Get to Know Your Rabbit

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Blu B Well like how Spielberg doesn't do comedies because he's not good at them...same can be said for DePalma it seems. Everything here is just subpar. The premise of a corporate exec who wants to become a magician I guess could work. I mean if there is any time where such a weird idea could work it's this era but yeah there just isn't much here. Mainly because the humor is just so flat and boring. It got maybe 2 chuckles. The direction also is just lacking that DePalma refinement and sharpness. It's super basic here and you'd never know it was him. Once he becomes a magican it feels ike stuff just happens. Stuff that's supposed to be funny but isn't at all. It's just visually flat with the jokes, the timing of the editing and pacing for visual jokes just isn't there at all and feels off. It's jus got nothing going for it but it also isn't really broken. It's on the more harmless lighthearted sort of side the entire time. Skip This. Plenty of better stuff comedy wise from this director and decade. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 04/29/25 Full Review Audience Member An odd but funny, obscure De Palma film. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/19/23 Full Review Audience Member This early effort from Brian DePalma has drugs, magic tricks, female nudity, and a Orson Wells cameo, now if it could only make a story appear out of all that mess they would really have something here. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 01/23/23 Full Review Audience Member the day the earth stood still Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/11/23 Full Review eric b A bizarre nugget from director Brian DePalma's early career, "Get to Know Your Rabbit" lands halfway between Woody Allen's concurrent farces ("Bananas," "Sleeper") and the many late-'60s comedies ("I Love You, Alice B. Toklas," for instance) where a "straight" drops out to experiment with the subculture. Tom Smothers is Donald Beeman, an executive marketing analyst who turns exasperated with the corporate grind, quits his job, moves to a fleabag hotel and takes lessons to become (ta-daa) a tap-dancing magician. His teacher? Orson Welles, of course. A pitiful string of bookings in sleazy bars follows, but Donald is happy to be living his dream. Along the way, he meets a beautiful gal or two, including groupie Katharine Ross (who must have been asking herself how her career so quickly plunged from "The Graduate" and "Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid" to this silly flick). Familiar faces Charles Lane, M. Emmet Walsh and Bob "Super Dave Osbourne" Einstein also pop in for random scenes, while the always wonderful Allen Garfield has a solid part as an overbearing brassiere salesman. And John Astin is Donald's needy ex-boss who becomes a crucial obstacle to the righteous, unfettered life. From the start, it's obvious that "Get to Know Your Rabbit" is too absurdist to have any real satirical bite. The plot makes less and less sense as it goes (just how many cut-rate magicians can the marketplace handle?) and, except for a couple of overhead tracking shots, the film has the aesthetics of a bland sitcom rerun. Smothers is a likable star, but his magic skills fail to impress (partly by design, sure). He does allow himself some racy moves that wouldn't pass on television, such as briefly exposing his genitals (too far away from the camera to be notable) and squeezing naked breasts. "Rabbit" is a fun little romp, but viewers seeking DePalma's comic side are much better off finding his previous film, "Hi Mom!" Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member Brian De Palma made a name for himself with his independent films Greetings (1968) and Hi, Mom! (1970), with that, Warner Bros. offered him a Hollywood film with this lighthearted satirical comedy about the madness of the rat race and how we want to escape it. It was shelved for 2 years after wrangling and uncertainty about how to sell it, shame really. Successful businessman Donald Beeman (Tom Smothers) is sick with being stuck in a Nine to Five routine, having to keep to deadlines and the punctuality and repetitive nature of his work, and one day, he just gets up and walks out, quits his job and trains to become a traveling tap dancing magician under the teachings of Mr. Delasandro (Orson Welles). Meanwhile, Beeman's boss Mr. Turnbull (John Astin) is desperate to get Beeman back to work, but it eventually costs Turnbull his job, he's now a drifter and Beeman employs him as his business manager, and while Beeman is travelling across America, Turnbull's new company grows to become one of the biggest corporations in the World, Tap Dancing Magicians (TBM). It is very much like a Richard Lester comedy, with very surreal humour carrying it along, but it has hints De Palma's technical trickery that he would used in Phantom of the Paradise (1974) and The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990). Smothers is a likeable presence and he holds his own against pro's like Welles and Astin, the result is one of the best kept secrets of the 1970's. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/05/23 Full Review Read all reviews

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