The Impostors
USA 1998
Reviewed by Peter Matthews
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
New York City, the 30s. Arthur and Maurice are struggling actors who pull a series of scams to acquire food. A plot for cream puffs goes wrong, but Maurice gets two tickets to a performance of Hamlet starring Jeremy Burtom, a drunken ham. After the play, Burtom overhears Maurice complaining about his bad acting and a scuffle ensues. Dodging the police, Arthur and Maurice hide inside a packing crate and soon find themselves on board the S.S. Intercontinental headed for Paris. Burtom is also on board, so the two impersonate stewards with the help of the head stewardess Lily.
Glimpsing Arthur and Maurice, Burtom demands that they be apprehended. The friends conceal themselves in a succession of passengers' cabins and learn about their fellow voyagers, who include a queen deposed in a military coup, a sheik and a tennis pro named Sparks. In addition, the newly widowed Mrs Essendine is looking for a rich husband, while her daughter Emily moons over the ship's entertainer Happy Franks. Arthur uncovers a plot hatched by Maxi and Johnny - a couple posing as French sophisticates - to kill the sheik and Mrs Essendine and abscond with their wealth. Maurice learns that the first mate is a secret revolutionary planning to assassinate the queen.
At the captain's ball, Maurice tries unsuccessfully to warn the sheik and Mrs Essendine. The captain recognises the queen as his lost love and the pair embrace. The first mate tries to kidnap the queen and blow up the ship. Johnny snatches Mrs Essendine, while Maxie spirits away the sheik. However, the three abductress turn out to be Lily, Maurice and Arthur in disguise. When the first mate accidentally drops the detonator, Happy catches it and saves the day. All the deserving couples are united.
Review
In theory, US independent film-makers are free to tackle offbeat and daring themes that Hollywood won't touch. So it's always a little depressing when they choose to grind out the kind of genre pictures that studio hacks in former days were compelled to make. After the success of Big Night - a warm, wistful comedy about Italian food and the failure of the American dream - director Stanley Tucci could presumably write his own ticket. But of all the conceivable subjects for a follow-up, he has decided to recreate a Paramount art-deco farce circa 1932. Not to infuse it with a modern sensibility, but to bring back the antique conventions just as they were. It was clear from Big Night that Tucci likes to snuggle up in what he sees as a gentler, more innocent past. Yet at least the 50s of that picture had a genuine nostalgic glow. By contrast, The Impostors is as thoroughly ersatz as the title suggests. You are never allowed to forget that the actors are actors or that their one-dimensional parts (the ingénue, the money-hungry dowager, the foreign revolutionary and so on) have been lifted almost bodily from the repertoire of 30s crazy comedy.
As if to confer his blessing on the project, Woody Allen appears uncredited in the role of a theatre director whose marital angst gums up the audition of down-and-out actors Arthur and Maurice. Allen's guest shot is certainly apt since The Impostors belongs to the same frisky metatextual species as Bullets over Broadway and the film-within-a-film sequences of The Purple Rose of Cairo. Tucci even includes a final stunt analogous to the postmodern shenanigans in Purple Rose: the happily paired off couples step down from the ocean-liner set, dance past the smiling camera crew and shimmy out into the street. Far from disrupting the theatrical illusion à la Brecht, Tucci wants to affirm the magic of old Hollywood fakery and schmaltz. But the sad fact is the clock can't be turned back. The featherweight comedies which The Impostors tries to simulate were catalysed by the need of Depression-era audiences to escape into a universe of high-style wit and romance. There's no way for Tucci to recover that historical frame of mind, and so all he ends up with is fossilised froth.
You can vaguely entertain yourself ticking off the allusions: a paraphrase of the state-room scene from A Night at the Opera (1935) here, a reprise of the "nobody's perfect" gag in Some Like It Hot (1959) there. Indeed, watching the movie is like enrolling in a course on screwball themes and leitmotifs (not anybody's idea of a party). Despite much rushing about in corridors and characters being knocked over like bowling pins, The Impostors is almost studiously unfunny.
The chief exception is the elegantly designed title sequence in which conmen Arthur and Maurice enact a slapstick argument that spirals into mock murder. This silent routine works because it depends on pantomime skills that haven't dated - unlike the specifically 30s forms of archness and naughtiness the film invokes elsewhere. Steve Buscemi's catatonic warbling of 'The Nearness of You' is also worth catching because it's the one time when something bizarrely, unpredictably contemporary breaks into the mothballed farce structure.
The large ensemble cast enters avidly into the spirit of the piece and seems to get a bang out of embodying the period clichés. It's a bit dismaying to observe indie stalwarts like Buscemi, Lili Taylor and Campbell Scott divesting themselves of their wacko originality and playing cute for the camera, even with irony. Still, these professionals supply the movie with some crisp edges. It's the centre that goes out of focus.
The nominal conceit is that Arthur and Maurice are compulsive hams who try to act their way out of scrapes, but this idea is only perfunctorily developed in practice. By a fundamental miscalculation, Tucci's script has our heroes mainly reacting from the sidelines to the various zany goings-on. What's worse, you sometimes see them positively recoiling from the craziness like the squarest of the square. When Arthur rolls his eyes at the music-loving sheik's invitation to the dance or when Maurice prudishly squirms out of the embrace of the besotted tennis champ, they forfeit a good deal of audience sympathy. Tucci doesn't seem to recognise that true clowns don't resist the comic anarchy: they give in to it.
