Review of Opportunity Knocks (1990) by Mickey M — 07 Mar 2013

"Eddie Farrell" (Dana Carvey) is a small-time, but effective con artist. He and his friend and parner, "Lou" (Todd Graff) get in a little trouble with a loan shark (James Tolkan), and have to go on the lam.

Eventually, the two break into a nice house in a nice neighborhood where they start to live in. The next morning, the housesitter (voiced by Mark Ross) calls and leaves a message on the machine telling the home's owner that he will not be able to housesit.

Later on, "Farrell" is coming downstairs after taking a shower, wearing a towel, when "Mona" (Doris Belack), the mother of the man who owns the house, walks in and is startled by him. Her husband, "Milt" (Robert Laggia), who was waiting in the car, runs in.

The parents automatically assume that "Eddie" is "Jonathan", and he has to think on his feet and con them into believeing it. Things get complicated however when he meets their beautiful daughter, "Annie" (Julia Campbell), a successful doctor at the local clinic. She then becomes a central figure in his con, and tries to get her to fall in love with him.

However, he is becoming attracted to "Annie," and he becomes torn between cleaning this family out and going straight while trying to avoid "Lou" and his thugs.

Even though this is a pretty good movie, this is not a great comedy. I probably laughed four times during the entire movie. Many jokes, in my opinion, flopped most of the time. Carvey, who is usually really wacky, held back if you ask me. And, sadly, brought only one of his SNL characters to one of the few funny scenes.

There are good performances in this film. Carvey is good as "Eddie" and is pretty likable. James Tolken, who is probably best known as "Strikland" in the "Back to the Future" movies, is excellent as the lead bad guy. Campbell is good as "Annie" and works well with Carvey.

For Carvey's first starring role, this is not the one for him. The humor was rarely over-the-top, which he is best at -- especially if he has the right partner to work off of. Like I said earlier, he is good as "Eddie" but is held back by the script's humor.

The music reminded me of TV sitcoms which used popular tunes at the time, but used studio musicians and singers to perform the tracks. It was real obvious that Gloria Estafan was not singing a classic Miami Sound Machine tune in a party scene where "Eddie" used some silly comedy to make "Annie" laugh in an attempt to get her to fall for him.

If anything, the only reason to see this is the story and the performances from the main cast. But, if you are expecting an outright comedy, you will be quite disappointed. I can only recommend this as something to watch on a rainy day when you are flipping the channels and see it on HBO or another movie channel.