The beginning of this film is deliciously silly, and I thought I was going to enjoy it enormously. But from Gloria Lyons' first appearance on the scene, the film seems to lurch around the corner into another genre... and it never seems to be quite sure what it is after that.
Overall I found it hopelessly uneven. The vivid life of the 'big street' is sidelined very early on by the constant demands of the character Gloria, who dominates the film with much the same insatiable need as she does the hero -- but unlike, say, in 'Dolores Claiborne', the story all but fails to establish any flashes of sympathy for the cantankerous invalid, and the audience is left largely bewildered by the Job-like endurance of Little Pinks. It could have been done -- perhaps in the original story it was done -- but here shrewish Gloria comes across as simply unlikable rather than, as apparently intended, tragically self-deluded.
For much of the time, after its beginnings in pure comedy, the film seems to be striving for melodrama, although the plausibility rating tends even here to be undermined by the sheer improbability of the situations obtained. The supporting characters, played for laughs, are far more engaging than the would-be urban fairytale of the principals, and it was never clear whether Pinks's predicament was intended to be tragic, life-affirming or simply prat-fall humorous, in the manner of all comedy dependent on humiliation. The set-up is simply too strained and the main characters too one-dimensional to be taken as drama or grand tragedy, but by and large it seems to take itself too seriously for us to be expected to laugh at Gloria either.
If played as outright farce, this could have been a decent, if cruel, slapstick comedy; if played with more depth and more appealing characters, it might have been a two-handkerchief weepie. What it's not is the meaningful street fable it seems to crave to be... and as a heavy-handed morality play its intended lesson left me rather foxed.
Overall I found it hopelessly uneven. The vivid life of the 'big street' is sidelined very early on by the constant demands of the character Gloria, who dominates the film with much the same insatiable need as she does the hero -- but unlike, say, in 'Dolores Claiborne', the story all but fails to establish any flashes of sympathy for the cantankerous invalid, and the audience is left largely bewildered by the Job-like endurance of Little Pinks. It could have been done -- perhaps in the original story it was done -- but here shrewish Gloria comes across as simply unlikable rather than, as apparently intended, tragically self-deluded.
For much of the time, after its beginnings in pure comedy, the film seems to be striving for melodrama, although the plausibility rating tends even here to be undermined by the sheer improbability of the situations obtained. The supporting characters, played for laughs, are far more engaging than the would-be urban fairytale of the principals, and it was never clear whether Pinks's predicament was intended to be tragic, life-affirming or simply prat-fall humorous, in the manner of all comedy dependent on humiliation. The set-up is simply too strained and the main characters too one-dimensional to be taken as drama or grand tragedy, but by and large it seems to take itself too seriously for us to be expected to laugh at Gloria either.
If played as outright farce, this could have been a decent, if cruel, slapstick comedy; if played with more depth and more appealing characters, it might have been a two-handkerchief weepie. What it's not is the meaningful street fable it seems to crave to be... and as a heavy-handed morality play its intended lesson left me rather foxed.