 |
| Beware Bill Cosby bearing gifts... |
Release Date: Dec. 18, 1987. Running Time: 85 minutes. Screenplay: Jonathan Reynolds. Story: Bill Cosby. Producer: Bill Cosby. Director: Paul Weiland.
THE PLOT:
After his agents are assassinated by such normally benign animals as rainbow trout, cats, and frogs, CIA head honcho Snyderburn (Joe Don Baker) decides there is only one man who can stop this: Leonard Parker (Bill Cosby). There's only one problem: Leonard retired from the spy business seven years ago, after he was dumped by his wife, Allison (Pat Colbert). He now runs a restaurant in San Francisco; and when Snyderburn approaches him, Leonard turns him down flat.
Leonard relents after his latest attempt to win back Allison results in him getting covered from head to toe with what was supposed to be dinner. With the aid of his butler, Frayn (Tom Courtenay), he infiltrates (er... is allowed to walk into) the lair of the evil mastermind: Medusa Johnson (Gloria Foster), an animal rights activist who has decided that it's time for the animals to fight back.
As Medusa prepares to unleash her army of killer fish, frogs, bunnies, and ostriches on the unsuspecting Bay Area, Leonard races to stop her. But all he has at his disposal are a few bottles of dish detergent, some hamburger patties, an uncooked hot dog, and a pair of ballet slippers...
 |
| Leonard is not having a good day. |
BILL COSBY AS LEONARD PARKER:
It's hard to remember following the last decade of disturbing and all too credible allegations (which I will henceforth studiously avoid mentioning); but in 1987, Bill Cosby was a legitimate superstar. Not only was he in the midst of an already legendary, decades-long career spanning stage, film, and television, he was also the star of The Cosby Show, the #1 television program in America. He was all but universally beloved, enjoying fame and fortune... and all the ego that went with it.
I stress that Cosby's success wasn't some accident. If you've watched his older movies, stand-up, or television programs, then you'll probably admit - even if reluctantly - that he was a charismatic presence, capable of being engaging, energetic, warm, and extremely funny.
Qualities nowhere in evidence in Leonard Part 6.
I wonder if on some level Cosby realized that the comedy didn't work. Though he co-wrote and produced the film, his performance is anything but engaged. He stumbles through scenes like some kind of zombie, his face frozen in an expression of dazed bemusement, reciting his lines in something very close to a monotone.
Whatever the case, this is the dullest he has ever been on screen. And given that he is front-and-center for the bulk of the running time, that spells disaster for the movie.
 |
| Tom Courtenay, as butler/narrator Frayn, manages to emerge with his dignity at least somewhat intact. |
OTHER CHARACTERS:
Frayn: Tom Courtenay, as Leonard's faithful manservant, manages to emerge with dignity at least somewhat intact. For one thing, he's able to find some of the fun that Cosby resolutely isn't having. After Leonard finally accepts the mission, Frayn sends him off with a series of inspirational speeches, allowing Courtenay to recite Tennyson, to dip into Shakespeare with Henry V and Richard III, and even to imitate Winston Churchill (well) and John Wayne (badly). He also narrates the film, which leaves him with the unenviable task of trying to make all this seem coherent.
Snyderburn: As the CIA boss, Joe Don Baker plays... well, the patented Joe Don Baker role. He gives the big expositional briefing at the start of the film, spars a bit with Leonard in the middle, and growls threats when Leonard tries to keep Medusa's technology away from the CIA even while stopping her. In short, Baker could play this role in his sleep - and it's to his credit that he doesn't, delivering the absurd exposition with gravity and sincerity. He isn't actually funny - but with a better script, I think he might have been.
Nurse Carvalho: The Albanian fortune teller who Leonard consults before every mission. She speaks only in gibberish, her fortune telling involving grabbing Cosby's face and either molding his cheeks and nostrils like putty or slapping him repeatedly. This is obviously meant to be hilarious; it isn't. However, her skills are obviously authentic. Twice in the movie, she supplies Leonard with the exact unlikely items that end up saving him from certain death. Oh, and she apparently has a crush on Frayn, despite only sharing a few seconds of screen time with him.
Medusa Johnson: Gloria Foster, as the deranged vegetarian animal rights megalomaniac, is by far the best thing in this film. She cackles maniacally, then orders her servants to "Mango me!" - hand her a mango to eat - or "Grape me!" She then shoves her face fully into whatever fruit has been put into her hands, chomping with a mania to match her cackles. She gets a monologue in which she describes the origin of some dancing vegetarian bird men Leonard fights around the midpoint (it's as bizarre as it sounds), and she enunciates each syllable with malicious glee. If Leonard Part 6 was actually going for anything, it was an over-the-top insanity in which anything could happen at any moment. Alone of the cast, Foster actually manages to hit that wavelength, making her (too few and too brief) scenes a rare highlight of an otherwise terrible movie.
 |
| Whatever this may be... it happens. |
"SO... EXACTLY WHAT WERE THEY ON?":
This... honestly applies to the entire movie. A rainbow trout assassin pauses to peruse a Playboy cover. Frogs hop a CIA agent's car into the bay, while the ill-fated man dutifully writes frog noises on his notepad. Leonard and Allison ward off killer lobsters by threatening them with melted butter. And, of course, there are the aforementioned dancing vegetarian birdmen, who appear out of nowhere in a bit that David Lynch would probably have rejected as being too weird and random.
