User reviews

This film has so many good things in it and so much talent worked so very hard on it that it's just baffling to me that so much of it doesn't work. I love '30s and '40s musicals, and I saw this film in 1981, and I've seen it about 10 times more on DVD. I like a lot of it, but somehow it's just not a very good movie, and I still can't figure out why.

The music is good. The musical numbers are creatively shot and well-executed; the Walken number alone took weeks to film. The sets, costumes, photography, and color are beautiful and give the film a real Depression feel. Clearly, no expense was spared. The actors give it their all. The re-creations of photos and paintings (including "Nighthawks" which is actually from WW2) are breathtaking. They must have been very hard to set up, light, and shoot. But, in keeping with the film's low-key style, they're not lingered on at all, and if you look away you can miss them.

Is the problem Steve Martin? This choice caused some controversy in 1981. He lacked film experience and he might not have been the ideal choice, although it's hard to guess what other leading man could have done that vaudeville stuff in 1981. Martin, at least, doesn't obviously fall down on the job; the verdict is still out. But Peters, who even apart from this film seems to belong to the '30s, holds up her end of things.

Maybe it's the script and the way the film is conceived. If the idea is to realize what these '30s drudges fantasize about-- and to do it in a '30s-musical style, as if they imagine themselves the heroes of musicals-- then there has to be something to the drudges that makes us care what they fantasize about. But there isn't enough to these people. They're drawn as thin types; yet the material is played very slowly, as if they were supposed to turn into real people at some point. They never do, and so by the end it all peters out (no pun intended). I also thought the subplot with the young girl was a maudlin absurdity, right out of a Mary Pickford tear-jerker.

Perhaps the real problem can be traced back to the origins of the project. It plays almost like an English musical made in an American style, and it doesn't work very well. The humor in the book is too tedious, too black, and too obsessed with tit jokes to be American. And the musical numbers are too slick, loud, and overproduced to be English. The filmmakers couldn't find a way to make these two parts fit together. And so they are just jammed together over and over again. One is constantly aware of the bad fit. It just doesn't come together, but in the various parts there are still more than enough reasons to see it.

It's 1934 Chicago. Sheet music salesman Arthur Parker (Steve Martin) can't get any love from his wife Joan (Jessica Harper) both in the bedroom and in the bank book. She wants to keep her inheritance for a rainy day but he wants to use it for his business. He befriends penniless hitchhiking Accordion Man. He falls for school teacher Eileen (Bernadette Peters) and they have a short affair as he lies to her about being a widow telling her to "take the pain away". His wife Joan entices him back with sex and money. Eileen is fired for being pregnant out of wedlock. Arthur meets a blind girl calling her beautiful. Later the Accordion Man rapes her and kills her. A desperate Eileen falls into the arms of Tom the pimp (Christopher Walken).

This is a sad depressing movie juxtaposed by the bright shiny surreal song and dance show. The story is such a downer. Arthur is a horrible person. Eileen is an innocent that is destroyed. There is a horrible crime. Yet this is a fantasy with dance reminiscent of the 30s except darker. It's a very odd mix and is almost experimental in its nature. It's definitely not a comedy.

Heavy-going, off-putting Depression-era musical (set to old recordings of the 1930s) is quite elaborate and usually looks good, but is filled with ciphers. Steve Martin, in a fair dramatic acting turn, plays a sex-obsessed sheet-music salesman in Chicago with no conscience who cheats on his frigid wife with a schoolteacher, later becoming involved in a murder investigation. Unfortunately for Martin, this character is such a crude, lascivious lout, we don't really care about his fate or whether or not his teacher-girlfriend (now a prostitute) leaves him. Jessica Harper (as the cold-fish wife) is every married man's nightmare: the bride-turned-shrew; Bernadette Peters is somewhat more sympathetic as the lover, and gets to utilize her natural Kewpie doll-ness to fantastic effect in the musical numbers. But, for the most part, "Pennies From Heaven" is peopled with low-lifes. The extravagant showstoppers, fantasy sequences designed like mini Busby Berkeley movies, are breathlessly intricate and exciting to watch, but they provide little emotional subtext for what's happening in the real world (I don't know if original creator Dennis Potter meant it or not, but the material plays like "Up the Sandbox" with music). Herbert Ross directed with a heavy hand, though he does get some fine moments from his cast, especially Christopher Walken as a hoofing pimp. An expensive remake of a British mini-series starring Bob Hoskins, the movie ultimately feels a bit claustrophobic and sluggish, and has an unsatisfying wrap-up to its reedy-thin plot. **1/2 from ****

