Looking for Laughs

...Of three recent releases, Raising Arizona is such an artistic and comic success...

...It is intimated in one of Hi's dreams that Ed will ultimately conceive, and that the couple will live long enough to see multitudinous progeny...

...Hi (Nicholas Page) is a feckless holdup artist who winds up in prison every time he tries to knock over a convenience store...

...Nonetheless, in not hesitating to embrace the most delicious absurdities, the acting leaves us laughing...

...When the women catch up with the object of their affections, they are shocked to learn that he is in truth an agent for the KGB, and he now tries to kill them...

...Played by Bette Midler, this number is as foul-mouthed and meretricious as they come, the pointfor-point antithesis of everything Long's character represents...

...Outrageous Fortune does not pretend to immortality...

...In all the confusion Walter manages to get arrested, and is brought to trial before Bedford's father (William Daniels...

...The story line is charmingly uncomplicated...

...To treat Raising Arizona as merely a comedy, though, is to miss one of the hallmarks of its excellence...

...A reward is offered for the baby's return and everyone seems to be looking for him—the police, a hulking biker in black leather, even two of Hi's former cellmates who come to visit after escaping from prison...

...It is not unusual for a comedy to be based largely on the incongruity of words and motives, unfashionable as that may be today...

...Spiritually, however, a better analogy can be found in The Vicar of Wakefield, where pervasive treachery and vanity are glimpsed through the benevolent credulity of a saint-like narrator capable of perceiving only decency and goodness...

...Soon the news is full of the theft...

...One would be hard pressed to name an emotion that is not memorably evoked...

...The two ex-cellmates are to all appearances the fattest, vilest, least genteel of creatures, yet when they speak they couch their ignoble intentions in the most florid and decorous terms...

...Occasionally the genre achieves something more admirable, as narrative, dialogue and camera work combine to earn the loftier label of art...

...Learning that the wife of Nathan Arizona Sr., the wealthy owner of a furniture chain, has given birth to quintuplets, they steal one of the infants in desperation to raise as their own...

...Raising Arizona is similarly shot mostly from the perspective of Hi, who like the good vicar of the novel is unable to condemn anything outright...

...The black-leather biker, threatening his victims, sounds as if he were an articulate Existentialist...

...He is assured that she can behave herself—as long as she has no alcohol...

...When the directors wish to depict fear, as in a nightmare sequence of a fiend coming to retrieve the baby, the montage is truly terrifying...

...and Blind Dateis aflatout failure...

...Walter is of course fired on the spot...

...But for the language to be very beautiful and effortlessly grammatical is rare in films that take themselves more seriously than Raising Arizona...

...Determined to find out which of them Coyote really loves, the women resolve to track him down...

...The movie concludes with the couple returning the baby voluntarily...

...They stop dead in their tracks: This cannot be their lover...

...She is delighted to be admitted into an exclusive acting class that reflects her snobbishness, but is soon scandalized to find that another would-be actress endowed with triple-X credentials has also been accepted...

...There is not much here in the way of humorous dialogue, acting or directing, and the plot's outlandishness— barely suggested by my summary— comes across as mere muddle...

...All the top executives are invited to a dealclosing dinner with him, and are asked to bring only exceptionally proper women...

...Like the Coens, director Arthur Hiller has given us both a suspense film and a comedy, although the plot is much more complex and forced than that of Raising Arizona...

...Blazing Saddles, Airplane and National Lampoon's Summer Vacation, for example, are poorly put together, predictable, obvious and vulgar, yet they incontestably accomplish what they set out to do—make us laugh...

...In its understated ambition, the film does virtually everything...

...In fact, it is for the most part decidedly elegant, despite its verbal exploitation of the sentiments of salt-of-the-earth criminals...

...Woody Allen, for all his obvious striving, scarcely reaches the level of artistry they achieve without ever seeming to try...

...Blind Dale, in sum, adds little to a season that has otherwise been a fertile one for film comedy...

...Bedford acts as the defense attorney and obtains a " not guilty" verdict—in return for which Walter must relinquish Nadia to him for marriage...

...The imperfections and emptinesses that detract from Allen's films, including his better ones, will not be found in Raising Arizona...

...Their quest takes them all over New York and then down to Texas, where they are pursued by a brutal bunch of thugs who turn out to be working for the FBI...

...Blake Edwards' Blind Date has enjoyed considerable commercial success, and it would require greater exertions than I am capable of to detennine why...

