Honeymoon in Vegas *** (1992, James Caan, Nicolas Cage, Sarah Jessica Parker) – Classic Movie Review 8955

Writer-director Andrew Bergman’s 1992 romance comedy thriller Honeymoon in Vegas stars Nicolas Cage as New York investigator Jack Singer, who promises his dying mom (Anne Bancroft in a cameo) that he will never marry and he becomes commitment phobic.

But, when his prolonged courtship of Betsy (Sarah Jessica Parker) turns sour, he says that he will finally tie the knot with her in Las Vegas. But there, gangster Tommy Korman (James Caan) sees her as the spitting image of his late wife and involves Cage in a poker game so that he can win her for the weekend, arranging for Jack to lose $65,000 in poker and make him forfeit his fiancée for the weekend to pay off the debt.

Plenty of plot and plenty of jokes are at the disposal of a handful of congenial players. Cage holds the centre firm with his bewildered good guy turn, Caan is light and easy, and. when the action moves to Hawaii, there are fun cameos from Pat Morita as Caan’s driver Mahi Mahi and Peter Boyle as a hippy, musical-loving eccentric, Chief Orman. Among the amusing ideas is a running gag about Elvis Presley impersonators. There is also a jolly music score by David Newman, with lots of Presley on the soundtrack.

It is a typical work from writer-director Bergman (The Freshman): not a great comedy but certainly a really good one – and that is rare enough.

Also in the cast are Johnny Williams, John Capodice, Robert Costanzo, Burton Gilliam, Brent Hinkley and Seymour Cassel.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8955

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