MOONSTRUCK (1987) *** I like this movie. This is a good movie. The acting is good, the plot is much better than what you usually get, Norman Jewison fills it all up with great shots that make you want to get on the next plane to New York and stay there, it makes you laugh it makes you feel good. There's this sense at the end though, for me, that maybe they'd gone after something bigger than what they got. I'm not sure that's a criticism of the film, I think maybe it's more a celebration of their audacity in going after something so big. I mean, wow!, if all of these talented people, playing at the top of their game, can only bring back chunks and point in the direction of the rest, and if they're willing to do it anyway and be happy about the whole thing, wow that thing out there must really be somethin'. I think they want you to go get it yourself. Much has been made, and rightfully so definitely, of the fine performances of Cher and Nicolas Cage. They are wonderful and wonderful together, and he has a cluster of lines so great that it doesn't really matter if they're right or make sense. They're all about the passion of saying them and he absolutely delivers on that. But I think the best part of the film is the older Italian guys, Vincent Gardenia and Feodor Chaliapin Jr. They're the pillars of the great culture so beautifully depicted. They set the whole backdrop of a mood, they deliver just the right line to make it all tilt again like the friggin' Tower a' Pizza, neh?! I just want to say a couple things about Cher. And Hollywood. You know this is probably going to be the lasting monument to her career, except maybe that song "I Got You Babe" (they were really smart to put in that line about "hair too long," for time capsules). But she's a tremendously talented lady. She can sing, she can act, she's got all kinds of fashion ideas and she can dance and when she talks to someone she always sounds intelligent. Hollywood's just full of people like that, people similarly situated with so many talents that..it's that Hollywood permits them to express their talent, sure, but it's also that Hollywood acting in concert with the inherent limitations of the time/space continuum and human mortality keeps them from expressing it all . And the rest of us over here, over there, too. Next time you look up at that crazy moon maybe it's the sane one taking an evening out over the lunatic asylum.
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