When Herb Ross opened "Pennies From Heaven" during Christmas of 1981 it met with harsh press and public indifference. Many concluded the musical was dead.

But "Pennies," like Bob Fosse's "All That Jazz" released two years before, is a key transitional work that juxtaposed the cynicism of the '70s to the exhilaration and escapist fantasy of its buoyant Depression era score.

Steve Martin ran the risk of alienating his fan base by trading in the "Wild and Crazy" guy for the brooding, unfaithful Arthur Parker. But he's a revelation. And what a dancer!

It was no surprise when audiences stayed away.

By all means watch it today, particularly on the new widescreen DVD release. You'll walk away with a greater appreciation of Christopher Walken, Bernadette Peters and especially Steve Martin.

It makes it so much harder to watch this major talent wasting himself in such tripe as "Cheaper by the Dozen" and "Bringing Down the House."

I saw "Pennies from Heaven" in the theater and I've seen it several times since. It has always been an unsatisfying watch. It's just too downbeat. Director Herbert Ross and company deserve an E for effort but the movie doesn't work as well as it should. Steve Martin's character is just too unlikable. The misery he spreads is just too much. The movie does look great. The set design and costumes are terrific. The musical numbers are very good. "Pennies from Heaven" jerks the audience from one extreme to another. It's often an uncomfortable movie to watch.

An Americanized adaptation of the six-part 1978 British miniseries, underrated director Herbert Ross' brilliant PENNIES FROM HEAVEN was a huge commercial flop in US when originally released. Audiences of 1981 did not seem to understand the concept of a depression-era musical, where the actors lip-synch to original recording from the in 1930s in elaborate fantasies that are far removed from the actual world in which they inhabit. Though extremely unconventional, this device is absolutely heart-wrenching as the dreariness of the real world breaks away to the brightly-colored, perpetually optimistic fantasy land that only lives in the lyrics of popular songs. It is the eternal agony of the dreamer that is expressed; the cold reality that leaves us destined to reach for the sky, but doomed to walk the earth.

This leaves the film's cast with a difficult task, as they must not only contend with their dramatic art, but also be well versed in a variety of demanding dances and highly disciplined choreography. Comedian Steve Martin is far from the first choice to portray the downtrodden protagonist in any film, but the actor acquits himself expertly in both the film's demanding dance and drama. Mousy Jessica Harper delves into her eternally repressed character so deeply that one is never certain where one stops and the other begins; a triumph of form for any thespian. Renowned dancer Vernel Bagneris is mesmerizing as the film's most ambiguous character, and his density-defying dance to Arthur Tracy's heartbreaking rendition of the title song is one of my favorite moments in any film.

Even more impressive is tough guy actor Christopher Walken's then-unexpected prowess on the dance floor, as he delivers a riotously funny and surprisingly sexy striptease to Irving Aaronson's "Let's Misbehave." In this sequence, Walken pulls off the difficult hat trick of satisfying both seasoned viewers and film neophytes, while still managing to leave both groups wanting more. Best of all, however, is the lovely Bernadette Peters in a superb, Golden Globe award-winning performance. Never before has Peters' slightly tarnished Kewpie-doll personae been better utilized, and the actress' transformation from repressed schoolmarm to hardened prostitute feels both stunningly and horrifyingly real.

