Every once in a while another movie about movies comes out -- metamovies. Truffaut's "Day For Night" was pretty good. "Bowfinger" had its moments. "The Deal" ought to be the comedy that it strives so hard to be but doesn't quite make it.
Producers William Macy and Meg Ryan hire an Israeli director to make an action movie that was originally written as a biography of Benjamin Disraeli. The picture is to be shot in South Africa. There are myriad subsidiary characters I won't bother to name or describe.
The action hero, a kind of black, Jewish Rambo, is kidnapped by an extremist political group and the studio tells Macy and Ryan to "shut it down and salvage what you can." They take this to mean they can move to Prague, where the studio has some frozen money, and revert to the original script about Disraeli.
Granted it doesn't sound too funny and it's not. That's a shame in a way because they've got some talent in front of the camera, and not just high-end stars like Macy and Ryan.
But the script, by Macy and Schachter, is weak, in that it's deficient in laughs, or smiles even, and there aren't any characters to particularly care about.
The direction and editing need some seasoning. There are too many cutaway shots to spectators gaping open-mouthed at the goings on. Some gags depend on the viewer's knowledge of the rudiments of Judaism. A book is entitled "The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Talmud." I don't know that, even today, the casual viewer in America's Heartland is going to get a joke like that, or like the director's insistence that everyone on the set wear a yarmulkah. They'll go over well on the Coasts.
I got the gags but didn't find them too amusing. The film simply ambles along with characters making shocking statements or doing outrageous things mostly in deadpan. It's confusing too. When the film within the film finally wrapped, it came as a surprise to me because I didn't know the production was that far along.
It's not an insulting movie in any way, it's just not what it was intended to be. Too bad. "State and Main" is funnier.
Producers William Macy and Meg Ryan hire an Israeli director to make an action movie that was originally written as a biography of Benjamin Disraeli. The picture is to be shot in South Africa. There are myriad subsidiary characters I won't bother to name or describe.
The action hero, a kind of black, Jewish Rambo, is kidnapped by an extremist political group and the studio tells Macy and Ryan to "shut it down and salvage what you can." They take this to mean they can move to Prague, where the studio has some frozen money, and revert to the original script about Disraeli.
Granted it doesn't sound too funny and it's not. That's a shame in a way because they've got some talent in front of the camera, and not just high-end stars like Macy and Ryan.
But the script, by Macy and Schachter, is weak, in that it's deficient in laughs, or smiles even, and there aren't any characters to particularly care about.
The direction and editing need some seasoning. There are too many cutaway shots to spectators gaping open-mouthed at the goings on. Some gags depend on the viewer's knowledge of the rudiments of Judaism. A book is entitled "The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Talmud." I don't know that, even today, the casual viewer in America's Heartland is going to get a joke like that, or like the director's insistence that everyone on the set wear a yarmulkah. They'll go over well on the Coasts.
I got the gags but didn't find them too amusing. The film simply ambles along with characters making shocking statements or doing outrageous things mostly in deadpan. It's confusing too. When the film within the film finally wrapped, it came as a surprise to me because I didn't know the production was that far along.
It's not an insulting movie in any way, it's just not what it was intended to be. Too bad. "State and Main" is funnier.