And Monkey Business Too
This weekend's review: Hanky Panky.
Hanky Panky looked like it would be fun on the surface. IMDB, I-tunes, Amazon, and the trailer all described it as a comedy, not to mention that the title design and the very name itself seem to promise some sort of romantic comedy. Yes, there’s evidence that there’s some thriller elements, but there was every possibility that they would make those elements more absurd than dramatic. Instead, it felt more like a thriller and a comedy were trying to coexist with each other, and both of them wind up poorer for it.
After a bizarre and unpleasant opening, the main plot begins when a woman (Kathleen Quinlan) finds herself on the run from two thugs. She gets into a taxicab to flee them, and winds up sharing it with Michael Jordon (Gene Wilder), an architect in town on business. He’s immediately smitten with her, but she’s more focused on getting a package mailed, which Jordon gallantly does for her. Later that night, he’s picked up by the same two thugs and drugged with truth serum so the bad guys can learn where the package is going. He successfully escapes them when they take him away to be eliminated, but all evidence of them has disappeared when he tries to get help from the police. To make matters worse, when he goes to the woman’s hotel to try to figure out what’s going on, she gets shot and everyone thinks he’s responsible. When he goes to his borrowed apartment to try to figure out how to deal with this situation, another woman, who eventually gives her name as Kate Hellman (Gilda Radner), shows up and tells him she’s a reporter who was hoping to get a big scoop, and promises to help him prove his innocence. They wind up on a series of chases and escapes from both the police and the villains, first tracking down the package and then trying to figure out exactly what’s going on, while gradually developing feelings for each other. As you can see, this scenario could easily be played straight or turned comedic, but as I said, it ends up in an unhappy middle ground.
The first problem the movie has is its opening. For the first two minutes, all you get are the names of the various cast and crew appearing in white font on a black background, with either no or very soft music. So with very little to look or listen to, the audience may wind up a little bored. Perhaps in an attempt to make up for this, the first actual scene in the movie is of a man waking up in his house with paint all over his hands and a weird, psychedelic painting on the wall. He seems dazed, and proceeds to stumble to the barn attached to the house, where he hangs himself. I suppose it’s effective, but if you came in expecting a comedy, it’s an unpleasant shock. To make matters worse, it takes quite a while before the opening ties in to the main story, so while you suspect it has something to do with the men pursuing Jordon and Kate, it still ends up feeling incongruous and possibly just added for shock value. It’s certainly not a good first impression, and although I did see it as a bad sign for what was to come, I didn’t expect what actually happened.
Humor is subjective, of course, but I didn’t find the comedy in this movie particularly funny. Part of the reason for this is that a lot of the jokes stretch out for far too long, two of which immediately spring to mind. One is an extended scene on a bus after Jordon has stolen a magician’s tux to make himself less conspicuous (he had to escape his apartment in his bathrobe and he thought it was a normal tux), and thus lots of wacky things pop out of it while he’s trying to get bus fare. The other is later in the movie, when Jordon and Kate have rented a small plane to track down a clue. The pilot says he’s not sure how long they’ll be able to stay up in the air, and when Jordon asks if it’s due to gas, the pilot confirms and then immediately burps. It’s an amusing enough play on words, but then it’s ruined when the pilot continues to burp for almost forty-five seconds. The former scenario at least has some variety, but the latter absolutely didn’t need to go on that long. Besides those two scenes, a lot of the humor is clearly supposed to be derived from Jordon’s confusion and increasing frustration/panic at the situation he’s in. This is achieved by having Wilder raise the volume and pitch of his voice, making him look and sound like he’s at the end of his rope. This could work for a scene or two, but again, it happens often enough that it quickly becomes grating. Since there are long stretches of the movie where things are played pretty straight, it makes moments like this even more unwelcome.
Sadly, the thriller moments of the movie aren’t great either, though they’re more dull than actively bad. A lot of it is made up of the usual tropes; innocent man accused, hiding or running from people, a friendly face who’s actually in league with the bad guys, etc. Furthermore, while I get the basic gist of what the big evil plot is, I’m a little confused on the details, which makes the climax in particular a little hard to follow. I don’t know if it ever would have been a truly good thriller, but I do think it might have turned out better if they’d just ditched the comedy aspect. At the very least, doing that would have given them more time to explain the confusing bits.
Finally, I feel like I should mention some of the few good things in this movie. The movie does try to avoid two of the big tropes (the wronged man not even trying to get help from the police, and a reveal of a lie leading to complications), and succeeds pretty well. Kate is shown to be a decent mechanic, which not only becomes plot relevant but makes her more than just the designated love interest. I don’t think it’s enough to qualify her for my “Best Female Characters” list, but I still appreciated that detail. Jordon spots some suspicious activity at one point and deals with it in an intelligent manner. One clue introduced late in the game is kind of neat, and also allows Jordon to use his background as an architect, again making what looked like a throwaway detail actually plot relevant. And while this last one isn’t precisely a good thing, I did smile slightly when it turned out that part of the plot revolves around computer tapes-not USB drives, not CDs, not even floppy disks, but something that I must assume is the equivalent of those old canisters of film. It’s an interesting time capsule, and a reminder that the movie would probably be hard to remake these days thanks to that element. Then again, given everything I outlined above, it’s probably better if they don’t remake it.
It should be obvious that I don’t recommend this one. Neither comedy fans or thriller fans will be particularly happy, and you won’t get much out of it if you’re here for the plot, either. I know that there are movies out there that were able to balance the thriller-comedy combination (though I can’t think of any names off the top of my head), so there wasn’t a guarantee that this would fail. Sadly, the writers of this particular tale weren’t skilled enough to pull it off.
