The clumsy slapstick set-pieces here tend to follow a familiar template, or rather a pair of familiar templates. Depending on the needs of the scene, Crumb can be shockingly smart and incisive, not to mention light on his feet and capable of flips and remarkable feats of agility, or so stupid and clumsy it’s a miracle that he’s made it to middle-age without accidentally killing himself. Jones’ lust-crazed villain hires the title character because he knows he’s an idiot but the detective proves a bit of an idiot-savant, with a heavy emphasis on the idiot part. In Who’s Harry Crumb, Eliot Draisen, a sniveling schemer played by Jeffrey Jones at his Jeffrey Jonesiest hires Crumb to investigative the kidnapping of Jennifer Downing (Renée Coleman), a model and the daughter of wealthy fishing enthusiast P.J Downing (Barry Corbin) and stepdaughter of Helen Downing (Annie Potts), a gold-digger, femme fatale and nymphomaniac who plotted the kidnapping with Eliot and her dim-witted tennis pro lover Vince Barnes (Tim Thomerson). These undercover idiots labor under the delusion that they must make an obnoxious spectacle of themselves in order to convincingly portray other people. In both cases, these undercover specialists make the curious, even counter-intuitive choice to wear the fakest, most obvious and grotesquely over-the-top disguise possible, the kind absolutely guaranteed to attract attention, all of the unwanted variety, as a means of moving stealthily through the world undetected. In sharp contrast to his distinguished relatives, he’s a total and complete idiot, a bumbling boob as unnecessarily, undeservedly confident, even cocky, as he is incompetent.Ĭrumb’s approach to undercover work is nearly identical to that of Master of Disguise’s Pistachio Disguisey. Alas, Candy’s dunce of a detective does not appear to have inherited the family’s investigative gene. The quintessential underachieving Candy vehicle, Who’s Harry Crumb? casts Executive Producer Candy as the title character, a third-generation detective whose father and grandfather were both world-class shamuses. SCTV empowered Candy to work at the very apex of his abilities, playing a dazzlingly eclectic array of characters, many wildly different from the portly, dim-witted bumblers Candy played in his perpetually under-achieving solo cinematic vehicles. It wasn’t until I discovered SCTV later on that I realized what an extraordinary talent Candy was. I came to know and love Candy though idiotic vehicles like this. Candy spends much of the film falling down in a series of graceless slapstick scenarios: he puts in a more horizontal performance than most porn stars. The inept light comedy subscribes to the “Fat man fall down, go boom” school of comedy. Who’s Harry Crumb? is a painful illustration of just how egregiously Candy’s extraordinary talent and charisma was wasted on films unworthy of him. Attired in a bizarre array of goofball disguises, from a Hungarian hairdresser to a hefty housewife - Harry is bound, gagged and determined to crack the case and prove that when it comes to crime, he’s one Crumb that won’t be swept under the carpet.I’m going to confess right here and now that 2020: The Year YOU Control Nathan Rabin, the project where Happy Place patrons chose 12 theme months for the website, beginning with last month’s Danny DeVito Month was, in fact, nothing but an excuse to write about the little-loved 1989 John Candy detective comedy Who’s Harry Crumb? Downing, a $10 million ransom, and Eliot’s hot-to-trot mistress (Annie Potts). At stake is the gorgeous daughter of multi-millionaire P.J. When Harry, the last of the great sleuthing Crumbs - and the last person in the firm to ever get an assignment - finally gets a shot at a frontpage kidnapping, it’s only because his beady-eyed boss Eliot Draisen (Jeffrey Jones) doesn’t want the case solved. John Candy is bigger, better and more bumbling than ever as the hilarious Harry Crumb - a big-hearted, soft-headed private eye and mixed-up master of disguise. “ Laugh-out-loud entertainment!” – Los Angeles Times
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |