Bananas

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Dave S From early in Woody Allen’s career comes Bananas, the story of Fielding Mellish (Allen), a New York product tester, who finds himself in the middle of a revolution in the fictional land of San Marcos. There are some bits that are comedy gold (the break-up scene early in the film, for example), but there are an equal number of scenes that are either pointless or run far too long, like the excruciating courtroom scene. To make matters worse, it is marred by erratic direction from Allen, some really bad editing, and an exhausting and often pointless music score. Because it is mercifully short, it is not a total waste of time…but it’s pretty close. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 06/13/24 Full Review Audience Member I found myself smirking dozens of times. I only laughed twice. This is classic Woody Allen humor, just without the strong characters and story driving it along. A great early exploration of comedy by the director, but it is not surprising the film has all but disappeared from public memory. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/02/23 Full Review Audience Member Not that funny. And the editing was a mess. Rated 1.5/5 Stars •  Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 01/14/23 Full Review bucky r Slapstick, silly, often outdated jokes are worth some laughs, but this is an early work that feels like a Jewish Benny Hill movie. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 03/30/23 Full Review Bill M IMHO Woody Allen is one of the most overrated movie makers in the U.S. He has a reputation an "auteur" but his art is very derivative. Virtually every movie he makes is based on some other movie he's seen, some book he has read (or, in the case of Russian classics, heard about) etc. He tries to give the "Woody Allen touch" to stale material. It's "ersatz originality" masquerading as the genuine article. Take, for instance, The Purple Rose of Cairo, where a movie character walks out of the screen into real life. A stroke of genius when Buster Keaton did it, about half a century earlier, in Sherlock Jr. True, Woody Allen simply exploits this device to to illustrate his own ideas but these "ideas", while quite clever, result in a rather dull movie. At one time I thought it was merely Woody Allen's "serious" movies that were pretentious and dull, that his early "funny movies" were quite good. But a few days ago I re-watched Bananas, on TCM, and changed my opinion. Or, rather, I tried to watch it. I couldn't stomach more that 15 or 20 minutes. In one of his books Woody claims to have admired Bob Hope, and this early performance is like a bad Bob Hope parody. Woody is a stand-up comic. He has no slapstick chops. "Don't let them catch you acting," Larry Olivier advised a young novice. Woody was obviously "acting". Bananas is not funny; it's embarrassingly bad. Of course, that's just my opinion; others may disagree. Rated 1/5 Stars •  Rated 1 out of 5 stars 11/28/20 Full Review James K A perfect farce with some sincere Orwellian-insight into the cyclical nature of Banana republics. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 09/15/20 Full Review Read all reviews

Bananas

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