Hanky Panky looked like it would be fun on the surface. IMDB, I-tunes, Amazon, and the trailer all described it as a comedy, not to mention that the title design and the very name itself seem to promise some sort of romantic comedy. Yes, there’s evidence that there’s some thriller elements, but there was every possibility that they would make those elements more absurd than dramatic. Instead, it felt more like a thriller and a comedy were trying to coexist with each other, and both of them wind up poorer for it.
After a bizarre and unpleasant opening, the main plot begins when a woman (Kathleen Quinlan) finds herself on the run from two thugs. She gets into a taxicab to flee them, and winds up sharing it with Michael Jordon (Gene Wilder), an architect in town on business. He’s immediately smitten with her, but she’s more focused on getting a package mailed, which Jordon gallantly does for her. Later that night, he’s picked up by the same two thugs and drugged with truth serum so the bad guys can learn where the package is going. He successfully escapes them when they take him away to be eliminated, but all evidence of them has disappeared when he tries to get help from the police. To make matters worse, when he goes to the woman’s hotel to try to figure out what’s going on, she gets shot and everyone thinks he’s responsible. When he goes to his borrowed apartment to try to figure out how to deal with this situation, another woman, who eventually gives her name as Kate Hellman (Gilda Radner), shows up and tells him she’s a reporter who was hoping to get a big scoop, and promises to help him prove his innocence. They wind up on a series of chases and escapes from both the police and the villains, first tracking down the package and then trying to figure out exactly what’s going on, while gradually developing feelings for each other. As you can see, this scenario could easily be played straight or turned comedic, but as I said, it ends up in an unhappy middle ground.
The first problem the movie has is its opening. For the first two minutes, all you get are the names of the various cast and crew appearing in white font on a black background, with either no or very soft music. So with very little to look or listen to, the audience may wind up a little bored. Perhaps in an attempt to make up for this, the first actual scene in the movie is of a man waking up in his house with paint all over his hands and a weird, psychedelic painting on the wall. He seems dazed, and proceeds to stumble to the barn attached to the house, where he hangs himself. I suppose it’s effective, but if you came in expecting a comedy, it’s an unpleasant shock. To make matters worse, it takes quite a while before the opening ties in to the main story, so while you suspect it has something to do with the men pursuing Jordon and Kate, it still ends up feeling incongruous and possibly just added for shock value. It’s certainly not a good first impression, and although I did see it as a bad sign for what was to come, I didn’t expect what actually happened.
Humor is subjective, of course, but I didn’t find the comedy in this movie particularly funny. Part of the reason for this is that a lot of the jokes stretch out for far too long, two of which immediately spring to mind. One is an extended scene on a bus after Jordon has stolen a magician’s tux to make himself less conspicuous (he had to escape his apartment in his bathrobe and he thought it was a normal tux), and thus lots of wacky things pop out of it while he’s trying to get bus fare. The other is later in the movie, when Jordon and Kate have rented a small plane to track down a clue. The pilot says he’s not sure how long they’ll be able to stay up in the air, and when Jordon asks if it’s due to gas, the pilot confirms and then immediately burps. It’s an amusing enough play on words, but then it’s ruined when the pilot continues to burp for almost forty-five seconds. The former scenario at least has some variety, but the latter absolutely didn’t need to go on that long. Besides those two scenes, a lot of the humor is clearly supposed to be derived from Jordon’s confusion and increasing frustration/panic at the situation he’s in. This is achieved by having Wilder raise the volume and pitch of his voice, making him look and sound like he’s at the end of his rope. This could work for a scene or two, but again, it happens often enough that it quickly becomes grating. Since there are long stretches of the movie where things are played pretty straight, it makes moments like this even more unwelcome.
Sadly, the thriller moments of the movie aren’t great either, though they’re more dull than actively bad. A lot of it is made up of the usual tropes; innocent man accused, hiding or running from people, a friendly face who’s actually in league with the bad guys, etc. Furthermore, while I get the basic gist of what the big evil plot is, I’m a little confused on the details, which makes the climax in particular a little hard to follow. I don’t know if it ever would have been a truly good thriller, but I do think it might have turned out better if they’d just ditched the comedy aspect. At the very least, doing that would have given them more time to explain the confusing bits.
Finally, I feel like I should mention some of the few good things in this movie. The movie does try to avoid two of the big tropes (the wronged man not even trying to get help from the police, and a reveal of a lie leading to complications), and succeeds pretty well. Kate is shown to be a decent mechanic, which not only becomes plot relevant but makes her more than just the designated love interest. I don’t think it’s enough to qualify her for my “Best Female Characters” list, but I still appreciated that detail. Jordon spots some suspicious activity at one point and deals with it in an intelligent manner. One clue introduced late in the game is kind of neat, and also allows Jordon to use his background as an architect, again making what looked like a throwaway detail actually plot relevant. And while this last one isn’t precisely a good thing, I did smile slightly when it turned out that part of the plot revolves around computer tapes-not USB drives, not CDs, not even floppy disks, but something that I must assume is the equivalent of those old canisters of film. It’s an interesting time capsule, and a reminder that the movie would probably be hard to remake these days thanks to that element. Then again, given everything I outlined above, it’s probably better if they don’t remake it.
It should be obvious that I don’t recommend this one. Neither comedy fans or thriller fans will be particularly happy, and you won’t get much out of it if you’re here for the plot, either. I know that there are movies out there that were able to balance the thriller-comedy combination (though I can’t think of any names off the top of my head), so there wasn’t a guarantee that this would fail. Sadly, the writers of this particular tale weren’t skilled enough to pull it off.