Herbert Ross and his creative team manage to bind all of the pieces together into one seamless collage of lost hope, forced optimism, and never-ending desperation. Gordon Willis' cinematography is never less than completely awe-inspiring, and the combined efforts of top-drawer art and set direction and Bob Mackie's seemingly authentic period costumes helps cement the look and feel of desolate decade that the film represents. Over all films in every genre, PENNIES FROM HEAVEN would be a likely contender to receive my vote for the single most underrated film masterpiece of the last twenty years. It exudes all of the contradictory joy and heartbreak that the movies offer, and serves it all up in one stunning presentation.

Man, did I love the musical numbers in this film.....but hated the story. I wound up taping just the music segments out of this film and making myself a neat little half-hour video of fantastic song-and-dance numbers.

The dance numbers are 1920s-1930s material except you get 1980s color and special-effects (and loose sexual mores). Actually, these are more like put- ons of those routines, including Busby Berkeley extravaganzas. Added to the routines are humor. I just laughed out loud at the absurdity of them, which included having the actors lip-sync to the old-time singers.

The dance routines are all totally different and very entertaining, from the opening bank skit, to the kids in the classroom to Christopher Walken's striptease to Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters imitating Astaire & Rogers. The dancing is good and the songs are great: catchy and fun.

Story-wise, Martin ("Arthur Parker") plays a boorish, profane, lying and just plain unlikeable character. Are we supposed to root for him? Maybe we are to root for Peters, who plays "Lulu," the school teacher-turned- prostitute (sounds like real-life these days with all the female teacher sex scandals). Hey, I like Martin in a lot of films. He can be a very entertaining guy, but the character he plays in here.....well, you can have him and this very cynical and depressing story. No thanks.

It's no surprise to me it bombed at the box office. Too bad, because with a more appealing story a lot more people would have been treated to the great musical numbers in this movie.

I get it, sad depression reality crossed with happy peppy songs done up with big time production numbers. The only problem is that gets old about the third time in and from there it's just repeat ad nauseum until you get a brutal real ending sold out by a tacked on routine at the end. This is an idea movie but the problem is the idea just isn't worth 2 hours. A couple of the routines, like the Walken one are some quality stuff, but there's just a barrage of nastiness and depressing soul crushing brutality that there's no reason to subject yourself to in everything else. Probably sounded better on paper than in practice.

the more I am amazed. It is the film that Chicago could have been were it not for its irony. I never saw the BBC original, but fondly remember Potter's "The Singing Detective." I can understand that Hoskin's Cockney optimism would fit Pennies' lead character to a tee, but Martin gives us a hint of the fragility of the song pusher's world, like Willy Loman, out there on a shoeshine, and for Martin, a song.

The film is innovative and definitely not your father's musical, and the songs, done up not in 1981 over-orchestration but in that tinny sound of early vinyl, just blow me away. After I saw it, I went searching for Follow the Fleet just to see 'Face the Music' in reel time.

This film will not be everyone's cup of tea. It is one of those movies that I say works best when you begin with "Once upon a time."

Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters star in this musical that is anything buy light in subject matter. The film is set in Depression-era America with Martin as a sheet music salesman who lives day to day through music and dreams. He is married, but takes up Peters as a mistress. The musical numbers are unique in that the actors do not sing, except in the end, for themselves, but merely lip-sync and dance to the music of the 30s. The desperation of the times is apparent everywhere, other than in the fantasy world that the characters create for themselves, which enable them to escape the harsh realities of life. Christopher Walken fans take note. He does a dance of exuberant decadence that should knock most people's socks off due to his surprising ability.

Let's start with the good in Pennies from Heaven: Bob Mackie's costumes are really pretty. Bernadette Peters is really pretty. You'll get to see Steve Martin tap dance and Christopher Walken in an elaborate striptease. Now let's get to the bad parts.

Pennies from Heaven is a jukebox musical set in the 1930s, but even though the two leads can sing-Steve would later appear in the movie Little Shop of Horrors and Bernadette had already been nominated for two Tony awards-the filmmakers chose to have no one in the film sing their own songs. Instead, the original 1930s recordings were used, and oftentimes the effect was jarring and comical when a male character would lip-sync to a female's vocals. Since the story is a drama, it's not supposed to make the audience laugh.

