La gatta e la volpe

Dreadful Jack Nicholson vehicle from 1992 that is just not very good at all. Nicholson stars as a guard-dog trainer who becomes involved with a woman who is being stalked (Ellen Barkin). This is supposed to be a comedy, but nothing is very funny. The stalking side-story is used to cover up dead spots in the film, but this fails to work. This creates a film that is not very funny and not very dramatic. It is a film that is just in limbo. Bob Rafelson, usually a great director, just does not have it here. The screenplay is awful and overall the film is awful. Only the greatest Jack Nicholson fans will get anything worthwhile out of "Man Trouble". 2 stars out of 5.

With the talent involved here, it should have been a much better film than it is. Music by Georges Delarue, director Bob Rafelson...

Basically it's a lightweight romantic comedy which is attempting to emulate classics comedies about a rich girl meets non-rich guy (think Katherine Hepburn) but it just doesn't have the class or punch of earlier classics in this genre.

The cheap looking opening credits/cartoon are the first indication that something is amiss here. The first half is quite OK but after that, you just don't care enough about these people to stay with the film. There's something incredibly shallow about all those involved and the 'comedy' is just too obvious...problem animal, hispanic housekeeper, mismatched/deceived couples.

I don't think it's until Harry Dean Stanton makes an appearance quite late in the film that you think, aaah, now we've got a movie. But it's all too late.

I found this movie in the $5.50 bin of Wal-Mart and only got it because it had Jack Nicholson in it. I had extremely low expectations, which is probably why I got such a surprise--This movie is hilarious.

It has a very dry line of sarcasm running all the way through it, particularly in the off-the-wall arguments between Nicholson's character and the wife.

Taking everything literally will not help you understand the humor. You have to view every line as some sort of comeback to a previous one, and that's when you see the laughable irony in the film. It really did surprise me; I enjoyed it!

And the acting is stellar. The characters really are portrayed well. They're all very comical characters, full of flaws, which just makes them more realistic in a rather ridiculous plot which honestly could have been thrown out the window.

Personally, I would have loved to just see a film about the marriage counseling, which is only glimpsed at, between Nicholson and his wife. Some of the funniest moments are in that part of the film, but, like I said, it's dry.

Enjoy!

If it were not for great acting skillings by Ellen Barkin and Beverly D'Angelo, this film would never have been produced, they held up the leading male actor and the dog stole the show from everyone.

This had to be the worst film of 1992, no laughs for me at all.

MAN TROUBLE has some sort of bad pedigree. It's among Jack Nicholson's lowest rated movies and according to the IMDB trivia it went in theaters and left them after only three days which is quite surprising since Nicholson at the time was an A-list actor. So I had extremely low expectations for it but when I saw it last October I found myself kinda enjoying it for what it was. Not that I loved it but still I didn't hated like most of the other users here.

Classical singer Joan Spruance (Ellen Barkin) is divorced from the conductor and one day she finds her apartment ransacked and receives threatening phone calls by a maniac. The next day she calls guard dog trainer Harry Bliss (Nicholson) that gives her a German Shepherd and after a while Harry and Joan start to feel attracted to each other only to have Redmond Layls' (Harry Dean Stanton) lawyer offer Harry some money for retrieving a manuscript where Andy Ellerman wrote a biography of the boss. Later that night Joan is assaulted by the masked maniac tho she manages to escape. After some misunderstandings between Harry and Joan she'll be saved by Harry after Eddie Revere (who was the masked maniac all the time) wanted to dump her from a hill.

I agree with the other reviewers that in some points it was dumb but still there was a lot to like. The acting by all (Nicholson, Barkin, Stanton, Saul Rubinek and Raymond Cruz) was good and I loved the first minutes where the dog was introduced. Some of the situations made me also chuckle in some points so, based on this a movie can't be that bad.

Overall, one of the lesser movies of the stars probably because it was easy for the audience bash this movie instead of seeing it for what it is. If you manage to lower your expectations you'll end up getting a kick out of it.