Pun Salad

A unique entry in the small "screwball fantasy" genre, this movie was very much under the radar when released in 1999. (As near as I can tell from IMDB, it grossed slightly over 65 thousand dollars in three recorded box-office weekends. That's not just under the radar, that's under all other forms of electromagnetic radiation too.)

But James Lileks wrote about it, liked it, and that was good enough for me. (You'll want to check out Lileks' take; he has movie clips, lots of additional insight, and also uses the term fin de siecle properly, something beyond the skills of Pun Salad.)

The hero, "Johnny Twennies", lives in late-90s New York. But he dresses, talks, and acts as if he were the star of a 1920s talkie, full of fast-talking wisecracks and patter. And he's in a mess of trouble: his girl is getting a little fed up with his Hays-code morality; the paper he works for is in danger of going under; and he's on the track of a mysterious mobster whose thugs are threatening him.

It's rated R; while the strongest invective Johnny will utter is an exasperated "Applesauce!", most of the other characters aren't shy about using the less restrained lingo of modern New York.

There are a number of recognizable people along for the gag: the late Frank Gorshin, the late Bobby Short. Anne Jackson plays Johnnie's mom.

Both Mrs. Salad and I had a great deal of fun watching. Movies like this are a fine argument for doing the DVDs-by-mail thing with Netflix or Blockbuster; it's almost certainly never going to show on TV, and if it ever was on the shelves of your local video rental shop, it's long been displaced by the dozen copies of Lethal Weapon 4.