How sad is this?

Fresh and Exciting

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Continuing my plan to watch every Clint Eastwood movie in order I come to the comedy Pink Cadillac (1989)Plot In A Paragraph: Skip tracer Tommy Nowak (Eastwood) is tracking Lou Ann McGuinn (Bernadette Peters) for a bail bondsman in California. Lou Ann is also being chased by her husband Roy McGuinn and his white supremacist friends a gang called the The Birthright. The last comedy Clint Eastwood would ever make. The movie was an attempt at returning Clint Eastwood to the action-comedy genre which gave him the highest grossing movies of his career in Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can (the latter had the same director as this movie and the last Dirty Harry) but sadly it's neither funny, charming or even watchable.The most interesting things I found watching this movie for the first time since it's release was Jim Carrey turns up here (his second Eastwood movie in a row) billed as James Carrey, as an Elvis impersonater. Regular Eastwood co stars Bill McKinney and Geoffrey Lewis pop up here in their last Eastwood movies too whilst Frances Fisher makes her first appearance in an Eastwood movie. Clint who has saved worse movie plots than this, seriously has his work cut out here. He tried hard, but it just doesn't work. Part of the problem is it's trying too hard to recapture the magic of the Philo Beddo movies (trailer parks, rowdy bars, motels and even another car wash) even the members of The Birthright can be compared to the bikers from those movies. Another is racism, and a baby being kidnapped are not very suitable topics for the gentle charming comedy this is aiming to be. Played straight it may have turned out different, but as it is, this is a tough one to say good things about. The 1980's ended with a whimper rather than a bang as Pink Cadillac was the second Clint movie to under perform as it only grossed $12 million at the domestic box office, to end 1989 as 74th highest grossing movie of the year. Making it Clint's worst performing movie since Joe Kidd seventeen years earlier. It actually didn't even get a cinema release in the UK, making it the first Clint movie to go straight to home video since he became an A list star.

This movie has some rawness and grit, interesting story line, plot, and sub-plots, with Eastwood as a tough no-nonsense detective, Speer, and Reynolds as an ex-cop and Private Eye, Murphy, who butt heads with each other, in Prohibition-era 1933 (last year of Prohibition, in fact), but team up to investigate mob murder and corruption. It also has some funny lines and wittiness. And of course, Eastwood, with his intensity, as well as his piano playing, is in true form as usual. The costumes are great. The sets are delightful and the cars dazzling. The treat in the movie is Jane Alexander as Reynold's long suffering brilliant secretary. Worth watching just for the pleasure of her company.The plot is a good one and the story believable just poorly executed, despite good performances. There's not a whole lot of saving graces other that what has already been mentioned but at least you can see some different, although hollow, acting performances by Madeline Kahn, Rip Torn, Richard Roundtree, Jane Alexander, and Irene Cara. Clint didn't direct this film, but his production company produced it and Buddy Van Horn directed it. Van Horn is Clint's stunt coordinator and Clint surrogate, and has directed several Clint films (most notably The Dead Pool). Maybe that's the idea of this film, but it didn't succeed in delivering the camp factors. The whole film felt like a middling effort, but at least it had the grace of showing a young Jim Carrey doing stand-up, which showed how little he changed over the years.Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

I knew the leading actor was in this film because I had heard the title quite a few times, I didn't realise it was meant to be a funny as well as serious, and I had to see why it wasn't highly rated. Basically Tommy Nowak (Clint Eastwood) is a skip tracer, with a talent as master of disguise who fool a criminal on the phone or in person into thinking well of him, and then he makes his move to catch them for whatever crime they are wanted for. His latest target is Lou Ann McGuinn (The Jerk's Bernadette Peters) who has skipped bail, and she married to husband Roy (Timothy Carhart) who is Nazi inspired and has a stash of counterfeit money, which he hides in the pink Cadillac. Tommy does catch Lou Ann in Reno, Nevada, but he comes to like her with the time they spend, being chased by Roy's gang of thugs for example. It is when the bad guys kidnap her baby who was being looked after by sister Dinah (Frances Fisher), Tommy decides to help his new friend get her baby back and deciding to forget about her in to the police. While driving through the West and catching a few more criminals with the disguise tactic along the way, romance is blooming between Tommy and Lou Ann. Eventually after some adventure, they do eventually catch up to Roy and the other criminals, and in the end they do manage to get the baby back and Tommy and Lou Ann drive away in the pink Cadillac together seemingly as fugitives. Also starring John Dennis Johnston as Waycross, Michael Des Barres as Alex, Geoffrey Lewis as Ricky Z, William Hickey as Mr. Barton, Home Alone's Gerry Bamman as Buddy, James Cromwell as Motel Desk Clerk, Bryan Adams as Gas Station Attendant and young Jim Carrey as Lounge Entertainer. I will admit I did giggle a little at the moments where Eastwood was in disguise as the radio DJ, the rodeo clown, the casino hotshot and the trash pool player, Peters was also quite amusing as his female companion, and the car of the title is obviously nice, but the film is too long, the more serious side of the story is silly, and not all the jokes are funny, so all in all, a disappointing comedy drama. Adequate!

As mentioned in another comment, this film is very, very similar to the brilliant De Niro movie Midnight Run which came out a year before this one. This one pales in comparison unfortunately. I wouldn't have thought it was a deliberate move by Eastwood to cash in on the success of Midnight Run, because I don't think Clint has to ride on anyone's coat tails, and was Midnight Run a big hit anyway? Actually this must be one of Clints least known films, its very rarely shown on TV here in Great Britain, in fact I think it went straight to video, a Clint Eastwood film straight to video! It must be really bad yeah? well no, not really, but not exactly great either. Its a pleasant enough way to spend a couple of hours, and does show Clint doing different things. He takes on different persona's in his Bounty hunter role to catch the crooks including a DJ and a redneck, which I thought was hilarious, really funny. Bernadette Peters was really good in this I thought as well, bright and quirky. What really let it down was the gang of Nazi redneck bikers (or whatever they were meant to be), they bordered on comedy villains, in fact I kept waiting for Clyde the Orangatun to wander on screen and punch them out and drink all their beer! So one for Clint fans only I'm afraid (like me!) P.S See if you can spot Jim Carrey AND Canadian rocker Bryan Adams in the film.