As the end credits rolled for 1990’s Crazy People, I said aloud a one-word assessment to my wife, a word I do not believe I have ever used before in describing a movie, and that was, “Neat.” That there was a sing-along-with-the-bouncing-ball bit happening over those credits only reinforced this feeling.
I’ll admit that is overlooking a great many problems with the film. Much of the script and dialogue feel like a sitcom, though the R rating ensures some strong, but judiciously employed, profanity. The tone is wobbly throughout, and this is exacerbated by the frequently overbearing score.
What would normally be a red flag is how the film treats mental illness, with the institutionalized people being those kinds of funny, harmless, “movie crazy” that have been the stock of comedies ever since the cinema had sound. It is a kind of gentle condescension and exploitation that should have made The Fisher King unpalatable, and yet that filmed succeeded with me wildly. I found it curious both films have Mercedes Ruehl in a supporting, though substantial, role.
Dudley Moore is a New York advertising executive having a nervous breakdown, thus being one of the Mad Men, but in a different sense of the word. He is cracking under pressure from the always-intense J.T. Walsh, who excelled as deceitful assholes in a wide variety of films. Moore’s work buddy is Paul Reiser, who is once again a weaselly corporate stooge type.
Stuck in traffic one morning, as it appears happens to him each day, Moore snaps when he sees an executive in the car next to him blathering on his car phone. If that is enough to push him over the edge, I’m guessing he would have a stroke in about a minute in our present age, where everybody is too distracted by their smartphones to pay attention to the road.
When he arrives at work, he has brought some radical new ad ideas that have Walsh and Raiser seriously concerned. His ad for Volvo says the company realizes its product is boxy and not sexy, but isn’t that good, what with all the diseases going around? I guess Jaguar drivers would know more about that, because his tagline for them is, “For men who’d like hand jobs from beautiful women they hardly know.”
Reiser gets Moore committed into a nice-looking facility. Private rooms. Sprawling estate. Nice views, including Daryl Hannah as a fellow patient. Those expansive grounds are apparently free to explore without restriction, as she has a private space in what appears to be an abandoned barn. I assume that’s where she met Neil Young, whom she married 28 years later.
While he’s checking Moore into the institution, Reiser calls the office and tells a subordinate to send the ad copies in his office to production. Of course, Reiser’s work is not the pile that is grabbed, rather it is Moore’s work makes it to the pages of major magazines and billboards. That Jaguar ad ends up on the side of a bus, which is funny despite it being impossible not a single person stopped that from happening in the long series of steps from print to installation.
In short order, Moore has a meet-cute with Daryl Hannah. I bet his first thought when seeing her is how the best sex is supposed to be with the crazy ones. She’s all over him and I was genuinely surprised her mental disorder was not nymphomania.
The other inmates are largely the type who I image are ordered up as a random assortment from central casting. You probably just call a number and ask for mixed nuts. One of the more memorable is played by Danton Stone, who is obsessed with the cars of Saab. As you might have guessed by now, the script has a curious fixation on automobiles. Perhaps the best of this pack o’ loonies is David Paymer, who seems to be channeling Larry Fine, as I believe I have seen him do in other works. His issue is he has only said “hello” as every word for the past couple of decades. He even makes a seemingly infinite variety of cards with that word on it, done in a myriad of styles.
In the meantime, Moore’s advertisements that were accidentally released upon the world turn out to be a big hit. Whereas Walsh had initially fired Reiser, now he will only give him his job back if he can get Moore released from the hospital. That isn’t going to be easy, as the institutionalized man finds himself happy for the first time in a long while. And why shouldn’t he, as he has been making time with Hannah.
Instead of bringing him to work, the work will come to him, and all his goofy newfound friends are engaged in creating brutally honest ad copy. I refuse to believe any hospital would allow the full-on offices they work out of, seemingly occupying a hallway that is a major thoroughfare of the facility. But I can suspend my disbelief to accommodate this and other developments.
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Crazy People. It walks a dangerous line when it uses the mentally ill for laugh fodder, but it has a surprisingly warm heart and it seems to love these oddballs who finally have a sense of purpose in their lives.
It was only after watching the film that I caught up with reviews from the time of its original release. The general consensus seems to be confusion as to whether this is supposed to be a cynical look at the fundamental dishonesty of the advertising biz, or if it is supposed to be a slightly skewed romantic comedy. People seemed to be especially confused by how a film with this degree of profanity could succeed at the latter. Odd how much of today’s fare accomplishes just that, so maybe this picture was before its time. That’s not unlike the brutally frank advertising that gets the biggest laughs in this picture. Today, that’s the kind of stunt every company is pulling to get those precious likes.
Dir: Tony Bill
Starring Dudley Moore, Daryl Hannah
Watched on Shout Factory blu-ray