FeistyUpper
If you don't like this, we can't be friends.
Acensbart
Excellent but underrated film
Beanbioca
As Good As It Gets
Robert MacRae (jayhawk-18)
'The Year's Best Comedy!' it said on the box. A review from the Village Voice, no less, although perhaps on the day when the director's mother was the guest reviewer.'The Best Comedy of 1990'. This review on the box came from the Lake County News Herald, serving Northern Ohio. Note the lack of an exclamation point.I'm glad I only paid a dollar for this and that the money went to the Salvation Army. That's the only good thing to come out of this.Keanu Reeves and Barbara Hershey (woeful actors, the pair of them) fall in love simply because she's bored and he's horny. They are aunt and nephew (in name only, not by blood) and this tinge of incest is incorporated into the soap opera which plays on the radio station where Keanu's character works.This 'scandal' is milked by the shady scriptwriter played by Peter Falk who has survived a terrorist attack on his previous place of employment and risks the same at this other radio station because of his nonsensical, baseless hatred of Albanians that works its way into every insulting line of his scripts.I hope the above paragraphs make sense or sound halfway interesting, unlike the movie itself. It's a wildly uneven movie, with incomprehensible and disconnected scenes featuring an assemblage of low-rent talents you may half-recognise from cancelled TV shows.None of it makes any sense. Despite wanting to be a writer, Keanu's character is never seen with a pen in hand or sat at a typewriter. He neglects his character's Southern accent in several scenes. The incest storyline features in the soap opera well before the aunt and nephew actually begin their affair. Oddball characters (like the Sid/Sam radio boss) are just irritating, not funny.The only thing I enjoyed about the movie (aside from the closing credits) was the brilliant music from Wynton Marsalis.
Robert J. Maxwell
I've watched this film twice and still don't know exactly how to respond to it. It's as if I'd been sawed in two, right down the sagittal plane. I'm impressed that the story was from Mario Vargas Llosa, a noted Peruvian novelist, essayist, and political figure. I mean, you can't help but admire a person who can become perhaps the most important writer of fiction in Latin America AND a serious candidate for president of Peru, who almost made it, by the way.The movie is clearly ambitious. It takes risks that most aspiring blockbusters wouldn't dare. The story of two mismatched real-life lovers -- the older and wiser Barbara Hershey and the younger and dumber Keanu Reeves -- is intercut with a radio play. This is 1951, mind you, so radio plays are listened to religiously. The radio play, a kind of soap opera with medical interludes, is written by Peter Falk, who steals from actual incidents in the lives of others, including the conundrum of Hershey and Reeves.The performances are uniformly good. Even Reeves is passable. Peter Falk is outrageously hammy. For reasons that are a little fuliginous he dresses up at various points as a dainty French maid, a dovening Rabbi, and an Irish Cardinal. It's full of diverse themes involving love, art, so-called real life, the sociology of enmity, and some others -- I guess. I got confused.The problem is that none of these themes are explored in enough depth to make the story gripping rather than just interesting. Of course, one hopes for a happy outcome. And one gets it -- out of nowhere. When the two lovers are alone in a field, Falk shows up driving a fire engine, gives them his blessings, and takes off dressed in the Cardinal's robes.The whole enterprise is more of a puzzle than a satisfying artifact. If it weren't for my own magnificent performance, which lifts the film into the realm of the celestial, but which I have discounted, I wouldn't know how to assess it. I'll have to leave the judgment to individual viewers.
refill
From some of the other comments (especially the one complaining about the Southern accents), it's clear that people are judging this film at face value. This movie is not meant to be realistic! It's a whimsical, highly stylized fable, right in line with director Jon Amiel's best work -- and it's a delight from start to finish. Everybody in the cast is clearly having a great time -- particularly Peter Falk -- and if you have an open mind, and are willing to surrender to the film's atmosphere, you'll have a great time too.Hilarious, smart, sexy, surprising -- in other words, not your typical Hollywood comedy. Give it a chance!
foxion
"Tune In Tomorrow" is a near miss. It's a movie that is funny in moments but unfortunately these moments are few and far between. Peter Falk is enjoyable as is the story of the effects of a radio serial on those involved with its' creation. The movie just never clicks. Much of the blame has to go to Keanu Reeves. It is almost worth watching the movie to see how bad an actor can be. I don't know if he's just horribly miscast or maybe it was just a bad day at the office for him but he is awful. The funniest portions of the film have to do with the fictional radio serial Peter Falk's character has created. The insults against the Albanians are laugh-out-loud funny. With a little more work this could have been a very funny movie.
