Review of Big Night (1996) by Edith N — 25 Aug 2006

I thought about turning this movie off about half an hour in. However, for Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub, I figured, hey, I can keep watching.

And how marvelous it turned out to be! The plot is kind of [i]Waiting for Godot[/i]-y, only with Louis Prima never showing up. And unlike the Beckett, it's fairly accessible. For one, you do have Tony Shalhoub and Stanley Tucci (whose name I really like saying), not to mention Isabella Rossellini and Minnie Driver and various others. Great cast. Great actors. Simple set and costumes, but they don't need to be showy.

Primo, Tony Shalhoub's character, would absolutely hate me, given my eating habits and food tastes. However, for someone less . . . fussy than I, I think a great analogy can be made between this movie and the food in it. It's unfamiliar and unexpected, but if you try it, you'll love it.

Unfortunately, we don't want to try the unfamiliar and unexpected. (For me, it's a matter of ingredients, though I could take the metaphor in that direction--bad acting is an ingredient in a film I wouldn't like, for example.) I'd never heard of this film until Netflix and Amazon caught my fondness for Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub and told me I needed to see it. Thanks to them; I'm delighted with this movie.

In the end, it doesn't matter that Louis Prima never shows. The people who did (including the large and inexplicable black woman) had a great time and a truly great meal.