Sometime about 1980 Steven Paul was being eyed as perhaps the next big director. Not even twenty years old he made the film FALLING IN LOVE AGAIN with Elliot Gould, Susannah York and a a very young Michelle Pfieffer in a romantic comedy midlife crisis film. It wasn't bad (and it wasn't great) but Hollywood was curious since Paul could schmooze big stars and execs and somehow he managed to convince them into making a film version of Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick with Jerry Lewis, Madeline Kahn, Pat Morita, Samuel Fuller and Marty Feldman.
In the days before the internet the film was heavily hyped and was being groomed as the next big thing...and then it was delayed, recut and dumped into theaters. Steven Paul barely directed anything again and instead went into producing and management.
This was one of a group of big studio bombs that were due to release in 1981/82 (And Which I will be covering this week). HEARTBEEPS with Andy Kaufman and Bernadette Peters, THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING WOMAN with Lilly Tomlin and couple of others were heavily pushed and all died at the box office (or at least with audiences on the back end because we never discuss them) in spectacular fashion. It was a time where you didn't know what you were going to get the first weekend because the studios could control word of mouth.
SLAPSTICK was a head scratcher from the first. Vonnegut's least favorite novel being turned into a film starring a man whose only attachment to the public at the time were his telethon appearances and his old cult films. No offense to Lewis, but other than his being a name, why was he chosen? More to the point what made the studio want to release it or investors want to throw away money we'll never know.
The plot has two twins played by Lewis and Kahn, who apart are idiots but together are highly intelligent and if they touch are super intelligent. It transpires that they are actually aliens sent to solve the world's problems, however they are so brilliant that humanity can't deal with them. (Oh, and the Chinese have all been shrunk to two inches and cut themselves off from the world)
Words can't really do this film justice.
This is some sort of bent fever dream of a film that has you wondering how it got made. This isn't a small budget inde film, but a bigger budgeted film with real stars. It's nominally an off kilter film from a mainstream company.
To me the film was doomed from the start. It looks off from the first frame and it never remotely feels connected to reality, even its own. Vonnegut's worlds are slightly off but you buy them because his words are so good. The filmmakers who have made good/great films from his work understand this and keep things tethered. Steven Paul never does and he lets it go wild. Lewis is allowed to mug for the camera. Kahn seems lost. This is like watching a road accident where bizarre clown cars designed by four year olds crash into each other explode.
Nothing works. It's just awful
In all honesty it's so f-ed up that any cinephile worth their salt should see it, just so they can see about where cinematic hell starts and what it really entails.
It's so bad you completely understand why it took a decade for Steven Paul to direct another film-and it will explain why some of the films he produced aren't very good.
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