A black comedy for whomever Arsenic and Old Lace suffices as a black comedy. The trumpeted preamble -- "This film is based on a true story": a story, so it develops, about a wife's repeated attempts to murder her husband after she discovers he's been tomcatting around on her -- gives us an approximate guidepost, if we have any experience of real life, by which to gauge how much scrubbing and bleaching must have gone on. (The philandering pizza man passes out face-first in a plate of sleeping-pill-spiked pasta -- a reliable laugh-getter from laughers who are most confident laughing at things they have laughed at before.) Kevin Kline, whose accent vacillates between Father Guido Sarducci and plain old Kevin Kline, is always at his broadest and smuggest in comedy (clear evidence of disrespect for the form), and never broader or smugger than in this one. Tracey Ullman is something else again. She, as anyone who has watched her TV show would know, is an almost frighteningly gifted comedienne (mimic, caricaturist). And although some followers of her show might be disappointed here at not seeing her with all stops out, a skit-length pace is not feature-length pace, and this tightly reined-in portrayal of a first-generation Yugoslav immigrant (with Joan Plowright facially well-cast as her mother) is a no less frightening confirmation of her gifts. With William Hurt, Keanu Reeves, and River Phoenix; directed by Lawrence Kasdan. (1990) — Duncan Shepherd
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