Roxanne (1987)

One of my favourite Steve Martin comedies, before he followed the example of Woody Allen and stopped with the comedy and hankered after more serious parts in dull films by Ron Howard and David Mamet. This is definitely how I like him best, in genuinely funny situations that make you laugh. He wrote his own screenplay too, cleverly if loosely taking the old classic story of the big-nosed romantic Cyrano De Bergerac and transplanting it to a modern American small town romantic comedy. As Charlie, the local fire-chief, Martin's character, besides being a loquacious wordsmith, is also, it would appear, a Cirque-class acrobat and martial arts expert which he amply demonstrates a stage movie progresses. The arrival in town of intellectual hottie Darryl Hannah finds the two striking up a blossoming if offbeat friendship before the entrance of lunk-hunk Chris, nicely played by Rick Rossovich, to his fire-crew finds Charlie pressed into action as Chris's prompter in trying to win over Hannah's heart in his stead.Needless the paths of true love don't run smoothly but do eventually find their rightful destinations for all the main parties but not before many highly comedic scenes get in the way. The extended scenes where Martin takes out two insulting tennis players at the start, his top 20 nose-jokes and especially the by-proxy seduction of Hannah at her Juliet window are all hilarious, but there's plenty of devilry in the detail too especially the short scenes with the "Golden Girls" of the town. Just maybe, Martin could have downplayed the slapstick comedy element of his Keystone Fire Brigade, which can't touch the Golden Silents of Keaton and Lloyd for amusement, but their coming together to finally demonstrate competence in actually putting out a fire, to the strains of "The Blue Danube", at least concluded another minor plot story arc too. Oh, and I hated the sleep-inducing saxophone-dominated soundtrack too, but hey, this was the 80's, I guess.Martin is terrific in the "Cyrano" part and Darryl Hannah is surprisingly good in being asked to do more than just shake her curls. Mild distraction as they were, it was still nice to see Michael J Pollard as one of the fire crew too.Like I said, I'm a big fan of Martin's early comedies and this is one of his best. If I'm lying, may my nose grow in length!

Steve Martin does Cyrano as a hopeless romantic, intellectual and expert fighter in this breezy and (somewhat) mature romantic comedy. Steve Martin is the long nosed fire chief in a scenic mountain town who falls for the lovely Darryl Hannah, only to have her fall for a good looking but lowbrow fireman. Darryl Hannah is the love interest, and Rick Rossovich is the big dummy that she's initially infatuated with. There's a good supporting cast with Fred Willard and Shelley Duval. Nothing in Roxanne will have you doubled over with laughter, but it's smart and amusing throughout, and it never finds the need to aim low with its comedy. It's easy to watch, and there's some nice Canadian scenery. The movie was shot in British Columbia, and the town they create looks like someplace everybody would want to live. You get good results when you have the right people working good source material. Steve Martin is perfect in this movie even though his comedy is not quite as broad here as a lot of people are used to. It's a refreshing movie to watch today. Roxanne probably is a "minor" film, but it's much better than a lot of the reviews its received.

It's a modern interpretation of "Cyrano De Bergerac". C.D. Bales (Steve Martin) is the well-liked fire chief of an incompetent group of guys. Astronomer Roxanne (Daryl Hannah) gets locked out with no clothes on and he befriends her. She's there for the summer. Hot hunky new firefighter Chris McConnell is completely head over heels but he is too stressed out to talk to her. Just when C.D. thinks that she's falling for him, she tells him that she likes the gorgeous Chris.This is such a good rom-com. It hits all the right notes. Steve Martin is hilarious. The chemistry is very delicate here in that none of the characters can come off as the villain. It's important that Roxanne is able to believably fall for Chris and later for C.D. without coming off badly. It's impressive that everything turns out so well. There is good passion. There is sacrifice. The original story hits on the universal notes and Steve Martin adds his humor. His character is not just fun and games. He's actually broken. That makes this such a good rom-com.

Edmond Rostand's 1897 verse play "Cyrano de Bergerac" is often described as a tragi-comedy because, although it contains many comic elements, it ends tragically. Steve Martin, however, clearly thought that the basic story would work equally well as a pure comedy, and relocated it to a contemporary setting in small-town America. Martin himself plays the Cyrano figure, Charlie "CD" Bales, the local fire chief. Like Rostand's character, he is witty, acrobatic, charming and intelligent but has a very large nose. Rostand's Roxane becomes a pretty young female astronomer named Roxanne (the etymologically incorrect but more normal spelling in English). The third member of the triangle, Christian, becomes Chris, a handsome but dim-witted and inarticulate member of Charlie's team. The love-triangle plot is essentially the same as Rostand's. Charlie is in love with Roxanne, but feels unable to pursue her because he is very self-conscious about his nose. Roxanne falls for Chris, not only because of his looks but also because she believes him to be romantic and intelligent, not realising that the love letters which he used to win her heart were actually written for him by Charlie.The term "romantic comedy" is often used to mean any boy-meets-girl love story with a happy ending, regardless of whether or not it is particularly humorous. "Roxanne" meets the standard Hollywood rom-com formula; it is a boy-meets-girl love story which ends happily after the obstacles to their love (Charlie's self-consciousness about his looks, Roxanne's infatuation with Chris) have been overcome. This, however, is a romantic comedy where the comedy is at least as important as the romance, and it is often brilliantly funny. The two scenes which stood out for me were the "Twenty Nose Insults" speech, where Charlie uses his wit and skill with words to put down a lout who has insulted him in a bar, and the scene where the hopelessly clumsy and oafish Chris tries to woo Roxanne using Charlie's words, relayed to him via a radio link. At his worst Steve Martin can be a rather annoying actor, but at his best he is a comic genius with a verbal dexterity reminiscent of the great Robin Williams, and he is certainly at his best here. Daryl Hannah still appears to be working in the cinema and television, but she is not the big name she once was, and few of her films from this century, apart from the two "Kill Bill" episodes, have attracted much attention. In her twenties and thirties, however, she was regarded as a rising star, even though with her lanky, boyish figure and long face she did not really have the classical looks of a Hollywood goddess. (I don't think having a boy's name really helped her either; I often wondered why she didn't simply reverse the order of her names to become the more obviously feminine Hannah Daryl). As with Martin the standard of her acting was variable, but here, as she had done in "Splash" three years earlier, she makes a sweet, charming and unaffected romantic comedy heroine, playing a woman who is not only attractive but also educated and intelligent without resorting to that old "bespectacled bluestocking" cliché. Mention should also be made of Rick Rossovich who gives a good comic performance as Chris. In the eighties he was seen as another promising newcomer but quickly dropped off the radar; the last role I saw him in was a bit part in that dire superhero spoof "Black Scorpion II", made less than a decade after this film. Shelley Duvall is also good as Roxanne's friend Dixie. Fred Schepisi is clearly a versatile director who can work in various film genres. I originally associated him with true-life crime dramas like "The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith" and "A Cry in the Dark", both set in his native Australia, but he has also turned his hand to comedy. "IQ" (another American rom-com) and "Fierce Creatures" (a British sort-of- sequel to "A Fish Called Wanda") are other examples, but "Roxanne" is probably his best. It is shot against some striking scenery- the town is supposed to be somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, although the film was actually shot across the Canadian border in British Columbia- and features a masterly comic performance from Martin with good contributions from the rest of the cast. This is one of the funniest, and best, romantic comedies of the eighties. 8/10