The second problem is Steve Martin's character. He plays a married man, unhappily tied to Jessica Harper. He treats Jessica badly, putting her down, blaming her for their problems, humiliating her, and pressuring her into doing things she's not comfortable doing. Then, he falls in love with a beautiful, meek schoolteacher, Bernadette Peters. He lies to her and tells her he's not married, then when he slips up and says "my wife" in the course of a conversation, rather than confess his deceit and disrespectful intentions, he pretends to weep in his hands and makes up another lie about being a widower. Then, as Bernadette comforts him, he makes advances. He doesn't listen to her protestations, uses his fake tears as his motivation, and pressures her into going to bed with him. In short, he's a terrible person. How can we possibly root for him? Poor Bernadette, and poor Jessica!

The next problem is the 1930s setting. As Fred Astaire commented when he watched the film, it didn't capture the innocence of the time period. The film is riddled with seediness and sensationalism, which don't embody the decade. In the Depression, those who were down on their luck were quite literally depressed. They didn't prance around like Honest John in Pinocchio on his way to Pleasure Island. 1930s films featured glitz and glam, but with the express intention of cheering their audiences up and providing escapism. The grand chorus numbers in Pennies from Heaven feel like they were made in the 1980s, appealing to a generation of yuppies swallowing the "Greed is Good" mantra.

Speaking of Fred Astaire, there's one song and dance that features his archival footage. Steve and Bernadette go to the movies and watch Follow the Fleet. When "Let's Face the Music and Dance" is performed, Fred and Ginger open the song. Then, Steve and Bernadette literally walk into the screen and take over in their places. Setting aside how presumptuous that is, and setting aside the fact that Fred was adamantly against using that footage in this film, the rest of the number is completely changed! If you're going to have a replica, have a replica, like Seth MacFarlane's tribute to Gene Kelly's dance with Jerry the Mouse. Follow the Fleet is my favorite Fred & Ginger musical; I know it like the back of my hand. Anyone who knows "Let's Face the Music and Dance" knows that it's not a chorus number. It's an extremely poignant number that speaks to those in the audience who have absolutely nothing to live for, telling them to get back up on their feet and ride it out. It is not a chorus number, there are no intricate camera angles, there is no tap dancing, Fred doesn't have a cane, the music doesn't suddenly become jazzy and up-tempo, and the two leads never find themselves imprisoned in a jail-like fence made of the chorusmen's canes. No wonder Fred said he was nauseated to watch this movie!

If you're that one person on Earth who doesn't like Fred Astaire, and you don't care one bit about accurately representing the innocence of the 1930s, you can check this out to see Steve Martin in a drama alongside his sweet-pie at the time. She's awfully cute, but even though she has a special place in my heart, I couldn't fully like the movie.

DLM warning: If you suffer from vertigo or dizzy spells, like my mom does, this movie might not be your friend. During the "My Baby Said Yes" bank song, there's quite a bit of spinning camerawork, and it will make you sick. In other words, "Don't Look, Mom!"

I am glad I don't live in Frostbite Falls because I might shiver at the thought of such a complex and clever film as PENNIES FROM HEAVEN. Made with a massive 1980 budget of $22 million and all of it up there on the screen, this genuine masterwork is one of the great unappreciated and misunderstood films of its day. The biggest hurdle the film could not overcome (then) was the casting of comedy stars in Art Deco darkness. Steve Martin had just scored a bullseye in the wild comedy THE JERK. For mainstream audiences to even then turn around and slightly embrace the sad loneliness of PENNIES' aching melancholy is impossible. PENNIES' failed and was consigned to misfire history. Today in 2005 this film deserves to stand with CHICAGO or even MOULIN ROUGE in its sly dark new century crowd pleaser theatrics. It is a film for this century and if audiences today have the chance to appreciate and applaud it's brilliant creative slant and dramatic spectacle, it will be a success. Possibly in the same ironic fantasy manner of THE PIRATE or YOLANDA AND THE THIEF, or LADY IN THE DARK of the 40s, ITS ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER from 1955, maybe THE BOYFRIEND of the 70s and even the original 1988 HAIRSPRAY by John Waters, PENNIES' belongs to that rare style of musical spectacle: the emotional fantasy with a dark satire core. Truly great.

