The personal, not professional, feud between two competing aluminum-siding salesmen (Richard Dreyfuss, Danny DeVito) starts out with Laurel-and-Hardy tit-for-tat attacks on each other's cars and escalates to wife-stealing (or wife-dumping, depending on the point of view). It is set in 1963, and in Baltimore, for no real purpose other than to underscore the cultural backwardness (it's a time when the Home Improvement Commission is cracking down like HUAC on improprieties in the business, but improprieties surely can't have been stamped out forevermore). For the same purpose, it is shot in colors that range from drab to hideous; and the actors spread on thick accents to bury themselves still deeper. Barry ("Diner") Levinson's schmaltzy humanism dampens the potential satire, giving us Damon Runyon when we want Ring Lardner, but the businessmen are all well cast and well costumed, and the script (by Levinson himself) is generous with the tricks of their shady trade. Barbara Hershey, John Mahoney, Seymour Cassel. (1987) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.