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Life Stinks (1991)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted: 16
Fresh: 3
Rotten:13
Average Rating: 3.8/10
Runtime: 1 hr 35 mins
Genre: Comedies
Synopsis: LIFE STINKS is the very funny, at times touching, and pointed commentary on greed, deceit, and human dignity. Director Mel Brooks stars as Goddard Bolt, a billionaire developer who is challenged by... LIFE STINKS is the very funny, at times touching, and pointed commentary on greed, deceit, and human dignity. Director Mel Brooks stars as Goddard Bolt, a billionaire developer who is challenged by business rival Vance Crasswell (Jeffrey Tambor) to live on the streets without money for one month among the homeless both men are trying to further displace by building on the property that is their only home. Goddard is forced to dance for his money, avoid turf wars, develop survival tactics, live in a cardboard box, and more. But along the way, he makes valuable friends among the street people who teach him that life is not about owning material items but about the integrity of the human spirit. One of these is bag lady Molly (Lesley Ann Warren), who, in one of the most inspired moments of the film, dances with Goddard in a dilapidated building to the strains of Cole Porter's "Easy to Love." It is humanistic moments such as this one that makes what could have been a silly movie into a film more reminiscent of Brooks's madcap but poignant films such as YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. [More]
Starring: Mel Brooks, Lesley Ann Warren, Jeffrey Tambor, Stuart Pankin
Starring: Mel Brooks, Lesley Ann Warren, Jeffrey Tambor, Stuart Pankin, Howard Morris
Director: Mel Brooks
Director: Mel Brooks
Screenwriter: Rudy DeLuca
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Reviews for Life Stinks
A slapstick vaudeville about the poor and homeless? Inadvertently Mel Brooks gives the dangerous impression that homelessness is cute and that Downtown LA is filled with adorable and eccentric people who "just happen" to be roofless.
The slapstick here is nothing to rent the film over. Oddly, it's the serious moments that charm. I was embarrassed to myself for being choked up by Mel Brooks.
This was supposed to be Brooks's comical stab at social injustice, a kind of My Man Godfrey for the nineties, but it doesn't work.
About 90% of the jokes elicit blank, polite stares, not laughs. The film is as raggedy and forlorn as its hero.
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