THE IMPOSTORS (1998)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
"Big Night" was a delectable yet uneven comedy-drama that at least proved unconventional in its depiction of food, and sibling rivalry. It was a smoothly acted and pristinely directed piece by actor extraordinaires, Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott. The uneveness leads to a steady decline in the terminally unfunny "The Impostors," Tucci's new film masquerading as a wholly misguided farce.
Set during the Depression, Tucci and the grating Oliver Platt (a low-rent version of Nathan Lane) star as unemployed sibling actors, who inadvertently wind up on a cruise liner set for Europe. They are stowaways pretending to be baggage men, and they try to elude the presence of a pretentious actor (Alfred Molina) and a stodgy German head steward (Campbell Scott, and his tediously thick German accent). Nothing much happens, except the twosome uncover trite conspiracies and potential assassination plots in each of the ship's compartments.
The acting is mostly atrocious, savor the always enticing Steve Buscemi as a depressed lounge singer - I laughed out loud every time he appeared. The rest of the cast could use a transfusion of downers to diminish the wild overacting, especially by Molina, Scott, Hope Davis as a suicidal heiress, Isabella Rosselini as a depressed queen (!) and, sadly, Lili Taylor as a TOO CUTE and TOO PRECIOUS head stewardess named Lily. They may have had a wild time making the film, but all the fun most assuredly took place off-screen.
The film's fatal flaw lies with the inept, lazy writing by Tucci. He has no idea how to make this potentially winning farce flow - every scene is staged with the same static energy and bright, artificial lighting undermining whatever humor exists. Tucci could learn a thing or two from masters of comedy and farce such as Laurel and Hardy, Woody Allen (who makes an awkward guest appearance), and Charles Chaplin - farce needs energy and movement since it depends so much
on chaos.
The only good scene in "The Impostors" is at the beginning. It is a scene between the two brothers at an outdoor restaurant who perform an escalating act of violence over espresso and a female passer-by. This sequence is priceless in its exactness and sly moments of physical comedy - it is like a scene out of a silent film. It is so enjoyable and so unique that I was relieved to see modern-day sensibilities interested in paying homage to the comedy greats of the past. Too bad, the rest of the movie is all a facade, a cheat, a fraud, like the title.
