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| United Artists | Release Date: December 21, 1968 |
Starring:
Bert Lahr, Britt Ekland, Denholm Elliott, Elliott Gould, Forrest Tucker, Harry Andrews, Jack Burns, Jason Robards, Joseph Wiseman, Norman Wisdom
Summary:
A naive young Amish woman runs away from her home in Pennsylvania to New York City, where she hopes to act in religious stage plays but ends up performing in Burlesque theatre.
Jason Robards and Norman Wisdom brilliantly perform knockabout stage routines in director William Friedkin's energetically patchwork portrayal of New York burlesque in the 1920s. [23 May 2008, p.10E]
The Night They Raided Minsky's is being promoted as some sort of laff-a-minit, slapstick extravaganza, but it isn't. It has the courage to try for more than that and just about succeeds. It avoids the phony glamour and romanticism that the movies usually use to smother burlesque (as in "Gypsy") and it really seems to understand this most-American art form.
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Unlike "Funny Girl," the screenplay is rich, not in stereotypes (mothers, accents), but in anecdotes, and there is a wonderful confrontation between Jason Robards, as a slick, sleazy burlesque entertainer, and the owner of a restaurant, "a man from principle," over an order of bagels, which are thrown, one by one, to the floor, with rage and elegance.
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It's lightweight and disorganized; it's a shambles, yet a lot of it is charming, and it has a wonderful seedy chorus line--a row of pudgy girls with faces like slipped discs.
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