Who's Harry Crumb? (1989) -
Weasello Rating:
{----} (Zero!)
I'm not an ass so you won't find any spoilers in this review without decent warning.
Now, I like a
slapstick comedy as much as
the next guy. And
John Candy is a great
actor. He was simply amazing in
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, for example. I walked by this movie in the
video store and thought, "Wow, that's one I've never heard of."
No wonder, that.
This is a very, VERY bad sequence of
lame jokes on a strip of
magnetic tape. Have you ever seen any of the
Pink Panther movies? Take
Inspector Clouseau and make him even more of a
putz. Put him in a ridiculous plot and remove the slapstick elements. The absolute worst (and just about all) that happens to Candy in the entire movie is his tie gets stuck in a
paper shredder. At least Clouseau put his foot in a
wastebasket every so often.
"What kind of content is it, then," you ask.
Like I said before, many a lame joke. The plot is this: A big
private dick company gets a call. There's been a kidnapping. $10 million is at stake. The head guy at the company is in on the kidnapping, so he puts the worst, stupidest guy on the case. This plot element seems very odd, since the
police have their own
crack team of specialists on the case as well. Now, you figure all of this out in the first 5 minutes, so don't worry about spoilers.
Tack on some amazingly
circumstantial evidence, and draw all your conclusions incorrectly... Yet, with an AMAZING amount of
hollywood luck, Candy figures it all out in the end. *sighs*
Wait, wait - as
Servo5678 points out, even at the end of the movie, Candy does *not* figure it all out. The mystery just sort of solves itself in the background while we watch Candy blunder through the scenes (his character blunders; his acting is excellent).
Recommendation: Not worth watching. Go watch
some other John Candy movie instead.
An interesting note is that the picture on the
box never appears in the film. "That's common," you say. Nay! The picture on the cover shows John Candy hanging from a
window by
suction cups, on an apparant
high-rise building overlooking what looks like
Chicago. This scene never takes place, there are no suction cups in the movie, and all high-rise scenes consist indoors. There is also no mention of it (ie:
Deleted Scenes) in the
DVD version. I have never seen such a
wild fabrication on a cover of a movie before nor since.
Another interesting note is that the
movie tagline only appears in the
late production copies and DVDs. ("
Nerves of Steel. Body of Iron. Brain of Stone.")
Cast:
Comments:
- Servo5678 says "C'mon now, be fair. The movie's not that great, but Candy still makes the most of the material. He's still in top form. His costars need work though."
From the box:
JOHN CANDY
WHO'S
HARRY
CRUMB?
Running Time: 1 hr 31 mins
Rating:
PG-13
John Candy is bigger, better and more bumbling than ever as the hilarious Harry Crumb - a big-hearted, soft-headed private eye and mixed-up master of disguise. When Harry, the last of the great sleuthing Crumbs - and the last person in the firm to ever get an assignment - finally gets a shot at front-page kidnapping, it's only because his beady-eyed boss Eliot Draisen (Jeffrey Jones) doesn't want the case solved. At stake is the gorgeous daughter of multi-millionaire P.J. Downing (Barry Corbin), a $10 million ransom and Eliot's hot-to-trot wife (Annie Potts). Attired in a bizarre array of goofball disguises, from a Hungarian hairdresser to a hefty housewife - Harry is bound, gagged and determined to crack the case and prove that when it comes to crime, he's one Crumb that won't be swept under the rug!
TRI-STAR PICTURES and NBC PRODUCTIONS present an ARNON MILCHAN/FROSTBADCKS production a PAUL FLAHERTY film
music by MICHEL COLOMBIER edited by DANFORD B GREENE production designed by TREVOR WILLIAMS director of photography STEPHEN M KATZ executive producer JOHN CANDY
co producer GEORGE W PERKINS written by ROBERT CONTE and PETER MARTIN WORTMANN produced by ARNON MILCHAN directed by PAUL FLAHERTY
© 1989 Tri-Star Pictures, Inc.
Sources: The IMDB of doom, my head, and special thanks to the box.