But all of that pales next to one central flaw: The extraordinary misuse of Bill Cosby. Producer/co-writer Bill Cosby completely misjudges the general audience appeal of star Bill Cosby. He was never a great physical comedian. No one turned on a Cosby show or went to a Cosby movie to see slapstick. As a comedian, his greatest strength was relatability: He was the everyman, the comedy emerging from his reactions to whatever strangeness the world threw at him. Even when he played a spy in hit 1960s show I Spy, he retained that core of being someone audiences could relate to.
None of which lends itself to Cosby being the central figure in a send-up of Roger Moore-style Bond pictures... any of which were not only better, but also funnier, than this film.
"SAY SOMETHING NICE":
As if to prove my point, there is one scene in which Cosby stirs halfway to life and manages a few amusing line readings. It comes early in the film, when Leonard receives a visit from his 20-year-old daughter, Joan (Victoria Rowell). She excitedly introduces her fiancé... 66 year old Giorgio Francozzi (Moses Gunn).
"Couldn't you have found a 45 year old?" Leonard grouses. "He's old enough to be my father!" He then reflects that after he pays for the wedding, he'll end up footing the bill for the old man's funeral. For just a moment, we get a glimpse of the type of comedy Cosby actually does well.
It's just too bad there isn't more of that.
 |
| Gloria Foster as Medusa Johnson: The movie's only genuinely enjoyable performance. |
OTHER MUSINGS:
"Clever, but stupid."
-Medusa Johnson reacts to Leonard's antics. She's only half-right.
Leonard Part 6 was made on a big budget. It was co-written by Jonathan Reynolds, who had previously scripted Blake Edwards's critically and commercially successful Micki + Maude. It was directed by Paul Weiland, who would go on to become one of the primary directors for Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean. It starred Bill Cosby, the most successful and beloved American comedian of the decade. What could possibly go wrong?
As it turns out... everything.
Leonard Part 6 is a jaw-droppingly bad movie. It's inept, bizarre, stupid, and relentlessly unfunny. The only of the "Worst Picture" winners up to this point that I'd rate below it is Bolero. Even The Lonely Lady makes for a less miserable viewing experience, and I'd sit through Laurence Olivier's W. C. Fields-inspired MacArthur ten times over before willingly subjecting myself to this dreck again.
Nothing works. Cosby is dreadful. The story is poorly paced. About ten minutes in, the story vanishes for more than twenty minutes for an attenuated (unfunny) sequence in which Leonard prepares for a date with his ex-wife. One thing fails to lead into the next. The overall story structure isn't so much poor as absent, and it often seems as if the narration (by Tom Courtenay, in character as Frayn) exists purely to try to lend some coherence to the various events.
Even moments that might have been funny are poorly executed. An assassin tries to kill Leonard in the kitchen of his restaurant (the only scene and practically only mention of Leonard's new career). Every shot not only misses Leonard, it ends up assisting the chefs in making their dishes: spices fall into the exact right pots, bullet holes turn a pot into a perfect colander just in time to drain spaghetti, and a burst of flame results in eager cries of "flambé!" Mel Brooks or Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker would have had a field day... but they would also have recognized the need for a gag to build to something and would have delivered a grand finale. Instead, this joke just sits there, repeated a handful of times and then unceremoniously dropped in order to move to the next scene (in which another gag, involving a body in a briefing room, suffers the exact same fate).
 |
| CIA researchers lock eyes with a killer bunny rabbit. Monty Python did this bit a whole lot better. |
THE OTHER NOMINEES:
1987 was something of a banner year for bad movies, as demonstrated by the execrable Superman IV - which would likely have been a shoo-in for Worst Picture most other years - not even being nominated.
Leonard Part 6 actually pulled off a bit of an upset, stealing the Worst Picture award from Elaine May's infamous Ishtar. Per my recollection, Ishtar isn't particularly good, but it's watchable and even occasionally amusing. It's mediocre, but not particularly worse than that. I think most contemporary reviewers were too caught up in ripping into the film's budget, its extended post-production, and its disappointing waste of stars Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman.
Jaws: The Revenge was genuinely terrible, but it was also so stupid that it crossed the line into unintended comedy. Novelist Norman Mailer tried his hand at directing with Tough Guys Don't Dance, the results of which are perfectly summed up by lead actor Ryan O'Neal in the film's most notorious scene: "Oh God, oh man, oh God, oh man." Nevertheless, it's such an insane mess that it laps back around into a sort of blinkered genius. Finally, there was Who's That Girl?, yet another Madonna flick that I haven't seen and don't intend to.
Overall, I'd say the Razzies got it right. Leonard Part 6 is a horrible movie, and it singlehandedly destroyed any thought that Bill Cosby's small-screen stardom could translate to the movies.
OVERALL:
I think the most damning assessment of Leonard Part 6 came from director Paul Weiland. In a 1994 interview with The Guardian, Weiland lamented Cosby's total creative control coupled with his stature at the time. He indicated that Cosby was surrounded by sycophants and that it was impossible to tell him that gags weren't working. Cosby replied by telling him: "You worry about construction. Let me worry about funny."
Making Leonard Part 6 more than a mere bad movie, but also one of many Hollywood cautionary tales about the perils of allowing anyone - a star, a director, a producer - to be considered too infallible to hear the word, "No."
Rating: Flushable Wipe (used).
Worst Picture: 1986 - Under the Cherry Moon
Worst Picture: 1986 - Howard the Duck
Worst Picture: 1988 - Cocktail
Review Index
To receive new review updates, follow me:
On Twitter:
On Threads:
No comments:
Post a Comment