Credits
- Producers
- Beth Alexander
- Stanley Tucci
- Screenplay
- Stanley Tucci
- Director of Photography
- Ken Kelsch
- Editor
- Suzy Elmiger
- Production Designer
- Andrew Jackness
- Music
- Gary DeMichele
- ©Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
- Production Companies
- Fox Searchlight presents a First Cold Press production
- Executive Producer
- Jonathan Filley
- Production Supervisor
- Margo Myers
- Production Co-ordinator
- Ellen Gannon
- Unit Production Manager
- Jonathan Filley
- Location Manager
- Sam Hutchins
- Post-production Supervisor
- Charlie Vogel
- Assistant Directors
- Justin Muller
- Lisa Janowski
- Brian York
- Script Supervisor
- Mary Gambardella
- Casting
- Ellen Lewis
- Associate:
- Marcia DeBonis
- Camera Operator
- Steve Drellich
- Steadicam
- Jim McConkey
- Associate Editor
- Zeborah Tidwell
- Art Director
- Chris Shriver
- Set Decorator
- Catherine Davis
- Costume Designer
- Juliet Polcsa
- Wardrobe Supervisors
- Cheryl Kilbourne-Kimpton
- Marcia Patten
- Key Make-up Artist
- Carla White
- Key Hairstylist
- Victor Denicola
- Titles/Opticals
- Cineric Inc
- Musicians
- Original Score:
- John Bowes
- Paul Maslin
- Jeffrey Mickus
- Henry Salgado
- Brian Sandstrum
- Miriam Sturm
- Gary DeMichele
- Tango Music:
- Fernando Marzan
- Miguel Bertero
- Leonardo Suarez Paz
- Domingo Diani
- Luis Bravo
- Washington Williman
- Lisandro Adrover
- Strings
- Chicago Musical Connection
- Music Supervisor
- Margot Core
- Music Editor
- Steve Borne
- Engineer
- Craig Williams
- Music Consultant
- John Head
- Soundtrack
- "Preparense" by Astor Piazzola-Sadaic, performed by The Forever Tango Orchestra; "China Boy" by Dick Winfree, Phil Boutelje, performed by Eddie Condon and His Allstars; "La Mourisque" by Susato, performed by The Canadian Brass; "Siboney" by Dolly Morse, Ernesto Lecuona, performed by Alfredo Brito and His Siboney Orchestra; "Sweetie Dear" by Joe Jordan, William Cook, performed by Sidney Bechet; "Skokiaan" by August Musarurgwa, performed by Louis Armstrong; "The Nearness of You" by Hoagy Carmichael, Ned Washington, performed by Steve Buscemi; "Parlez moi d'amour" by Jean Lenoir, performed by (1) Hope Davis, (2) Lucienne Boyer; "I'm Comin' Virginia" by Donald Heywood, William Cook, performed by Artie Shaw; "(When We Are Dancing) I Get Ideas" by Dorcas Cochran, Julio C. Sanders, performed by Elizabeth Bracco, Lewis J. Stadlen; "It's Funny to Everyone but Me" by/performed by Isham Jones
- Choreography
- Jo Andres
- Sound Mixer
- William Sarokin
- Re-recording Mixer
- Michael Barry
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Bob Hein
- Dialogue Editors
- Jac Rubenstein
- Sylvia Menno
- ADR
- Editors:
- Gina R. Alfano
- Mary Ellen Porto
- Foley
- Supervisor:
- Ben Cheah
- Artist:
- Marko Costanzo
- Engineer:
- Clete Ritta
- Editors:
- Jennifer Ralston
- Steven Visscher
- Artistic Consultant
- Andrei Belgrader
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- George Aguilar
- Cast
- Stanley Tucci
- Arthur
- Oliver Platt
- Maurice
- Teagle F. Bougere
- sheik
- Elizabeth Bracco
- Pancetta Leaky
- Steve Buscemi
- Happy Franks
- Billy Connolly
- Sparks
- Allan Corduner
- captain
- Hope Davis
- Emily Essendine
- Michael Emerson
- Burtom's assistant
- Dana Ivey
- Mrs Essendine
- Allison Janney
- Maxine/Maxi
- Richard Jenkins
- Johnny, Frenchman
- Matt McGrath
- Marco
- Alfred Molina
- Jeremy Burtom
- Isabella Rossellini
- Queen, veiled woman
- Campbell Scott
- Meistrich
- Tony Shalhoub
- first mate
- Lili Taylor
- Lily
- Walker Jones
- maître d'
- Jessica Walling
- attractive woman
- David Lipman
- baker
- E. Katherine Kerr
- Gertrude
- George Guidall
- Claudius
- William Hill
- Bernardo
- Jack O'Connell
- stage manager
- Matt Malloy
- Mike/Laertes
- Ted Blumberg
- Francisco
- Arden Myrin
- stewardess with luggage
Christopher Pomeroy- steward
- Sarah McCord
- stewardess with the Queen
- Lewis J. Stadlen
- bandleader
- Phyllis Somerville
- woman at bar
- Amy Hohn
- woman with captain
- Michael Higgins
- older man
- Ken Costigan
- bartender
- [uncredited]
- Woody Allen
- theatre director
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- 20th Century Fox (UK)
- 9,048 feet
- 100 minutes 32 seconds
- Dolby
- Colour by
- Technicolor