...The story begins, ends and is interrupted at various points by Hi's glowing description of his indigence in ecclesiastical prose...

...Walter, who can't find a date, bows to his brother's insistence that he take a woman he has never met before named Nadia Gates (Kim Basinger...

...Occasionally the zaniness is successful, yet not often enough for the viewer to feel he has gotten his six bucks worth...

...When he goes to pick up Nadia, he is startled by her beauty...

...Predictably, he makes the mistake of giving her champagne, and by the time she meets the puritanical Japanese mogul she succeeds in scandalizing everyone in the restaurant...

...Before vows can be exchanged at the elaborate wedding ceremony, as you may have guessed, Walter reappears and is reunited with Nadia...

...George Carlin, playing a used-up hippie spending his days as a wino in Texas, is a valuable addition to the cast...

...The film tells the story of Walter Davis (Bruce Willis), a young executive working for an investment company that has been trying to get the account of an immensely wealthy, very traditional-minded Japanese businessman...

...Shelley Long plays a tall WASPy actress who is very concerned about the nobility of her art and the perfecting of her craft...

...Some comedies captivate us not for their cinematic or literary qualities, but because they are gross specimens of the genre...

...An exciting suspense sequence in the canyons of the Midwest follows...

...Outrageous Fortune is extremely funny without aspiring to, or attaining the status of art...

...It makes no profound judgments on the human condition, and its cinematography and direction are lackluster...

...A long chase scene, with virtually everyone getting involved, is genuinely suspenseful...

...The many mishaps that follow are largely precipitated by David Bedford (John Larroquette), a lawyer who is crazy about Nadia and intent on killing Walter...

...Long's devotion moves her to go to the morgue to see the mutilated corpse...

...And in the film, too, is the asperity of the wife that constantly cuts away the tissue of sweetness the narrator sees everywhere about him...

...This is perhaps the essence of the Coen brothers' remarkable and prodigious talent...

...Where Long scruples to use her physical or dramatic charms to get men to do what she wants, Midler offers to perform the most obscene acts for a bit of information (though the script never requires her to fulfill these promises...

...Eventually he resolves to go straight by marrying Ed (Holly Hunter), the policewoman in charge of taking mug shots...

...The ensuing affair is cut drastically short when her man steps out of their taxi into a flower shop that is immediately blown to bits, presumably by terrorists...

...Add to the list Outrageous Fortune: It is inane and coarse in a most appealing way...

...By the end of it all, Long and Midler have become fast friends...

...It would certainly be difficult to add or remove anything without impairing its smooth unfolding...

...Perhaps the best that can be said for the script is that it has more potential than Blake Edwards realizes: The scene in the restaurant could have been extended and made much funnier...

...The humor in Raising Arizona is always perfectly apposite to the dramatic purpose, and thus never seems merely gratuitous or vulgar...

...Speaking to strangers on the telephone, she often closes, "I want to bear your children," or "We're gonna have the best looking kids...

...The two start fighting, and while they are smashing one another around on the floor the sheet covering the corpse falls off, exposing his apparently intact midsection...

...Early in the film, Long meets Peter Coyote, who she thinks is a school teacher, and falls in love—aprocess communicated entirely through the wordless expressions of her lovely, endearing face...

...In this respect it might well be compared to the plays of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, in which the crudest thoughts are not allowed to disturb the measured perfection of the dialogue...

...When at the end they seek to convey halcyon fulfillment by means of another dream sequence, the agile movement of the camera breathes happiness and hope...

...Moreover, while the actions of the characters in Raising Arizona may strike us as manifestly hilarious, the script is so acute psychologically that they never betray themselves: They remain fully evolved human beings who feel everything with absolute sincerity and conviction...

...As many critics have already noted, Outrageous Fortune is exceptional, if not unique, in featuring a female comedy team in the manner of Abbot and Costello or Laurel and Hardy...

...But their dreams of domestic buss are shattered when they learn that she cannot conceive, and with Hi's criminal record the couple is also ineligible to adopt...

...Peter Coyote, a perfect foil to the Midler-Long duo, is thoroughly likeable until he is revealed as a spy and becomes equally despicable...

...There.to her horror, sheencounters Midler—who also claims to have been in love with Coyote...

...The obsessiveness of John Larroquette and William Daniels' Boston Brahmin act are, however, genuinely amusing...

...Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, Raising Arizona may actually be that rare phenomenon, a perfect film...

...Ed, who possesses an incomparable Southern twang, expresses herself with the deliberate precision of a schoolmarm...