Magic Marmalade ● 13th Jan 2024
| | Rated 10/10"I like New York in June... How about you?"
(Nope, never been to New York myself, but that tune certainly gets stuck in your head, especially when sung by a chorus of the homeless, or the mentally ill :)
This is one for all the romantic crazies out there... a zany, magical tale of homelessness, mental illness, guilt, forgiveness, redemption, and profoundly socially awkward romance.
Imagine, if you will, a man who makes his living at the top of the social tree by mindlessly saying the most provocative, shocking and awful things, not because they are necessarily true, but because they provoke a shocked fascination with what he says, like observing a car crash, and that keeps him in his position of power and splendour...
...Imagine then, there are consequences; Someone takes what he says to heart, and commits an atrocity on the strength of it, walking into a bar one night with a shotgun, and opening fire.
No... this man is not a "politician".
This man is Jeff Bridges' "shock-jock" Radio DJ: Jack, who's life crashes after this opening event, and he finds himself taken in by the wonderful Anne (Played breathtakingly well by Mercedes Ruehl, who justly, won just about everything in sight for this role), and making acquaintance with a very disturbed homeless man played by Robin Williams: Parry, who saves Bridges one night form having wandered into the wrong area of town in a drunken stupor and getting beaten and almost set on fire by local "kids" who hate the homeless.
Jack is grateful, and guilt ridden, and in profound need of redemption, so luckily, Parry, being a knight, tasks him with a quest that may redeem him:
Recover the "Holy Grail".
Once the nature of Jack and Parry's relationship is discovered, Jack further tries to help Parry, by match-making with the hilariously socially awkward object of his affection: Lydia, who Parry has admired from afar (In a totally non-stalker-ish way, of course! :)
In this, the help of both Anne, and the truly singular Michael Jeter (Who steals every scene he's in) is required, and so they set about helping Parry to woo her.
>The scene with the Grand Central Station waltz may be the most magical moment in cinema history!<
So this is a Terry Gilliam film, with Robin Williams, Jeff Bridges, Mercedes Ruehl, Amanda Plummer, Michael Jeter, Tom Waits, and the Holy Grail...
...And yes, it is as good as that sentence suggests.
(No wonder I wore my old VHS tape of this out!)
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