Runtime: 89 minutes
Directed by: Howard Franklin/Bill Murray
Starring: Murray, Geena Davis, Randy Quaid, Jason Robards, some famous faces who have small roles
From: Warner Bros.
Well, at least I can’t say anything bad about Geena Davis IRL…
This is a case where I can share a personal story about the film. In this case, would you believe that as an 8 year old boy with my family in the summer of ’89 we went to visit New York City (where my aunt lived at the time) and on a guided tour of the city, the vehicle passed by a set where they were filming this? We were not in the midst of any filming so no celebrities were seen and the set we passed was a bank, not the many “crappy New York City of old settings shown in the second and third acts. Despite that, it was just last night that I FINALLY actually saw the movie; that thought was in the back of my head forever yet for whatever reason the trigger wasn’t pulled until now.
Sadly, by now Randy Quaid has been bonkers for years and according to Geena Davis’s recently released memoir, Bill Murray engaged in harassing behavior with her more than once on set. As he was also co-director and a producer… a shame that he probably isn’t as lovable an oddball as he’s been portrayed but I will judge the movie not based on that unfortunate information or any later behavior.
Based on a book which was adapted just a few years earlier into a French-Canadian Jean-Paul Belmondo vehicle I had never heard of before until after viewing this (Hold-Up; it co-starred Kim Cattrall!), I was unsure of the movie at first as immediately we are thrusted into Murray dressed as a clown entering an NYC bank and commits a robbery that at first seems awkward and bizarre but eventually the scheme makes much more sense. All the people involved in that scheme try to flee New York… and that’s when the trouble starts. Many odd and surreal moments happen, none of which I dare spoil.
The film is stranger than anticipated; yet, the end product did win me over in the second and third acts. There was enough humor between the one-liners, the oddball scenarios, the obscure references, and Murray’s expected deadpan persona, in the framework of straightforward storytelling and an 89 minute long film. There are nice performances from Murray, Davis, Quaid and Jason Robards as the chief of police on the hunt to crack this case. No surprise that this eventually became a cult film after underperforming at the box office. For the 33 ½ years of backstory and anticipation to see a random movie I happened to find out about during production, it is fortunate then that Quick Change (as a movie) wasn’t a letdown. Learning more about Murray’s off the screen behavior and how there may be many other tales of terror… that IS a letdown.
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