Respectably black comedy, even if really only charcoal-gray, and disappointingly rosy at the end. A nice young couple kidnap the wife of the clothing manufacturer who has stolen their idea for a Spandex Miniskirt. They want half a million or they'll kill her (just bluffing). But the businessman, who has a bosomy mistress, was already planning to kill her himself. The mistress, who has a hunkish boyfriend, sees some possibilities for blackmail. And so it goes. The highly coincidental plotting doesn't really hold interest, much less water, but individual players have their appeal: Judge Reinhold and Helen Slater as the Jimmy Stewart-Jean Arthur team of kidnappers; Bette Midler as a Bel Air matron who finds happiness as a hostage when she loses twenty pounds, but who is deeply affronted at having her ransom reduced to $50,000 and then $10,000 ("I've been kidnapped by K-Mart!"); and Bill Pullman as the mistress's dim-bulb boyfriend ("This could very well be the stupidest person on the face of the earth"), with fashionable beard stubble and a half-inch of dark roots under dyed-blond hair. The movie gets off to a strong start with a sadistic animation sequence by Sally Cruikshank, and it doesn't stop trying until somewhere in the closing credits: the one for Best Boy is followed by one for "Best Pitcher ... Dwight Gooden." With Danny DeVito; directed by Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker. (1986) — Duncan Shepherd
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