1981 Directed by Peter Bonerz
While everyone knows you can't fight City Hall, there are those who, for whatever reason, can't resist the challenge. Three slightly disturbed psychiatric patients decide to take on the government. What ensues includes car chases, a ferry boat hijacking, strip-teases and lots of fun!
Gabe Kaplan Alex Karras Robert Klein Susan Clark Alex Rocco James Cromwell Paul Stewart Arthur Rosenberg Bobby Ramsen John DiSanti Will Knickerbocker Peter Bonerz Harold Bergman Roz Simmons Alden McKay Omkar Spencer Keshav Haeseler Al Kiggins Raymond Forchion Luke Halpin Julio Oscar Mechoso Jorge Gil John Archie Lee Krug Jeff Gillen Dan Rambo Lillian Zuckerman Clarence Thomas Bobby Gale Show All…
USAPG
USA
1981 In Review - August
#10
The story of a group of misfits living in Miami, and their revenge against government bureaucracy. After the city refuses to pay for the damage to their car caused by a pothole, the three friends, including one with constant short-term memory loss and another who is always jumping from personality to personality, to another who keeps seeing his mum who is invisible, decide to steal an army howitzer and ‘persuade’ the mayor to change his mind.
This is about as terrible as it sounds. Totally unfunny and very dated. Comedies about mental illness are hard to judge, and this comes across as totally silly. This is an incredible obscure film and was very difficult to find. I half wish that I couldn’t find it to be honest because it became mental torture to watch.
Nobody needs to watch this.
I saw that this was leaving Tubi in a couple days so I watched it last night. After it was over I was like well that was pretty stupid, I shouldn’t have bothered. But this morning on the drive into work I found myself chuckling at a few of its lines/bits of business so I dunno. I mean, it is pretty stupid, but it’s a harmless enough, uncynical, unsnarky, wacky little comedy.
It’s sort of a proto-DREAM TEAM about three guys with mental issues (one keeps forgetting everything, one keeps lapsing into impersonations of James Cagney or Bette Davis, one thinks his deceased mom is coming with him everywhere he goes) who get into a car wreck and try to…
It’s a sunny afternoon in 1987, you’re a divorced dad that just passed out on the couch halfway through an HBO presentation of Nobody’s Perfekt after crushing 8 miller lites. You’ll wake up and tell your other divorced dad friends that you saw a hilarious comedy on TV but in reality you may have mustered a couple faint chuckles because Nobody’s Perfekt is a screwball comedy that moves at an incredibly glacial pace. This is a tried and true Mild Movie. Something that was on pay cable in the 80s or 90s that no one really remembers because it wasn’t very good or very bad. It just exists for a lonely person to fall asleep to.
The only reason I've even heard of this is insomnia from either high school or college. I woke up extremely early and could not get back to sleep. This was playing on probably Comedy Central. I've been desperate to see it again, but not desperate enough to pay a single penny to rent it because I don't remember it being very good. It's finally on tubi and can confirm that it's not very good.
I think the premise could be made into a funny movie with a lot of work. The biggest issue is how ridiculous this is but it's still very low key. That could work for because this is a kind of low stakes story that keeps getting sillier but never feels like it's escalating. It's also just not funny but it could be funny. Everything is kind of near a joke without actually being a joke.
I’ve never watched a movie and was certain that the lead actor just wanted to hang out with his friends in Miami. The movie is never funny, the internal logic of the movie is non-existent and there is a jai alai scene, one of the very few in film history. But seldom do you see a cast just having so much fun being there.
