The film is a pretty straight forward fish-out-of-water comedy elevated by two performances: joe pesci and marisa tomei
The supporting actors are solid- the judge, Fred Gwynne, is great as is bruce McGill in a small role. The usually reliable James Rebhorn doesn’t fair as well and struggles with the southern accent
It’s reminiscent of 30’s screwball comedies— led by a sassy and intelligent woman
Very breezy in pacing and tone
Huge and somewhat distracting age discrepancy between pesci 49 and tomei at age 28
Repetition of pesci going to jail for being insubordinate gets tired. Same with getting woken up early for various reasons. There’s a line between film form and laziness and I think this is the latter.
The film lags in scenes without tomei but in the scenes she’s in there’s such vitality and humor- it’s a wonderful performances and her achievement here is greater than even pesci’s
Some odd angle choices by Lynn- tilted for no reasons- doesn’t really mesh with the rest of the rather straight forward choices
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