I’ve never stopped to think about it, but I never understood what the big deal was supposed to be about Kim Basinger in her heyday. Having finally watched 1987’s Blind Date, I realize I hadn’t seen her in a genre she truly excels in, and that is screwball comedy.
While filled with touches that firmly establish it as a product of the 1980’s, I wouldn’t have been surprised in this Blade Edwards movie had been a remake of a film from the 1930’s. It even could have originally been a film from the director’s career in the 1960’s, as it channels the same zany energy as the original The Pink Panther.
Bruce Willis stars as a workaholic accountant for a firm that is wooing a lucrative Japanese client. He needs a date for a company dinner that night with the head of the company. This man’s beliefs are rooted firmly in long-established Japanese traditions, which sets the stage for mayhem to ensue.
The chaos starts when Willis insists his date have some champagne. Soon, she’s tearing off the breast pocket from the suit jacket of every man she stumbles into. She convinces the browbeaten wife of the Japanese company head to get a divorce. Things go so disastrously that Willis’s boss replies to a question from him with, “Fired? I only wish we were in the army so I could have you shot. Twice.”
Willis is determined to take Basinger home, but she has other ideas. This movie reminded me a lot of After Hours, in that the protagonist just wants to get home, yet keeps getting drawn into various bizarre situations. The most noteworthy of these is a highly unlikely scene where he rings the doorbell of a house and the entire building starts moving away from them. Turns out the house was on the bed of a giant truck in the process of moving it. This is funny, so long as one doesn’t consider the great many elements of the setup Willis and Basinger had to be oblivious to in order for this to have a payoff.
The film is competently made, though the visuals aren’t anything to gush over. Artlessly lit interiors include a dance club that is even more brightly lit than some football stadiums I have been in while a game was in progress.
Of course, nobody watches such a film for the cinematography. It is the performances that matter, and our leads are joined by a solid supporting cast with crack comic timing. Phil Hartman is underused as Willis’s brother, who sets up the blind date. John Larroquette makes the most of a very physical performance as Basinger’s psychotic ex. There’s a particularly good repeating gag of him crashing his car into different buildings at various points. I seem to recall that, by the end of the film, he is covered with paint, feathers and flour from these collisions.
There’s also more chemistry between the leads than I would have expected. Willis and Basinger hit it off so quickly that I found myself rooting for these characters despite them lacking significant depth. Their date begins at a gallery exhibit for an artist friend of hers who appears to be ripping off Giger. Walking away in shock from a mechanical statue of a female mannequin appearing to dry hump a motorcycle, he says, “We’re adults, aren’t we?” and she replies, “I thought I was.”
Blind Date saw Edwards return to form after a run of features that I felt were unworthy of his talents. It even has a score by Henri Mancini, though one wouldn’t know if from the typical 1980’s soundtrack filler he provided. Still, it is a very funny screwball comedy with both leads and supporting characters I enjoyed spending time with.
Dir: Blake Edwards
Starring Kim Basinger, Bruce Willis, John Larroquette
Watched on Image blu-ray