The new movie “The Alto Knights”, directed by Barry Levinson, with Robert Robert De Niro, playing two roles as mob bosses Frank Costello, and Vito Genovese – plays more like a documentary not told sequentially with no noticeable story.
This low-rated film reminds me of last year’s “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1” (it now looks like Chapter 2 will never be released), written and directed by Kevin Costner which had some of the same major flaws. Scenes, storylines, and characters are injected without regard to the previous scene, providing no measurable level of continuity, fundamental to the understanding and enjoyment of the audience. Instead, De Niro, as Frank Costello, talks to the audience at different parts of the story, trying to educate a confused audience about some event in the past. After about 5 scenes like this, this movie starts to fail with everyone watching hoping the two hours will be over soon.
Considering a great accomplished director like Barry Levinson and arguably one of the greatest actors of all time, it is surprising that a movie this bad could have been written, directed, produced and released.
The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this movie are a correctly low 38% and I agree with this low number and do not recommend this film.
The story of the new movie “Ezra” about two separated parents trying to raise their Autistic child reminds everyone that raising a child with Autism requires extreme levels of patience and tolerance for loud screaming, erratic and sometimes dangerous behavior. The parents of Ezra, played by William A. Fitzgerald are played by real live couple Rose Byrne as Jenna and Bobby Cannavale as Max with Robert De Niro playing Max’s father Stan.
The unusual part of this story is that Max is trying to make a living as a standup comedian in New York City, which is one of the reasons for the divorce of Max and Jenna, as well as their many disagreements about how to raise Ezra. I was surprised that most of the scenes of Max doing standup did not have enough funny moments to make him convincing as a standup comedian.
After a huge disagreement with a doctor over his prescribing drugs for Ezra, Max assaults the doctor in his office and he is arrested and jailed. Unfortunately the rest of the story is mostly about a road trip with Max taking taking Ezra across the country to escape the doctor’s diagnosis and then to Los Angeles and a surprise invitation to be on the Jimmy Kimmel show. It is this long road-show story that is where this screenplay mostly fails as it mutates into a series of sub stories as Max and Ezra encounter different situations during their trip. Max’s father Stan and his ex-wife Jenna drive across the country, trying to stop Max even putting out an Amber alert. There is an emotional scene between Stan and Max that is very well acted, but there are not nearly enough scenes like this to rescue what could have been a much better story about raising an Autistic child.
Actor Tony Goldwyn has a small part in this movie as Jenna’s boyfriend and also directed this movie. Whoopi Goldberg plays Jayne, Max’s agent in a surprisingly small part.
This film is another example of how difficult it is to write a great screenplay when you consider this could have been a great movie, but went down an incorrect path which is why the Rotten Tomatoes ratings are a low 69%. This story missed the mark in two many areas, and I do not recommend it, agreeing with the low critics reviews.
In August of last year, the movie “Easter Sunday” was released, about the family and especially the mother of Jo Koy, a very good standup comedian who uses stories about his mother as part of his act. The producer of this film was none other than Steven Speilberg. The problem with Easter Sunday is that Koy’s humor in his standup act did not translate to the screen. The screenplay was also bad and the entire story was about Koy handling high-stress conflicts in his life, ending with attempted humor with his controlling mother. This film was low-rated on both Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB.
The new movie “About My Father” is another attempt at taking a standup act, for Sebastian Maniscalco and translating it into a film. This attempt fails even worse than Easter Sunday, mainly because the screenplay is so bad. There is no noticeable story within these two hours, just a series of events, that try to be funny, and mostly all fail. The worse failed funny scene is when Sebastian, played by Maniscalco, is on a water jet and his bathing suit falls off, and none of this is funny and its only purpose was to add a shocking scene to the movie trailer.
What probably happened here is that producers were trying to capitalize on the popularity of Sebastian Maniscalco, then when the script (co-wrote by Maniscalco), was found to be not good enough they called in a favor from Robert De Niro, in the slim hope to rescue the box office. From my experience as an avid moviegoer, this strategy never works. This is because a bad movie is simply a bad movie and cannot be rescued by throwing someone respected and famous into the cast.
I was surprised about how bad this movie was. There was no flow or continuity, just a series of scenes. This film also stars Leslie Bibb as Ellie Sebastian’s girlfriend and Kim Cattrall and David Rasche as Ellie’s parents. I would have thought, given one of the writers is Maniscalco, that there would be something that works comedically in this film, but there is nothing funny in the entire two hours – always the cardinal sin of all comedy films.
In 1999 and 2002, Robert De Niro made two good comedy movies with Billy Crystal – “Analyse This”, and “Analyse That”. Unfortunately, most of the other comedy movies he has made since then, including the very bad “Dirty Grandpa” and this movie are failed attempts at comedy. Hopefully, De Niro will steer clear of comedies and continue with dramas. Not even the great actor Robert De Niro can have too many movies this bad on his resume.
The Rotten Tomatoes rating of a very low 29% is correct this time around, with my rating of 15% and a recommendation to not waste two hours with this mess of a surprisingly bad comedy movie.
A Screenwriters Perspective: Current and Past Movies. 