Review of Bananas!* (2009) by Jose Luis M — 29 Dec 2014

Woody Allen is his typically neurotic Jewish New Yorker who unwittingly becomes immersed in a revolution occurring in a Latin American banana republic. Although some of the humor falls flat in this early Allen comedy, his satire of revolutions and revolutionaries - most notably the opening scene where Howard Cosell, on ABC's Wide World of Sports, acts as an announcer of a Latin-American president's assassination as if it were a boxing match, and then interviews his dictator replacement - is hilarious and perpetually topical.

Sylvester Stallone, in one of his first credits, has a non-speaking cameo as a subway mugger.