The funniest gag in this dismal film, an unintentional insult to Sly in a Hollywood system that doesn't acknowledge Cockney rhyming slang.
Oscar opens with a man visiting his father on his deathbed, then segues into a plasticine model singing The Barber of Seville. Amazingly, it actually manages to get worse from this point on.
I always cut Sylvester Stallone a lot of slack for reasons I've never been quite able to fathom, and even cast a kind eye over Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. But this overplayed, rigidly directed (supposed) comedy really is unbearable.
A period piece (which, when shot with modern film techniques makes it look like a TV movie) it has such gems as a man who stutters, gangsters who say "boss" when told not to, an "Irish" maid and Sly as an all-mugging "Godfather". As you can see, this is a picture that takes comedy back further than the 30s in which it's set.
As mobster Angelo Provolone Stallone learns a new word every day. Bizarrely, Angelo's word of the day here is expeditious, defined by him as "to be efficient and speedy". For if there's anything Oscar isn't, it's efficient or speedy. In fact, it's yawn-making 120 minutes of stretched-out pap.
Why am I even bothering to analyse this tripe? The characters aren't believable, the script isn't interesting, the narrative is tedious. I hate bandwagons, but this film is bad. Really bad. Stallone's comic timing is... what comic timing? The acting is overplayed, the script poor and derivative. And derivative of stock comic situations, too. The scene where Chazz Palminiteri empties his pockets of weapons is so predictable it's untrue. See also: the final bag scene.
Let's be positive. The plot, when it finally gets going, is actually fairly clever in a contrived, drawerroom kind of way. And I did laugh at the cheesiness of four lines: "I'm smoking a salmon." "Well put it out."/"Not in front of the help." "Trust me, he's no help."/"Of course I knew. I just had no idea."/"What killed him?" "Someone stepped on his fingers." "And that killed him??" "He was hanging from a window ledge at the Addison Hotel at the time."
And that's it. The rest of it, from the constant shouting (from Ornella Muti particularly) is draining, and even the incidental music is an annoyance. Sylvester's allowed to break the fourth-wall, sub-Hardy style on two separate occasions, an act of pure desperation here. It is nice to see that IMDb voters have actually gone against the tide, with to date - a 5.2 average for this movie (and less than 30% of voters giving it below 5). And out of 37 comments, 33 of them are positive. Sadly, however, I must agree with the majority of external Oscar reviews, and the tagline "It's a comedy of criminal proportions!" and remark how terrible it all is. Forget Judge Dredd, Cobra, The Specialist... this is the worst Sylvester Stallone movie ever made.
Oscar opens with a man visiting his father on his deathbed, then segues into a plasticine model singing The Barber of Seville. Amazingly, it actually manages to get worse from this point on.
I always cut Sylvester Stallone a lot of slack for reasons I've never been quite able to fathom, and even cast a kind eye over Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. But this overplayed, rigidly directed (supposed) comedy really is unbearable.
A period piece (which, when shot with modern film techniques makes it look like a TV movie) it has such gems as a man who stutters, gangsters who say "boss" when told not to, an "Irish" maid and Sly as an all-mugging "Godfather". As you can see, this is a picture that takes comedy back further than the 30s in which it's set.
As mobster Angelo Provolone Stallone learns a new word every day. Bizarrely, Angelo's word of the day here is expeditious, defined by him as "to be efficient and speedy". For if there's anything Oscar isn't, it's efficient or speedy. In fact, it's yawn-making 120 minutes of stretched-out pap.
Why am I even bothering to analyse this tripe? The characters aren't believable, the script isn't interesting, the narrative is tedious. I hate bandwagons, but this film is bad. Really bad. Stallone's comic timing is... what comic timing? The acting is overplayed, the script poor and derivative. And derivative of stock comic situations, too. The scene where Chazz Palminiteri empties his pockets of weapons is so predictable it's untrue. See also: the final bag scene.
Let's be positive. The plot, when it finally gets going, is actually fairly clever in a contrived, drawerroom kind of way. And I did laugh at the cheesiness of four lines: "I'm smoking a salmon." "Well put it out."/"Not in front of the help." "Trust me, he's no help."/"Of course I knew. I just had no idea."/"What killed him?" "Someone stepped on his fingers." "And that killed him??" "He was hanging from a window ledge at the Addison Hotel at the time."
And that's it. The rest of it, from the constant shouting (from Ornella Muti particularly) is draining, and even the incidental music is an annoyance. Sylvester's allowed to break the fourth-wall, sub-Hardy style on two separate occasions, an act of pure desperation here. It is nice to see that IMDb voters have actually gone against the tide, with to date - a 5.2 average for this movie (and less than 30% of voters giving it below 5). And out of 37 comments, 33 of them are positive. Sadly, however, I must agree with the majority of external Oscar reviews, and the tagline "It's a comedy of criminal proportions!" and remark how terrible it all is. Forget Judge Dredd, Cobra, The Specialist... this is the worst Sylvester Stallone movie ever made.