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The voluble joke is that it's Thunderbolt and Lightfoot as a schmuck spree, from New York to Miami with a pair of neurotic ballsacks. The hypochondriac bookkeeper (Michael Emil) works for a gambling syndicate, his pal (Zack Norman) announces himself proudly as "a deal-maker," between them there's nearly a million in embezzled cash lining the tires of the limousine heading south. "You're a rich man, why don't you enjoy it?" The wannabe lounge lizard at the gas station (Richard Romanus) takes up chauffeur duties, also along for the ride are the beaming yoga siren (Patrice Townsend) and the emotionally fragile waitress (Irene Forrest). The punning title is underlined by a whole farm of quacking fowl, not to mention the main specimens chafing in the same bathtub, "wash up and feel good, you son of a bitch!" A buoyant blur of the splenetic and the vulnerable by Henry Jaglom, with improvised notes on friendship, success, escape, suitcases packed with vitamins, the flexible muse who turns up wielding a machine gun. The manic-depressive masculine and the randy-forlorn feminine, odd couples trying to figure things out one motel room at a time. "Hi. Do you only talk about sex or do you do it, too?" Philosophical squabbles around swimming pools, zigzagging pick-up routines in bars, Doris Day on a TV screen. The end of the line is a charter plane under cobalt Florida skies, where the filmmaker awaits as "The Bad Guy." "One great American song, I mean... just one!" The fulsome tribute to Cassavetes is fulsomely returned in Big Trouble. With Kelly Rogers, John Terranova, Eric Starr, Stasia Grabowski, and Ellen Talmadge.
--- Fernando F. Croce |