The late Dennis Potter, who died ten years ago this month, was during his lifetime one of Britain's leading playwrights, but since his death his work has been neglected, largely because most of it was written for the medium of television. Although the BBC has an extensive archive of dramatic material, very little of this can ever be shown on the main terrestrial TV channels for fear of offending that vociferous lobby of viewers and critics which regards the showing of 'repeats' as an unworthy use of the license fee and which would rather view new programmes, however trashy, in preference to archive material, however brilliant.

I have not seen Potter's original television drama 'Pennies from Heaven' since it was first shown in the late seventies. I did, however, recently see the American film version of the series on television. (Feature films, however old they may be or however many times they may have been shown on television, are for some reason not classified as 'repeats', and thus are one of the few exceptions to the reluctance of British TV executives to screen older material). The film concerns the three-sided relationship between Arthur Parker, a sheet-music salesman during the depression years of the thirties, his wife Joan and his mistress Eileen. As the plot progresses, the characters frequently break into song to sing one of the popular songs of the era. (The actors, in fact, do not actually sing themselves but rather mime to the original recordings). The original TV drama was set in Britain, but the film has been relocated to Chicago- a change of no great significance, as even in the thirties Britain and America shared a common culture as far as popular music was concerned.

The film's main theme is the contrast between the harsh economic and social conditions of the period and the sugary nature of much of its popular music. The scenes showing the characters' everyday lives are grim in their subject-matter- the plot deals with adultery, prostitution, unemployment, poverty and murder. The look of these scenes is also bleak, with dull colours and a lack of decoration; some of the shots deliberately echo the paintings of Edward Hopper, the most cold-eyed and disenchanted painted of the age. Whenever the characters break into song, however, the scene changes and we are transported into the world of 1930s Hollywood musicals with their extravagant song-and-dance numbers. Although there were songs of protest and social comment in the thirties, all the numbers we hear in the film are sunny and light-hearted, either celebrating the joys of happy love or (like the title number) extolling a philosophy of shallow Panglossian optimism.

Like another reviewer on this board, I was struck by the film's obvious debt to Brecht and his theory of the 'Verfremdungseffekt', or 'alienation effect', which was still influential in the late seventies and early eighties. (The idea is that theatrical performances should be deliberately unrealistic so that the audience, rather than sympathising emotionally with the characters, will consider the play's themes rationally and objectively). Besides the final scene, the deliberately stilted acting and the sudden shifts from a sordid daily life to an escapist fantasy world emphasis the theatricality and unreality of the whole enterprise. The characters are certainly difficult to sympathies with on an emotional level. I have never been an admirer of Brecht either as a man or as an artist (his theories of 'non-Aristotelian drama' can make for some very tedious hours in the theatre, and I find it impossible to admire a man who continued writing propaganda for Soviet-style Communism throughout the era of the Stalinist terror), but it cannot be denied that his dramas had a serious purpose. I am not sure that this film does. Its political message really goes no further than saying that when times are hard people will tend to take refuge in optimistic or escapist entertainment.

The main quality of the film, in fact, seems to be the nostalgic appeal of the songs themselves and of the song-and-dance numbers into which they are introduced. Like, I suspect, many of my generation who grew up with the Beatles in the sixties and seventies, I have never taken much interest in the popular music of the pre-rock-and-roll era. Although this music was often tuneful and performed by talented artists, it has always struck me as bland and, despite its frequent theme of romantic love, too emotionally reticent to make much impact. Nevertheless, I can appreciate that in 1981 there were many of the older generation who remembered this style of music with affection and who may well have enjoyed the film for its nostalgic qualities rather than as a Brechtian cinematic experiment. In 2004, of course, the proportion of the public who actually have first-hand experience of the popular songs and film musicals of the 1930s is much less than it was in 1981. Today the film seems a strangely dated curiosity, an unsuccessful mixture of Brecht and Busby Berkeley. 5/10.

