Well, "Airplane" was released in 1980 and proved a cash cow so it was inevitable that sequels, imitations, and rip offs should follow. The duo responsible for the first, Zucker and Abrahams, did it best. They imitated themselves with relish and with skill. "Johnny Dangerously" is amusing too but not quite in the same vein as the others. In high school English class I was always puzzled by the distinction between parody, satire, and farce. With little help from the teacher, Ms. Olive Rapp, I decided that a parody consisted of gently making fun of something, that a satire involved edgier ridicule, and that a farce was a fast comedy in which people fell over things like furniture.
This is a satire of 1930s gangster movies that sometimes elbows its way uncertainly into farce territory. For the most part, the laughs lie in the often witty dialog. And there ARE laughs. Many of them come from Richard Dimitri's character of Roman Troy Moronie, a caricature of a mustachioed foul-mouth Italian rival of the Kelly gang. He's always overwrought, teeth bared with rage, his eyes blacked out like the villain's in a Charlie Chaplin short. He reads a statement to the congressional committee investigating him: Something like, "Ladies and Gentlemen. You cork-sacking foragging faggots ain't got no right to take a man's freedom." He gets deported to Sweden.
The plot follows the usual formula of the gangster movie. Michael Keaton is one of the Kelly brothers. Their "Ma", Maureen Stapleton) is always suffering from some increasingly expensive illness or other that doesn't stop her from plodding on with her laundry in order to support her two boys now that their Dad is gone. (A photo of Dad hangs in the kitchen; he's in a striped prison suit and strapped in an electric chair.) Keaton changes his last name to Dangerously so that Ma and his younger brother don't know about his sensational career in crime. He even puts his brother through law school and when he becomes D.A. the clash is inevitable.
Keaton does all right as Johnny Dangerously but is perhaps outdone, or at least outwritten, by some of the supporting players. Some of the sight gags are dated and a few are sloppy but the film is redeemed by the dialog, which can get pretty funny, funner than a similar satire (or is it a parody) in "Movie, Movie."
This is a satire of 1930s gangster movies that sometimes elbows its way uncertainly into farce territory. For the most part, the laughs lie in the often witty dialog. And there ARE laughs. Many of them come from Richard Dimitri's character of Roman Troy Moronie, a caricature of a mustachioed foul-mouth Italian rival of the Kelly gang. He's always overwrought, teeth bared with rage, his eyes blacked out like the villain's in a Charlie Chaplin short. He reads a statement to the congressional committee investigating him: Something like, "Ladies and Gentlemen. You cork-sacking foragging faggots ain't got no right to take a man's freedom." He gets deported to Sweden.
The plot follows the usual formula of the gangster movie. Michael Keaton is one of the Kelly brothers. Their "Ma", Maureen Stapleton) is always suffering from some increasingly expensive illness or other that doesn't stop her from plodding on with her laundry in order to support her two boys now that their Dad is gone. (A photo of Dad hangs in the kitchen; he's in a striped prison suit and strapped in an electric chair.) Keaton changes his last name to Dangerously so that Ma and his younger brother don't know about his sensational career in crime. He even puts his brother through law school and when he becomes D.A. the clash is inevitable.
Keaton does all right as Johnny Dangerously but is perhaps outdone, or at least outwritten, by some of the supporting players. Some of the sight gags are dated and a few are sloppy but the film is redeemed by the dialog, which can get pretty funny, funner than a similar satire (or is it a parody) in "Movie, Movie."