Frankie and Johnny

Frankie and Johnny as a movie isn’t a first chance love story, or a second chance or a third. This is a film about two lonely people who have spent so long trying to find someone to connect with and who have been disappointed so often that it seems like maybe connection isn’t worth the effort anymore. Read full review

Frankie & Johnny is no big deal, but it has plenty of laughs and it's appealingly romantic. The movie is a collection of small, trivial things that add up to something that is, while not important, at least entertaining. [11 Oct 1991, p.22]

Last time, director Garry Marshall gave us the fairy tale with Pretty Woman. This time, he gets the story right. [11 Oct 1991, p.1D]

Frankie & Johnny does what any true romantic movie should: It makes the mysterious, push-and-pull alchemy of love seem, once again, worth the effort. Read full review

Frankie & Johnny manages to work as a sudsy romantic picture about big city loneliness despite an awkward performance by Al Pacino in the role of a hash-house dispenser of wisdom. Read full review

The lead roles are played by Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer. They're the reasons this movie works. Despite itself. [11 Oct 1991, p.G5]

McNally takes a thin story and pumps it up, bringing in waitresses and busboys, all of them lonely, all of them broke. In the hands of director Garry Marshall, the material becomes deadly. He turns on the schmaltz, brings up the violins and shows them in their tiny apartments, alone and miserable but kinda cute, living their small, dull lives. This is the working class as viewed by the clueless wealthy -- condescension trying to pass as compassion. [11 Oct 1991, p.D1]

I still liked Marshall's movie version of Frankie & Johnny for many of the same reasons I liked his Pretty Woman. Neither one is a big picture, nor particularly realistic, and yet despite their shortcomings - and there are plenty in each - I left the theater feeling good. I also left feeling guilty about feeling good. [17 Oct 1991, p.4E]

Mr. Pacino has not been this uncomplicatedly appealing since his Dog Day Afternoon days, and he makes Johnny's endless enterprise in wooing Frankie a delight. His scenes alone with Ms. Pfeiffer have a precision and honesty that keep the film's maudlin aspects at bay. Read full review

Producer-director Garry Marshall, who made a pretty penny off Pretty Woman, brings the same fizzy, dizzy feel to Frankie & Johnny. He seduces us with stars in our eyes and blinds us for 90 minutes or more to his ploys, some of them as cheap as dime-store perfume. Still, we're happy to sit back and swoon. [11 Oct 1991, p.D7]

Frankie & Johnny is a hard movie to dislike. Marshall and McNally have a real fondness for their characters and a deep trunkful of showbiz savvy. The playwright's delicious one-liners detonate with precision timing. The supporting characters, expertly played, have the kind of instant familiarity of regulars on a favorite TV sitcom. [14 Oct 1991, p.68]

Frankie & Johnny is an episodic romantic comedy of opposites attracting; there's a real joy in watching the courtship of these lovers and the consummation of their undeniable attraction for one another. Read full review

When Frankie and Johnny works, it works because of Pfeiffer, whose impact is cumulative. Pfeiffer finds her own kind of truth in the role, especially in the final scenes, when the character's looks cease to matter. [11 Oct 1991, p.3]

Chances are you'll have a good time with Frankie & Johnny, but you won't respect yourself in the morning. It's that kind of movie. Read full review

Frankie and Johnny is an all-star, high-gloss, feel-good romantic feature sitcom. Amiably written and performed but fearsomely predictable, this middle-of-the-road adaptation of Terrence McNally’s off-Broadway hit [the 1987Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune] invites audiences to indulge in watching beautiful movie stars play lonely little people struggling to find love. Read full review

Rendering experience synthetic, replacing desperation with cuteness, Frankie & Johnny is Love Lite. [11 Oct 1991, p.49]

Frankie & Johnny is a salutary reminder of what happens when two Hollywood stars, no matter what firmament they may inhabit, are lumped together without any real storyline, subtlety or sex. Read full review

Pacino wears a vest and bandanna and moons through the part. Pfeiffer plays dowdy. Marshall directs as if Marty had never happened. Read full review

Romances such as Frankie's and Johnny's work better in the artificial environment of the stage than the "real" world of movies. The couple's bond seems phony from the start. [11 Oct 1991, p.7]

Scrape off its grimy exterior, and it too is a fairy tale, but one with ambitions of realism, one that tries to co-exist in our world, one that pretends to be something it isn't. Frankie & Johnny ends up lost in limboland, stumbling onto a whole new genre - call it kitchen-sink unrealism. [11 Oct 1991]