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Scott Ventura >> Movie Commentary >> January 2000 >> Bananas

Bananas

Movie Commentary by Scott Ventura

Details

Times Seen:
1
Viewing Date:
January 2000
IMDB Name:
Bananas (1971)
Director:
Woody Allen
Keywords:
comedy
Made:
1971
MPAA Rating:
PG-13 for comic sexuality including some pin-up nudity, some drug use and crude language.

Slip

Even at a scant eighty-two minutes, Bananas feels too long. While many of the comic moments at the beginning are excellent, there's a certain point past which almost nothing seems funny. The movie loses focus in the transition from Manhattan to San Marcos. Woody Allen is most comfortable in The City, where the material is obviously familiar to him. The best moments not necessarily in Manhattan are Allen's parodies of the American sports media's ego and methods. I'm shocked that this material hasn't gone stale in almost three decades. I'm more shocked that Howard Cosell participated voluntarily. I have to wonder what Cosell did to upset Allen that caused his particularly unflattering appearance in Sleeper two years later.

Fielding's Hillish

When Bananas was made, "The Benny Hill Show" was only in the second year of a twenty-year run, but Allen had already co-opted the use of background music as the foreground sound. Watching Allen in a news store trying to be discrete while Marv Hamlisch music heightens the slapstick is humor that I hope will never go out of style.




Copyright 2000 by Scott Ventura. All rights reserved.