If you are truly interested in seeing this film, please read the review written by Pauline Kael, who with her unique voice, says everything I am about to try to say, perfectly. This may not be a movie for everybody. First, you may have to have some patience for musicals. And secondly, you may have to have patience for complex people and their problems. I have watched this movie with two friends, and the first yawned everytime the actors opened their mouths to lip sync the beautiful and strange Depression era songs. The second found the role played by Steve Martin heartbreaking, and could not watch the entire film. But I think this movie can be extremely rewarding, and have found myself watching it a least once a year for the past few years. I think the Depression makes an excellent back round in this bittersweet story of blind optimism, and this movie greatly inspires my imagination. I imagine the whole U.S. as it was in the early part of the century, filled with millions of dreamers, greedy for sex and love and money, just like people are now, only now most people have a shot at a least one of those things, and during the depression, beautiful and hopelessly empty dreams were everywhere, as poverty crushed lives right and left. Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters are as connected and magical together as they are in the Jerk. In fact, everything I love about The Jerk is what I love about Pennies From Heaven. Some of the musical sequences are breathtaking, particularly a dance number performed by Christopher Walken ! And the subtle beauty of the last song sung by Steve Martin, I don't know how to describe it. In closing, this movie is not for everybody. But I know I am not the only person out there who will see this movie as the unique gift that it is. Please give it a shot.

This is one of those movies that is difficult to categorize. Is it a musical? Well, sort of. It's satire, and it's poignant. The music and dance offer a delightfully surreal contrast to a storyline that skillfully navigates a razor edge between beautifully intense drama and melodramatic comedy. The music-dance numbers satire big-budget musicals and showcase talent while they entertain. Assuming the leads did their own dancing (which ain't necessarily so--I mean, how often have you seen Christopher Walkin dance???) I was astonished. I had no idea these actors were so versatile. This goes down as one of those "off-beat" movies that touches my emotions while engaging my mind and providing entertainment like pecan pie--so rich you don't want it too often, but you keep coming back.

Much has already been written here saying positive things about Pennies From Heaven, but the best reason for the excellence of the film lies in the fact that the screenplay was written by Dennis Potter. I give the film a 9 and the BBC series a 10+++. There is so much more to this story than can be told in a single film.

Potter wrote what I consider the two most brilliant series ever on television, Pennies From Heaven starring Bob Hoskins and The Singing Detective starring Michael Gambon. Both were dark films with more than their share of irony. Potter interjected popular music of the eras into the story lines in their original versions lip-synced by the actors. These films aren't for casual viewers. You need to keep your brain attached and operating all the time, so smart is Potter's writing. Those of us who make the effort are rewarded with stories of sheer genius.

The jump from England in the BBC mini-series to the US in the films works better than I would have imagined. I give all the credit to the producers who had the good sense to have Potter do the screenplays for both films. They are translated to a similar mood and setting and the music is well integrated. I think the adaptation of The Singing Detective is more like the BBC version because the numbers aren't so overproduced as in Pennies From Heaven. On the other hand, the cast of Pennies is a powerhouse of musical talent with Bernadette Peters and Christopher Walken and the surprisingly good Steve Martin. With lesser talent in both the writing and acting the big production numbers would have overwhelmed the story.

Watch the US films first and then follow them up with the BBC versions. Make the intellectual investment and reap your rewards. These BBC series are brilliant. If you need more mental stimulation after these two series have boosted your IQ, try to hunt down Lipstick On Your Collar. This is a later Dennis Potter BBC series based on what turned out to be the "final straw" in the fall of the British Empire, the loss of Egypt and the Suez Canal to a considerably out manned and out gunned Egyptian army. This, too, could work as a film (obviously not translated to the US), but only if Dennis Potter could be reincarnated to do the screenplay.

