There's a preface to this movie, surely some sort of first in cinema history, composed of critical blurbs of the Thomas Berger novel. These tip you off that what you are about to see is, among other things, "a comic nightmare." The Bill Conti background music, all throughout, relentlessly stresses the comic aspect, as if there were some doubt you would be able to ascertain this for yourself. Such doubt is perhaps not without foundation. Though the movie is pretty well put together and the impossible situations hold your interest, you can easily lose sight of what sort of reality this distortion is supposed to correspond to and exaggerate. And John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, as the incompatible but interdependent neighbors, keep nudging the proceedings into a whimsical Saturday Night Live sketch -- which would be all right if it lasted no more than five or ten minutes. With Cathy Moriarty; directed by John G. Avildsen. (1981) — Duncan Shepherd
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