Chevy Chase is Norman Robberson, a hen-pecked suburban dad who likes to watch cop shows. When he is informed that his next door neighbor, Horace Obsborn (Robert Davi), is suspected of being a Mafia hitman, he agrees to allow Detectives Jake Stone (Jack Palance) and Tony Moore (David Barry Gray) to use his house as their stakeout location.
Cops and Robbersons is just as terrible as its title. Norman is basically Clark Griswold without the excuse of a vacation or the holidays to explain away his stupidity. Jack Palance growls and looks annoyed but without the same comedic flair that he brought to City Slickers. Dianne Wiest is wasted as Norman’s wife. Of course, Norman’s daughter develops a crush on Tony while Norman’s son dressed up like Dracula and tries to put the bite on Stone. Norman keeps getting in the way of the two cops and trying to conduct an investigation on his own. There has to be an easier way to capture a hitman. The only thing that really works is Robert Davi’s performance as the hitman. Davi doesn’t try to be funny, which actually brings out the best in Chase whenever they share a scene. Chase’s goofy dad shtick works best when he’s dealing with someone who isn’t trying to score laughs of his own.
How did the great Michael Ritchie end up directing movies like this? Whoever let that happen should be ashamed.
For our latest entry in the 44 Days of Paranoia, we take a look at Oliver Stone’s 1995 presidential biopic, Nixon.
Nixon tells the life story of our 37th President, Richard Nixon. The only President to ever resign in order to avoid being impeached, Nixon remains a controversial figure to this day. As portrayed in this film, Nixon (played by Anthony Hopkins) was an insecure, friendless child who was dominated by his ultra religious mother (Mary Steenburgen) and who lived in the shadow of his charismatic older brother (Tony Goldwyn). After he graduated college, Nixon married Pat (Joan Allen), entered politics, made a name for himself as an anti-communist, and eventually ended up winning the U.S. presidency. The film tells us that, regardless of his success, Nixon remained a paranoid and desperately lonely man who eventually allowed the sycophants on his staff (including James Woods) to break the law in an attempt to destroy enemies both real and imagined. Along the way, Nixon deals with a shady businessman (Larry Hagman), who expects to be rewarded for supporting Nixon’s political career, and has an odd confrontation with a young anti-war protester who has figured out that Nixon doesn’t have half the power that everyone assumes he does.
Considering that his last few films have been W., Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and Savages, I think it’s understandable that I’m often stunned to discover that, at one point in the distant past, Oliver Stone actually was a worthwhile director. JFK, for instance, is effective propaganda. Nixon, which feels a lot like an unofficial sequel to JFK, is a much messier film than JFK but — as opposed to something like Savages — it’s still watchable and occasionally even thought-provoking. Thanks to Hopkins’ performance and, it must be admitted, Stone’s surprisingly even-handed approach to the character, Nixon challenges our assumptions about one of the most infamous and villified figures in American history. It forces us to decide for ourselves whether Nixon was a monster or a victim of circumstances that spiraled out of his control. If you need proof of the effectiveness of the film’s approach, just compare Stone’s work on Nixon with his work on his next Presidential biography, the far less effective W.
(I should admit, however, that I’m a political history nerd and therefore, this film was specifically designed to appeal to me. For me, half the fun of Nixon was being able to go, “Oh, that’s supposed to be Nelson Rockefeller!”)
If I had to compare the experience of watching Nixon to anything, I would compare it to taking 10 capsules of Dexedrine and then staying up for five days straight without eating. The film zooms from scene-to-scene, switching film stocks almost at random while jumping in and out of time, and not worrying too much about establishing any sort of narrative consistency. Surprisingly nuanced domestic scenes between Anthony Hopkins and Joan Allen are followed by over-the-top scenes where Bob Hoskins lustily stares at a White House guard or Sam Waterston’s eyes briefly turn completely black as he discusses the existence of evil. When Nixon gives his acceptance speech to the Republican Convention, the Republican delegates are briefly replaced by images of a world on fire. Familiar actors wander through the film, most of them only popping up for a scene or two and then vanishing. The end result is a film that both engages and exhausts the viewer, a hallucinatory journey through Stone’s version of American history.
Chevy Chase is Norman Robberson, a hen-pecked suburban dad who likes to watch cop shows. When he is informed that his next door neighbor, Horace Obsborn (Robert Davi), is suspected of being a Mafia hitman, he agrees to allow Detectives Jake Stone (Jack Palance) and Tony Moore (David Barry Gray) to use his house as their stakeout location.
Through the Shattered Lens 