After young playwright, David Shayne obtains funding for his play from gangster Nick Valenti, Nick's girlfriend Olive miraculously lands the role of a psychiatrist—but not only is she a bimbo who could never pass for a psychiatrist—she's a dreadful actress. David puts up with the leading man who is a compulsive eater, the grand dame who wants her part jazzed up, and Olive's interfering hitman/bodyguard—but, eventually he must decide whether art or life is more important.
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In the late 20's NYC, idealistic playwright David Shayne (John Cusack) is trying to get his play on Broadway. He gets finance from ruthless gangster Nick Valenti but he has to cast Nick's talentless loud-mouthed girlfriend Olive Neal (Jennifer Tilly). He is horrified that he's whoring himself out. Her surprisingly-insightful escort Cheech (Chazz Palminteri), not Mr. Cheech, starts making great suggestions. David falls for aging leading star Helen Sinclair (Dianne Wiest) and cheats on his girlfriend Ellen (Mary-Louise Parker). Olive has an affair with leading man Warner Purcell (Jim Broadbent).It's an irreverent Woody Allen movie taking a sharp jab at the backstage world with a healthy dose of mob violence. There are some hilarious moments but I do want more. I keep thinking that the movie is on the verge of great madcap fun. This is a pretty good Woody movie just below some of his greats.
Woody Allen successfully combines gangsters and Broadway theater in this riveting comedy that earned seven Academy Award nominations. John Cusack stars in the leading role, doing his best Woody Allen impression of course, as David Shayne, a playwright who has to cast a mobster's girlfriend in one of the starring roles. She is given a body guard named Cheech, played by Chazz Polminteri, who has to sit back and keep an eye on her during rehearsals. As the show starts to come together Cheech has some ideas of his own about the show, and they end up making it a better play than the one David originally wrote. This comedic turn of events fuels the rest of this lively and genuinely funny film.Bullets Over Broadway is simply more of Woody Allen doing what Woody Allen does best. It's quick, witty, whimsical, and intelligently hilarious. It's a great story full of wildly eccentric characters played by an ensemble of great actors. It possesses that engaging Woody Allen cadence full of all the Woody Allen quirkiness that makes us love watching his films. Bullets Over Broadway has a lot of charm and delivers a lot of laughs.There's nothing revolutionary here, but Bullets Over Broadway shows us a great time with all its witticism and frivolous ingenuity. Woody Allen is a pure genius, and he always seems to know exactly what he is doing when he makes a film. His specialty is quirky comedy, so it's no surprise that Bullets Over Broadway is just a great film. The story is simple yet effectively hysterical, and the characters are brilliantly constructed and wonderfully written, each displaying their own quirky uniqueness that becomes part of clever quirky whole. This is a great film, and one that continues to show what a brilliant man Woody Allen is.
Woody at his best. A movie about artists - not only about writers ( but mostly about them ), but about any artist, who is trapped between his talent and the expectations that other people have about him. A movie about what it takes to make something perfect. I strongly consider John Cusack's ( David ) character and Chazz Palminteri's ( Cheech ) character as different sides of the same person - the bohemian, who sees in art just an excuse for meeting famous people and living like them and the real artist, for whom art and creating are only reasons to live. And the moral? I guess no one can say it better than David's girlfriend - one could not love an artist if he hasn't got enough dignity to be a man in the first place.
This was one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. The only other Woody Allen movie I've seen is "Annie Hall", and I liked this so much more! The reason I wanted to see this movie was because Jennifer Tilly stars in it; furthermore, she was nominated for an Oscar because of her performance in it. In the middle of this crime/comedy, I realized why. I predicted that the mobster would shoot her because she wasn't as good as the understudy in the play that she was forced to be casted in because her boyfriend, the mobster (Joe Viterelli) was funding the production for an aspiring and talented writer who had recently made flops because as he claims "I wasn't able to direct them." This play he was able to direct. It's well-known that actors and actresses who play characters who die in film are more likely to be nominated or to win an Oscar. While Jennifer Tilly played the stupid moll, mobster's girlfriend well, her death should have been the addition that made her win. Unfortunately, Diane Wiest won in a very overacted performance. This movie is hysterical, and makes you realize that art can come from the most unexpected of places10/10
