The Crew
In what can only be described as an attempt at counter-programming, August has seen not one but three films featuring mature actors and plot lines. What would normally be a welcome relief from the usual drudge that oozes across theater screens throughout the summer is actually an embarrassment of riches.
Maybe Hollywood finally got fed up with the trite teen trash that filters through their release schedules every year, and decided to embrace older film goers, providing them with something more substantial than naked cheerleaders and babe bartenders.
Maybe Hollywood has become so desperate to appeal to the “Murder She Wrote” demographic that they are willing to do anything to wangle away their hard earned Social Security checks. Whatever the reason, the season of the geezer is upon us, and Hollywood should be ashamed of itself.
Instead of delivering thought provoking examinations of senior life, they give us broader than a barn cartoons that do no one any favors. First “Space Cowboys” crashed and burned (but not at the box office, where it is still in the top ten), then “Saving Grace” couldn’t light up the screen.
Now comes “The Crew,” a film directed and written by television talent, and the proof is in the pudding. Here’s a vanilla flavored comedy if ever there was one, a runny mess that never solidifies. It’s “Good Fellas” lite, and the results are disastrous. Do we really need more old fart jokes?
Richard Dreyfuss, Burt Reynolds, Dan Hedaya and Seymour Cassel play retired mobsters who worked on the same crew together. Now they live the dull life in Miami Beach, watching their decaying apartment building come under attack from yuppies looking for a beach view. One handsome couple even has the nerve to ask the men if anyone in the building with a view has recently died.
It’s an insult, but not as much as the one that these four extremely talented men are forced to endure. “The Crew” is supposed to be a comedy, a goofy riff on Martin Scorsese’s mob films, with more than a nod to “Good Fellas.” Director Michael Dinner even restages the “Good Fellas” opening as a gag, and it falls flat on its face.
There are so many problems with “The Crew,” starting with the characters. When we first meet Bobby (Dreyfuss), Joey (Reynolds), Mike (Hedaya) and Tony (Cassel), they’re young enforcers for the mob. They’re not the cute, loveable old codgers they become, but violent thugs. That makes it hard for us to warm up to them, even when they become benign old men.
They’re not mobsters anymore, they’re colorful characters. Like time is supposed to heal the fact that these men terrorized and probably even killed people for a living. But that’s all in the past, or is it? When the yuppie traffic at their apartment building becomes unbearable, Bobby comes up with a plan.
The four men borrow a corpse from the morgue, drag it back to their apartment lobby, and make it look like a mob hit. Their plan works, and soon the building becomes a ghost town. Unfortunately, the John Doe they picked from the morgue ends up being the lost, elderly father of a local drug lord, who demands retribution.
It’s at this moment that “The Crew” self-destructs. What starts off as “Grumpy Old Gangsters” becomes a film about retribution and killing. The film’s split personality isn’t served well by its writer or director, who camp everything up like a television sitcom.
The drug lord (an over-the-top Miguel Sandoval) orders his men to kill all his rivals, and they spend the night eliminating the competition. Cars blow up, guns go off, it’s all rather messy. Little attention is paid to the fact that the crew’s little prank got numerous people killed. To make matters worse, when the drug lord finally catches up with the crew, he literally becomes a different person.
Instead of being the ruthless drug lord who ordered the assassination of his enemies, he becomes this cartoon character who yells and screams but does little else. Writer Fanaro, who spent four years as writing supervisor for television’s “The Golden Girls,” loads numerous subplots on top of all this until the film becomes top heavy.
Jennifer Tilly is extremely chesty as a stripper who blackmails the crew into killing her overbearing step mom, played by Lainie Kazan. Unable to kill Kazan, the crew fakes her death and kidnaps her. It’s not surprising that she eventually falls for a member of the crew.
There is also a silly subplot about Bobby looking for his long lost daughter, taken away from him by his ex-wife when he went to prison. It’s a small world in sitcom land, so you know the daughter will pop up.
The four leads are all fine, they just don’t have much to do. They deserve better than this. Blame director Dinner, who cut his teeth on television drama, and can’t seem to escape the convenience of the medium. Quick in, quick out, no harm, no foul. The film still feels long at short 88 minutes.
Fanaro’s script is no help. It’s so flat and derivative you wonder what attracted the cast. These aren’t jokes. They’re fossils.
“The Crew” isn’t paint-by-numbers. This is finger painting. Where are those wonderful geriatric films like “Trip to Bountiful” and “On Golden Pond” which not only respected seniors, but depicted them as real people.
FUH-GET-ABOUT-IT
The Crew craps out in messy mob comedy
THE CREW
Richard Dreyfuss, Burt Reynolds, Dan Hedaya, Seymour Cassel, Lainie Kazan, Jennifer Tilly, Carrie-Anne Moss, Miguel Sandoval in a film directed by Michael Dinner. Rated PG-13. 88 Minutes.
LARSEN RATING: $2
