Latter-day screwball comedy about an NYU film student (not much gotten from that background, apart from a snickeringly satirized professor) who gets involved in a Mob-operated Gourmet Club, boasting a menu of endangered species for a minimum of $200,000 a plate. Although not well paced or light afoot, it's truly screwy enough to keep you off balance, and safe from boredom or despair. Some of the looser screws: an oversized lizard (Varanus komodoensis) running wild in a shopping mall and producing a reaction that would flatter Godzilla; Bert Parks singing a Dylan tune; Marlon Brando on ice skates. Brando's portrait of a Mafioso who bears an uncanny resemblance to Brando's portrait of Don Corleone won't lessen his reputation in late career for laziness, but it's a better impression of Brando's Corleone than most such impressions. It's also, however, a cheap joke. It could have become less cheap (as a joke, mind you; not as an item in the budget) had someone other than Brando taken the role. With Matthew Broderick, Bruno Kirby, Paul Benedict, Penelope Ann Miller, and Maximilian Schell; written and directed by Andrew Bergman. (1990) — Duncan Shepherd
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