It's in the middle of the Depression and sad sack Arthur is a traveling sheet music salesman. He dreams of the love and happiness he finds in the songs, and he longs for his wife to give him love and sex. Arthur and the other characters break into lip synching popular songs of the period to illustrate their feelings. He meets a repressed but adventurous school teacher, and depression really sets in for the viewer.

The movie is based on the strange and wonderful Dennis Potter BBC television show from 1978 (which I'm in the process of watching). In the Herbert Ross version, Steve Martin plays Arthur, Bernadette Peters the school marm and Jessica Walters the wife.

The movie has some great moments, but for me those moments are all wrapped up in the big production numbers. These are elaborate song productions with the stars dancing and lip synching. The numbers are huge Busby Berkeley fantasies in vivid color with lavish sets and costumes. And they completely overwhelm what interest there might be in the sad little story of Arthur. That's only part of the problem. At this point in his movie career, I don't think Martin had the skill or the confidence to portray yearning (as he did excellently in Roxanne). That lack of sympathy for Arthur really undercuts the story. I can't help but contrast his performance with Bob Hoskins in the original BBC production. Hoskins is so instantly likable that he automatically gives greater depth to the role.

But, ah, the musical numbers. They're great. Vernel Bagneris does a terrific shuffling dance in the rain to Pennies from Heaven. Christopher Walkin is a wonder as a sleazy pimp doing a strip and tap routine while lip synching to Let's Misbehave. And the dance number in the bank with Martin and, I think, an actor named Jay Garner, is a lot of fun. Garner plays a fat, complacent, middle aged banker who turns Martin down for a loan...but then in Arthur's fantasy they break into lip sync song and dance while the banker showers Arthur with money. Garner nearly steals the scene.

Martin must have really wanted to do this movie; it shows in the terrific dance routines he handles with skill and enthusiasm. The movie itself, for me, just doesn't come off. If you like big Hollywood productions numbers, though, get the disc and fast forward to them. That's what I've done after the first time I saw the movie on VHS.

Steve Martin plays a disaffected traveling sheet music salesman. His wife is frigid and he wants more out of life. Soon he sees a pretty lady (Bernadette Peters), he is instantly smitten...though he has no idea who she even is. Can he win her or can his wife manage to be the woman he wants?

I love old 1930s musicals, so you'd think I'd be the perfect person to watch "Pennies From Heaven". However, there were three major things that prevented me from falling in love with the film. First, when they weren't singing, the plot was so incredibly depressing and awful. Second, seeing modern actors dancing and lip syncing to old 1930s tunes is interesting...but soon loses its novelty and becomes a bit tiresome. Third, although the film is set in the mid-1930s, the cursing and crude language took me out of the experience. As a result, I had a hard time even finishing this film and I guess I am just the oddball who didn't appreciate the picture.

Unique, amazing film. Each of the big, sometimes complex, musical numbers is a look inside one of the character's heads, showing how they perceive the 1930s Depression Era world around them. Their dreams (or delusions) usually have little to do with reality. Steve Martin's Arthur is a bizarre, almost unredeemable amoral man who creates a pretend morality in the vision of the music he loves: he claims to listen to the words, that he is a pure romantic, but the reality of his actions constantly opposes this. Bernadette Peters is, well, Bernadette Peters...she's gorgeous and perfect here as the mousey then trampy object of Arthur's obsession. And Christopher Walken has a show stopping tap-dance sequence that must be seen to be believed. Great stuff that at the very least you have never seen anything quite like before. Darkly ironic eye-candy that stays with you.

This not very well known and dismissed musical surprised me with how good it was. Under the glossy production design and snappy musical numbers, there's a very dark center to the film, as its characters struggle through the Great Depression and their own desperation. It put me in mind of the depression-era musicals like "42nd Street," in which landing a part in a chorus line could mean the difference between eating and starving, and people put on a show more out of grim determination than through the true desire to burst into song. Maybe it's this quality that resulted in the film being a box office bomb upon its release.

Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters and especially Christopher Walken do smashing work in this movie. Walken shows that pizazz and attitude can go a long way toward overcoming limitations as a singer and dancer.

