Bananas After making Take the Money and Run, Woody Allen put together a working script for Bananas, derived from the rough draft of a script called El Weirdo. The film would again star Woody Allen in the role of Fielding Mellish, a product tester looking for romance who eventually winds up becoming a fascist dictator in San Marcos. Nobody told Allen his script couldn't be far-fetched. The way the film opens is a montage of live television coverage with one of America's most recognized broadcast icons, Howard Cosell, giving the play by play. The place is San Marcos and the event is the live assassination of the President of San Marcos. An absurd beginning to a film that is all over the place. After El Presidente is shot the new dictator, General Vargas, is sworn in. The film then introduces Fielding Mellish playing the part of guinea pig at his product testing job. Allen gives us a dose of slapstick right off as Fielding tests the Execuciser, a work out machine for the busy office body. Fielding is presented right away as an outsider trying to be an insider on the social ladder. His coworkers joke with him on his bad luck with women, and encourage him to ask out the office receptionist. Fielding: You busy tonight? Allen keeps the slapstick pace going and places Fielding in a magazine shop attempting to buy porno magazines while an elderly lady watches his every move. Hiding the smut magazine in a stack of business magazines, he checks out only to have the cashier get a price check on "Orgasm" magazine. Keeping the pace, Allen places Fielding in a silent film-style skit with only Dixieland Jazz music playing as several street thugs mug an old lady (Sylvester Stallone in a pre-Rocky role as one of the thugs). Fielding somehow, in a Buster Keaton mannerism, pushes all the thugs out of the subway car at once. He plays with his glasses nervously as the men find their way back onto the subway train. Finally making his way home, fate strikes as a beautiful young girl named Nancy (Louise Lasser) comes knocking on his door. Nancy is a San Marcos activist trying to get signatures while Fielding is just looking for a date. In some of the funnier dialogue of the film, Fielding tries to impress Nancy with some intellectual conversation that goes sour: Nancy: Have you ever been to Denmark? Fielding tricks Nancy into a dinner date, and the two end up in bed together with Fielding covered in talcum powder. The relationship is going great, and he even attends several protests with her. Looking for more adventure in a man, Nancy ends up dumping Fielding. Looking to escape from his problems in life, Fielding decides to take a trip to San Marcos. Filmed in reality in Puerto Rico, the scenes taking place in San Marcos are when Fielding finds himself in some real hot water with the locals. Mistaken for someone important, Fielding is invited to a dinner with General Vargas and other dignitaries. An instrument-less band plays as the men dine and Fielding pays with a credit card when the meal is finished. Vargas decides to assassinate Fielding and blame it on the rebels to get support from the United States. Before Fielding can be assassinated though the rebels kidnap him and send him through boot camp. Accompanied by Dixieland jazz, the boot camp scenes are filled with slapstick and vaudeville style skits. Some of these skits work, others are on the borderline of just being goofy. Fielding and the rebels holdup a roadside dinner and order 1,000 grilled cheese, 300 tuna and BLT sandwiches, 700 coffees, 500 Cokes, 1,000 7ups, and mayo on the side. After being given the food, Fielding assumes the role of rebel leader and yells, "Get your money from Vargas, we're the rebels!!!!" A little more respect than he got back home. He ends up seducing a woman named Yolanda (played by Playboy centerfold Natividad Abascal) who is impressed with his influence on the rebels. As the two get ready to make love, the 1812 Overture plays in the background as Fielding rips his clothes off to the canons being fired. Fielding is eventually drafted to the role of President by the rebels, and is sent in disguise back to the United States to negotiate a US loan. Fielding is discovered to be a fake, and is sentenced to 15 years in prison. The judge suspends the sentence, with the promise that Fielding does not move into his neighborhood. The film ends with Fielding, still in disguise, being married to Nancy. Their wedding night activities are given play-by-play by Howard Cosell inside the bedroom. Nancy tells Cossell "it wasn't the worst that I've had." Still no respect after becoming the president of a small country. Bananas ends on a high note, and one can't go away without feeling like they have just seen a cartoon turned into a live action comedy. The film is absolute comedy, and there does not seem to be any scenes to disprove this. The influences of Chaplain, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton are far more evident in this film than in Take the Money and Run. Several scenes rely strictly on body humor and slapstick mannerisms. The entire boot camp sequences are mostly gags with a fast paced jazz soundtrack accompanying them. As mentioned above, some of this slapstick works while a majority of it fails to impress. Woody himself said a majority of scenes in the film were improvised until he felt he had a good enough shot to move on. It shows the most in the boot camp scenes as well as early in the film. There is one scene where he parks his car, and we see there is road construction right outside of his car before he gets out. It feels too textbook as he falls into the manhole while getting out of the car. Did he really think he was breaking new ground in comedy with these overused scenes? In Take the Money and Run, the parodies worked because he was working with a genre that is almost always serious and straight faced. It is almost impossible to copycat certain comedic elements and make it work on the big screen, especially in a sound film. In silent films, sight gags work over and over again because they are the actions that move the plot along. In Bananas, there a great majority of gags that are presented because Woody Allen needed to make a film that runs 80 minutes long, and it shows. The pacing of the scenes is right on cue for what they were intended to provide for the viewer, but the pacing of the film itself lacks a proper structure. Bananas is a film that the viewer wonders how it all came together to become a film that is as funny as it was intended to be. The film seems right at the verge of falling apart at points, and often times feels only like photographed sketches Woody Allen may be one of the closet living actors who can perform similar stunts that Keaton and Chaplain were noted for, but in this film the silent film style gags do not blend in with the story enough. This film is far from flawless, and seems like a stepping stone Woody Allen had to face before he could move on. I like this film but I have problems sitting through it. It is a great political farce, and the CIA, the court system, the media, advertising, and the military are all up for mocking in the film. In the court hearing of Fielding, a black lady is a witness and when asked what her name is she replies "J. Edgar Hoover." Bananas contains some great one-liners and the gags that do work are classics. There is a dream sequence where Fielding is being carried on a crucifix by monks down a street in New York City while another crucifix approaches from the rear. Fielding's crucifix tries to parallel park while the one behind him tries to steal the spot. There is also a scene in which he visits his surgeon parents in the operating room and they let him take over the task. A great parody occurs when the rebels are fighting on the steps of the capitol building in San Marcos, and a baby carriage falls down the stairs in an ode to the Odessa Steps sequence of Battleship Potemkin. The cameo by Howard Cosell to provide commentary on the live assassination and also the the marriage night of Nancy and Fielding being covered like a boxing match works perfect as well. These gags work, and it's a shame that they are not consistent. There almost seems to be two different films in Bananas. You have Fielding as the lonely romantic in New York, then you have Fielding as the revolutionary in San Marcos. Either of these two plots could have been expanded on to make more of a focused film. |
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