CLUB PARADISE. Directed by Harold Ramis; written by Harold Ramis and Brian Doyle-Murray; produced by Michael Shamberg for Warner Bros. Starring Robin Williams, Peter O'Toole and Rick Moranis. Rated PG-13 (language).
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How can any movie featuring Williams, O'Toole and Moranis be this bad? Would it take a lousy script which jumps around fretfully, and can't tell a coherent story? Sloppy direction, which paces the movie in fits and starts? A supporting cast that doesn't support?
Williams, at least, should be able to overcome one, or even two such handicaps. But even he can't manage against all three.
Jack (Williams) is a Chicago fireman who quits after being blown out of a fourth-story window. An original beginning for a comedy. But originality isn't everything.
Anyway, taking his disability insurance money, Jack retires to the out-of-the-way Caribbean island of St. Nicholas (this name is the best thing about Club Paradise). He eventually teams up there with reggae-singing Ernest (Jimmy Cliff), who also owns a seedy but colorful hotel, the club of the title.
We're treated to the expected plumbing problems, difficulties with the help, etc. Then complication piles upon complication. Shadowy figures seek to buy the Club Paradise for unfathomable, sinister purposes. Ernest's political consciousness runs amok and revolution threatens. The plot, which got off to a bad start anyway, goes downhill fast.
However you look at it, Club Paradise is a disaster. And it's a shame, too, because we expect a better quality of work from the people involved here.
For example, the man in charge behind the cameras, director and cowriter Ramis, has been responsible for some solid, if excessively highspirited, comedies. (He directed Caddyshack and National Lampoon's Vacation), as well as co-writing the incomparable Ghostbusters.) While making Club Paradise, for some reason, Ramis' comic judgement must have been out to lunch ... on Mars.
Most of the cast, too, has been good enough elsewhere to justify high—or at least moderate, expectations. Maybe there are just too many of them. There's no time for any interesting bits to develop. Besides, with so many people running around in different directions, any kind of reasonable plot is almost impossible.
The biggest problem for most of the cast, though (except for the three headliners, who struggle manfully against the current, and Cliff, whose music is enjoyable) is an epidemic of over-acting. They just run wild. Even the late Adolph Caesar, who should have known better, isn't immune to the disease.
Over-acting, however, certainly isn't Twiggy's problem. Casting her as Jack's love interest was an embarrassing blunder. Williams' style is so overwhelming, only really top-notch comics—or straight people—should ever be in the same frame with him.
O'Toole certainly qualifies as one of these, and his and Williams' few scenes together are among the better ones in Club Paradise. But Twiggy, though she looks sensational, is about as bottom-notch an actress as you can get.
Williams, being the most talented performer in the movie, wastes himself the most terribly. Granted, movies have rarely been adequate showcases for his brand of inspired insanity, but Moscow on the Hudson and Survivors came close to being worthy vehicles for him. Club Paradise isn't even in the ballpark.
July 30, 1986