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jeff_v [ 8.5 ]
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A lovely musical from Dennis Potter starring Steve Martin as a struggling sheet-music salesman in the Depression Era. This is a beautiful film (kudos to D.P. Gordon Willis and Production Designer Philip Harrison) and an incredibly heartfelt one. The musical sequences are nothing short of astounding. It's only in the pacing between numbers that the film falters a bit. The cast is excellent, particularly Bernadette Peters (Christopher Walken has a show-stopping dance number that is one of the film's highlights). A lovely and endearing effort that is all I want from a musical.
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Dancing_P [ 7.0 ]
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Ostensibly the 80's precursor to Punch Drunk Love, Pennies from Heaven is a depressing-as-hell musical starring everyone's favorite wild and crazy guy, Steve Martin. Understandably, it failed miserably at the box office; people were not ready to see Martin as a boozing, adulterous asshole who sang songs in between bouts of adultery. Hell, 25 years later, I still don't think anyone is really ready for a movie like Pennies from Heaven. Arthur Parker (Martin) is a sheet music salesman in Depression-era Chicago. His business is waning and he has to come home to his frigid wife (Jessica Harper) wife every night. He starts seeing a schoolteacher (Bernadette Peters) but, wracked with guilt of leaving his wife, he gets her pregnant and promptly leaves her. He ping-pongs back and forth between his wife and his lover until he's caught at the wrong place at the wrong time. It's not a musical in the traditional sense in that the performers do not sing any of the songs; instead, they lipsynch to era recordings. It's a pretty daring move that pays off quite well, especially in the scene where Christopher Walken (as a scuzzy pimp) strips to the tune of Let's Misbehave (no, seriously, it's awesome). The brutal shifts in tone make for a (maybe intentionally) uneven film that works in scenes and setpieces instead of a whole. There's an overabundance of plot that most likely comes from adapting six hours of miniseries into two of film, which is to be expected, I suppose. It looks damn good, too. It's an imperfect film, but it's so original that it's certainly worth a look.
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| Weighted Rating | : 6.9 |
| No. Ratings | : 4 | |
| No. Reviews | : 3 | |
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