Big Trouble ** (1986, Peter Falk, Alan Arkin, Beverly D’Angelo, Charles Durning, Paul Dooley, Robert Stack, Valerie Curtin) – Classic Movie Review 13,059

The misfiring 1986 American comedy film Big Trouble with Peter Falk, Alan Arkin and Beverly D’Angelo is the last film of director John Cassavetes. Cassavetes disliked what he called ‘the aptly titled Big Trouble’.

Director John Cassavetes’s 1986 American comedy film Big Trouble stars Peter Falk, Alan Arkin, Beverly D’Angelo, Charles Durning, Paul Dooley, Robert Stack and Valerie Curtin, and you can’t say fairer than that. It is the last film of director John Cassavetes, though he merely inherited the project from original director Andrew Bergman, who wrote the screenplay, and it reunites Peter Falk and Alan Arkin, co-stars of the 1979 The In-Laws, for whom Bergman also previously wrote the screenplay.

Alan Arkin and Beverly D’Angelo star as Leonard Hoffman and  Blanche Rickey, who try to swindle an insurance company by killing her husband Steve Rickey (Peter Falk), in director John Cassavetes’s daft, only occasionally funny, comedy thriller.

Falk and Arkin are a winning team and spark off some rich moments, even in this misfiring, too-lightweight vehicle for their talents.

Big Trouble is big trouble for unexpected director Cassavetes, too serious a talent for such silly shenanigans. Afterwards, Cassavetes disliked what he called ‘the aptly titled Big Trouble’. Columbia Pictures had vetoed many of his director decisions while shooting and later he disapproved of how the studio edited the film.

It was a problem production: Andrew Bergman was replaced as director by John Cassavetes, and Bergman had his name taken off the script, to be replaced at his request by the pseudonym Warren Bogle, and the film was scarcely seen in cinemas.

The plot is similar to Double Indemnity so Columbia Pictures asked Universal Pictures to grant a license to use it. In exchange, canny Universal executive Frank Price, who had worked at Columbia, knew Columbia was holding onto a script called Back to the Future and made a deal to own it. Big Trouble flopped for Columbia and Back to the Future was a huge hit for Universal.

An unrelated film 2002 Big Trouble followed. And big trouble followed again. Nobody learns anything.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 13,059

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