Ruthless People (1986)
Directed by David Zucker
Sam Stone hates his wife Barbara so much that he wants her dead. He's ecstatic when she's taken by a duo of kidnappers who want $500,000 ransom in exchange for her life. Fully intending to ignore every one of the kidnappers' demands in the hopes that they do him a favor and murder her for him, the two confused kidnappers have to figure out how they're going get their money, and what they're going to do with the overbearing Barbara.
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What critics compared Ruthless People to
"Horrible Bosses" follows the precedent set by such earlier crime-gone-awry comedies as "Ruthless People" (1986), "Throw Momma from the Train" (1987) and "Bottle Rocket" (1996) with gut-busting gusto.
The movie also juggles a handful of established comedic subgenres extremely well, wisely letting the currently lucrative spillover from The Hangover take center stage though better and more timeless films like Swimming with Sharks , The Ref , and Ruthless People also share an indirect lineage.
Game Night feels like one of those comedies from the 1980s, usually made by Touchstone Pictures, more often than not starring the likes of Bette Midler (Ruthless People, Outrageous Fortune) or Richard Dreyfuss (Stakeout), or even better the both of them (Down and Out in Beverly Hills), and that’s a good thing.
If anything, the film is trying to be something of an edgier version of the old 1986 comedy "Ruthless People" where a down-on-their-luck couple kidnap their ex-boss' wife to get revenge and extort money from him.
And anyone who has seen the magnificent battle scenes in " Braveheart " will be almost embarrassed for director director Jerry Zucker ("Ghost," "Ruthless People"), whose confusingly filmed battles do little to enhance a slow-moving story.
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Screenwriter Leslie Dixon nurtured this project ever since she read the original novel, “The Dark Fields,” but her credits range from “Ruthless People” to “Freaky Friday.”
The surprises pretty much end there in My Cousin Vinny, written by Dale Launer (Ruthless People, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) and directed by Jonathan Lynn (Clue).
Director Jonathan Lynn ("Nuns on the Run") and screenwriter Dale Launer ("Ruthless People," "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels") have both done better.
And what a pig's hearing organ it is, a stretched-out courtroom caper scripted by Dale ("Ruthless People") Launer.
It was written by Dale Launer, who wrote "Ruthless People" and "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," and directed by Jonathan Lynn, the Englishman who wrote and directed "Nuns on the Run" and collaborated on the scripts for the English television series "Yes, Minister" and "Yes, Prime Minister."
This turns on some neat subtleties regarding automotive topography and the script, by Dale Launer (who wrote the better "Ruthless People" and the worse "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels"), develops a nice line as it reveals Tomei, initially a fairly standard issue arm decoration, to be sharp as a tack and quick as an adder.
"Ruthless People" and "Naked Gun" among his chief credits.
In this artistically devalued summer of schlockbusters ("Days of Total RoboCop III"), it means Jerry Zucker's movie (he made "Airplane!" and "Ruthless People") is surprisingly entertaining and goes along nicely with the theater's air conditioning.
Director Jerry Zucker's resume of raucous farces like "Airplane!", "Ruthless People" and "The Naked Gun" gives no indication of his being capable of sustaining the movie's many shifts of tone and tempo, but he pulls it off, certainly more successfully than Spielberg did in "Always," which was more saccharine than romantic and was weighed down by overblown comic interludes.
Jerry Zucker's breakthrough helming--after making his name as a comedy director (Airplane!, Ruthless People)--made a well-oiled ensemble of disparate stars and created moments so memorable they invited Zucker-esque parody.