Bullets over Broadway

 1.5/4

Starring: John Cusack, Jennifer Tilly, Dianne Wiest, Chazz Palmentieri, Jack Warden, Mary Louise Parker, Jim Broadbent, Rob Reiner, Joe Vitelli

Rated R for Some Language

"Bullets over Broadway" should have been a lot funnier than it is.  It grapples with a lot of questions, but the energy is slack.  There is very little zing.  It grapples with some thoughtful and perplexing issues, but it feels like a screwball comedy with too little tension.

David Shayne (Cusack) is a playwright who is universally regarded as brilliant, but not commercial.  "If the common people don't understand your work, you're a genius," someone claims.  Then a miracle happens: his devoted but broke producer Julian Marx (Warden) has found funding for his new play.  "A single backer going for the whole show!" he exclaims.  But there is a catch.  Funding comes from a nasty gangster named Nicky (Vitelli) and Shayne has to cast Nicky's air headed, monumentally untalented squeeze Olive (Tilly) in the show.  Keeping an eye on things is Nicky's right hand man, Cheech (Palmentieri).

One of the interesting things in Allen's script is that it explores the line between art and commerce, and what constitutes the former.  For example, which is more important, the artist or the work? And does any compromise make it a less valid expression of the artist's ideas?  After exploring these for a while, Allen turns up the heat a little.  The violent mobster Cheech turns out to have the gift of an artist, whose radical ideas transform Shayne's play into brilliance.  Whose play does it become then, David's or Cheech's?

The problem is, as provocative as these questions are, the movie is pretty dull.  What is this supposed to be?  A farce?  A look behind the scenes of theater?  Allen doesn't seem to know.  The tone is all wrong for a comedy, making the jokes feel nonexistent.  Only at the ends, when things get really screwy, does the film start to gain the necessary energy.

John Cusack is one of the unsung heroes of American cinema.  Perhaps it's because he's so identifiable, or that he has carved out his own niche as a sad sack.  But given the right role, he is a terrific actor.  It's hard to imagine Rob from "High Fidelity" in a Woody Allen movie, but Cusack is so good that it only takes a few moments to forget that it's him.  Jennifer Tilly has a lot of fun playing a ditz.  Equalling her (and coming out on top at the Oscars) is Dianne Wiest, who plays the self-important theater star Helen Sinclair ("Don't speak" is her mantra when David confesses his love for her).  The true star, however, is Chazz Palmentieri, the wonderful Italian American tough guy.  Palmentieri pokes fun at his own image and steals every scene that he's in.

In tone and timing, "Bullets over Broadway" wants to be a comedy.  But the jokes just aren't there.  There are a few that provoke a few chuckles, but that's it.  It's as if Allen left them out intentionally.

Pity.

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