Descente à Paradise

What we have here is an experiment in no writing, no directing, just gathering some actors together and turning them loose. Many of these have been funny in skits, and each was encouraged to develop their own comic persona. But since these are not very clever comics, we have copies of Harpo, Jonathon Winters, Laurel and Hardy, Lucy and so on. There's nothing original or entertaining here except to watch how strong is the magnetism of the past masters.

Watching Cage flounder is also interesting since there are some who celebrate his talent. I'm coming more and more to appreciate how many different types of actors there are and how widely they differ. Cage as a person always sits nervously in his character. This is no problem if he is cast as a person who sits nervously in himself, and of course this is how he is typed. Sometimes it works, for instance with DePalma's experimental `Snake Eyes,' the disembodied EMT of `Bring out the Dead,' and the pretty sensitive `Raising Arizona.' But when it fails, it fails spectacularly with Cage staring goofily as in that lottery movie, or with shouting as here. Spectacular.