Grade: A-

Owing to its ambition, failure at the box office, and overall uniqueness, it's the kind of movie that I want to shout out as an underrated minor classic... but I don't feel it is.

I think it's an absolute mess of a film. It made me surprisingly uncomfortable in parts, and it never seemed to find a tone, which kept me out of the movie and unengaged, as well as confused. The songs are silly and jarring and the storyline is bleak, and it just never really worked for me. The music sequences were probably meant to feel like fantasy/ dream sequences, but it didn't really click for me.

I didn't enjoy the music itself either, and never felt at ease with the way all the songs were old, similar sounding, and oddly lip synced. If it inspired the way Dancer in the Dark had all its musical numbers as dream sequences then that might be some silver lining I suppose...

It is very well shot- I'll give it that. I always enjoy the look of a film that manages to capture the Depression the way this one does. And Christopher Walken can dance- I'll also give the film that.

But overall, I'm sad to say I kind of hated it. Glad there are so many users here that vibed with it, but I'm afraid I can't include myself in that club.

One reason musicals have been going out of style for the past 30-odd years is that audiences simply don't buy the escapism and optimism that permeated the genre in its heyday. This lavish and biting 1981 work solves the problem brilliantly by using the upbeat nature of '30s popular song ironically. The production numbers, and there are many, are toe-tapping, feel- good entities that play in devastating counterpoint to the somber narrative. The production design is amazing, Martin a surprisingly sympathetic Everyman with some rough edges, Peters perfection, Walken amazing in his one scene (imagine what a brilliant Pal Joey he would have made). But then, everybody in this movie seems to be performing at his peak: Even Marvin Hamlisch, whose musical scoring is usually so soppy and obvious, comes through. A salute, too, to Herbert Ross and his wife, Nora Kaye, for employing so many wonderful stage- trained dancers who seldom got a chance to shine on film: Robert Fitch, Vernel Bagneris, and Tommy Rall, who was so splendid in the movie of "Kiss Me, Kate." As far as I'm concerned, the movie's a masterpiece -- but nobody went to see it, and Ross reacted by making nothing but safe, mainstream entertainment for the rest of his life. At least this one shows the audacity and power of which he was capable.

As cinema fans must already know, Pennies From Heaven director Herbert Ross died past October 10th. Ross was a movie craftsman and sometimes shows glimmering of intelligence. And this film was one of this glimmering. "Pennies..." is a depressive story (from famous and possibly depressed D. Potter) about a married couple who make love too much few during the Depression Era. It is may be the ineffable Steve Martin best performance on the screen. Bernadette Peters and Jessica Harper play well roles of Eileen, the music teacher, and Joan, the very moderate wife, respectively. The movie is a nostalgic aestheticist recreation of the Depression Era's end and a careful of Edward Hopper´s paintings translation´s work. Musical numbers and old songs accompany this interesting task. "Pennies..." was show at Spanish cinemas much delayed and with not noise at all. Even now, when film maker died few days ago, no one between Madrid´ cinematographic journalist knows that Pennies From Heaven is the Herbert Ross masterpiece.

Quick, name a lead character - male or female or alien - in a musical that is more obnoxious, rude, objectionable and punchable than Steve Martin's sheet-music salesman. He swears constantly. He tries to force himself on his long-suffering wife TWICE in the same morning. Then he walks out on her. He treats a busker to a meal than humiliates him in a diner. He stalks Bernadette Peters and then lies out of his @zz to her. He condescends to his fellow salesman.... By the same the salesmen do their lewd rendition of "It's a Girl" I'd just about had enough so I started fast-forwarding. But I caught Bernadette Peters' B-version of a Busby Berkely-type number. And Christopher Walker's seedy number at the bar. Yuck. No wonder Fred Astaire was appalled. I'm surprised he didn't sue to have his film clip removed from this garbage. Pennies From Heaven has none - and I mean none - of the charm that made 30s musicals so endearing and enduring. Rather than trying to be uplifting during the Depression - as was the intent with the originals - this movie brings its own depressive pallor to moviegoers. Pennies From Heaven is so awful