Given its garish production history, one rather expected The Cotton Club to sing with hot-jazz desperation. Instead, we get the mediocre craftsmanship of a pit band in Vegas.
The Cotton Club (1984)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:23
Fresh:17
Rotten:6
Average Rating:6.3/10
Runtime: 2 hrs 45 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: It's the height of the 1920s Jazz Age and Harlem's famous Cotton Club is the home to both talented performers and gangster molls. Dixie Dwyer (Richard Gere) is a cornet player who unexpectedly... It's the height of the 1920s Jazz Age and Harlem's famous Cotton Club is the home to both talented performers and gangster molls. Dixie Dwyer (Richard Gere) is a cornet player who unexpectedly saves the life of mobster Dutch Schultz (James Remar). When Schultz takes Dixie under his wing, Dutch's girlfriend Vera Cicero (Diane Lane) and Dixie become dangerously entangled. Meanwhile, the performers at Owney Madden's (Bob Hoskins) club, led by Sandman Williams (Gregory Hines) and his brother Clay (played by real-life brother Maurice Hines), balance their lives as stars on the stage with the real-life discrimination of being black. Sandman falls for ambitious light-skinned chanteuse Lila (Lonette McKee) while Dixie moves to Hollywood to become a movie star. The supporting cast is a colorful mix, including musician Tom Waits as club manager Irving Stark; Fred Gwynne (aka Herman Munster) as Madden's sidekick, Frenchy; Broadway legend Gwen Verdon as Dixie's mom, Tish; Andy Warhol star Joe Dallesandro as Charles "Lucky" Luciano; and founder of New York's Living Theater, Julian Beck, as the sinister Sol Weinstein. [More]
Starring: Richard Gere, Gregory Hines, Diane Lane, Lonette McKee
Starring: Richard Gere, Gregory Hines, Diane Lane, Lonette McKee, Bob Hoskins, James Remar, Nicolas Cage, Allen Garfield, Fred Gwynne, Lisa Jane Persky, Maurice Hines, Julian Beck, Tom Waits, Laurence Fishburne, Gwen Verdon, Jennifer Grey
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Screenwriter: William Kennedy, Francis Ford Coppola
Story: William Kennedy, Francis Ford Coppola, Mario Puzo
Producer: Robert Evans
Composer: John Barry
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Reviews for The Cotton Club
This musical gangster movie is a tour de force, even if a little muddled.
Lavish, interesting, evocative but strained and self-conscious, Cotton Club is all watchable curiosity.
It was the most assured film Coppola had made in a decade, full of casual wit and visual invention.
Whatever it took to do it, Coppola has extracted a very special film out of the checkered history of this project.
Ambitious, but like many post-Apocalypse Coppola films, it doesn't quite hit the mark.
There're always something and someone interesting just around the corner; and, if Coppola seems to have difficulty with the story's narrative line, he does manage to help the audience keep straight the huge cast of characters.
There are lots of good ideas, but none of them are really worked out or honed
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 15% 15% | The Ugly Truth |
| 98% 98% | Up |
| 36% 36% | G.I. Joe: The Rise of … |
| 52% 52% | The Taking of Pelham 1… |
| 45% 45% | Ice Age: Dawn of the D… |
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 36% 36% | Angels & Demons |
| 68% 68% | Funny People |
| 25% 25% | Four Christmases |
| 45% 45% | Shorts |
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