Rags to Riches

The Hudsucker Proxy

The Coen brothers (Raising Arizona, Fargo) have become the most consistently original filmmakers in the land. In a salute/reworking of the fast-talking comedies of the '40s, we follow Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) and his amazing rise to the top. But he's only a puppet for the evil Sidney J. Mussburger (Paul Newman), who wants the company for himself. The Coens' design is the real star, and their first big-budget film will stimulate movie fans. The story weakens in the middle, but you will find very few films that move with this much imagination. As a Kate Hepburn hybrid, Jennifer Jason Leigh is wonderful in an almost unplayable role. The less you know about the film, the better it plays, so just think of it as How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying mixed with Brazil and every journalistic drama made before 1960. Cowritten by Sam Raimi. --Doug Thomas

The Jerk (26th Anniversary Edition)

Carl Reiner (Where's Poppa?) brought comic Steve Martin to the screen in this mostly funny 1979 movie about a relentlessly stupid but innocent man, whom we get to know from childhood (where it never occurred to him that he was white as he was raised by a family of black sharecroppers) to romance (where he doesn't quite know what to do with Bernadette Peters). Martin is game as the moron, and this is the kind of film with funny moments people still talk about. --Tom Keogh

That wild and crazy guy, Steve Martin, makes his film-starring debut in the wacky comedy hit The Jerk. Steve portrays Navin Johnson, adopted son of a poor black sharecropper family, whose crazy inventions lead him from rags to riches and right back to rags. Along the way, he's smitten with a lady motorcycle racer, survives a series of screwball attacks by a deranged killer, becomes a millionaire by inventing the "Opti-grab" handle for glasses - and shows why he's one of the hottest comic performers in the world.

Blank Check

All it takes is a little quick thinking and 11-year-old Preston Waters' life becomes a million-dollar adventure! When a crook runs over Preston's bike, he thinks it's his unlucky day. But when a quick settlement puts a blank check in his hand -- he fills it in for a million bucks! Now Preston is rich beyond his wildest dreams! He's got his own pad, his own limo driver, and he's spending the money like there's no tomorrow! The only problem with having a million dollars is keeping it -- especially when the FBI and the bad guys are after the loot! Join the spending spree of a lifetime as Preston tries to hang on to the cash -- and you cash in on the laughs!

Brewster's Millions

He's had some good performances in supporting parts, but Richard Pryor never starred in a film that captured his comic brilliance the way his concert films did--proving that magic isn't something you can bottle. This 1985 film is no exception, even though it was directed by Walter Hill three years after he turned Eddie Murphy into a movie star with 48 HRS. The seventh film reworking of a warhorse stage play, this movie stars Pryor and John Candy as a pair of minor-league baseball players whose best days are behind them. Then Pryor is informed that he's just inherited a fortune--$300 million. But it comes with a condition: he must spend $30 million in one month, with a number of rules about how much he can spend at one time and how many of any one thing he can buy. Both Pryor and Candy were at the top of their comedy game at this point in time but were utterly failed both by ham-handed direction and by a script that left them higher and drier than seems humanly possible, given the comic talents involved. --Marshall Fine

Run Ronnie Run!

Based on the incredibly popular character Ronnie Dobbs from the hit HBO series "Mr. Show" Run Ronnie Run tells the story of a drunken mullet-haired criminal who can't seem to keep himself from getting arrested. When spotted once again on a national reality show a Hollywood TV producer gets the brilliant idea to base an entire show on Ronnie himself. Soon Ronnie is a national TV star and the toast of Hollywood but how long can a guy from the backwoods of Tennessee survive in the big timeRunning Time: 87 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY UPC: 794043651328

Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, creators and stars of the HBO comedy sketch series Mr. Show, bravely stretch one of that program's premises and characters into a generally successful, feature-length film in Run Ronnie Run! Cross plays Ronnie Dobbs, a trailer-park nitwit whose pranks find him routinely chased by small-town police. When an L.A. television producer (Odenkirk) discovers Ronnie is a favorite and frequent felon on a reality TV show, he signs Dobbs to his own series (Ronnie Dobbs Gets Arrested!) and re-settles him in Beverly Hills. Unprepared for fame, money, and power, Ronnie tries reinventing his life with mixed results. Much of Run Ronnie Run! is funny, though Cross--always a strong performer--is typically better than the material. The film works best as a showcase for sight gags and one-note sketches; among the latter is a great piece involving a self-help guru and a cameo by Jeff Goldblum. --Tom Keogh

Mr. Deeds (Widescreen Special Edition)

Following the flop of Little Nicky, Adam Sandler returned to safe territory in Mr. Deeds... and made Nicky look inspired by comparison. A loose remake of Frank Capra's 1936 classic Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, this dumbed-down version finds Sandler in the Gary Cooper role, inheriting a vast fortune and a corporate empire, foiling a greedy executive (Peter Gallagher), and winning the heart of an undercover reporter (Winona Ryder) who's been mocking his small-town naiveté in print while falling for his goodhearted sincerity. It's fun enough to satisfy Sandler's loyal fans--and John Turturro's a hoot as Deeds's foot-fetishist butler--but the subtleties of Capra are lost on Sandler, director Steven Brill, and writer Tim Herlihy. While Gary Cooper portrayed a rube who was savvy about big-city cynicism, Sandler's an amiable goofball with a heart of gold and an empty skull. You can admire him, and parts of the movie (including Steve Buscemi's unbilled cameo), but you have to work harder to get there. --Jeff Shannon

Josie and the Pussycats (PG-13 Version)

"Oh my God, I'm a trend pimp!" cries rocker Josie McCoy (Rachel Leigh Cook) when she discovers that she and her best friends Melody (Tara Reid) and Val (Rosario Dawson)--collectively known as the Pussycats--have been recruited in a plot to brainwash America's youth into a frenzy of mindless consumerism. Unbeknownst to the Pussycats, subliminal messages in their chart-topping hit "Pretend to Be Nice" are forcing kids to follow the latest prefab trends as if their lives depended on it. Josie's going to be the Next Big Thing, and to her manager (Alan Cumming) and Megarecords mogul Fiona (Parker Posey), the other Pussycats are expendable baggage in their scheme to dictate the cool quotient of teenagers everywhere.

Shrewdly concocted by codirectors Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan, this wildly comedic update of the Archie comic book (and early-'70s cartoon show) is a deliriously entertaining assault on pop-cultural flotsam, with a disposable boy-band (aptly named "Du Jour") and cross-product marketing ploys that perpetuate blind conformity among gullible teens. Blatant product placements dominate virtually every colorful scene as Josie gamely embraces the cultural blight it claims to criticize, but this isn't Hollywood hypocrisy. Elfont and Kaplan willfully bite the hand that feeds them, and they're having loads of fun while advocating independent opinion. Cook and her pals are more honestly sexy than Britney Spears, and they make genuinely catchy music (although Cook's vocals were dubbed). It's pure fluff, but Josie and the Pussycats was conceived in such high spirits that it's hard to imagine how it could be improved. Even the obligatory end-credit outtakes are utterly irresistible. --Jeff Shannon

The Guru

The Day-Glo delights of India's Bollywood musicals collide with the crossed-love conventions of Hollywood romantic comedies in The Guru. Jimi Mistry, a young Indian named Ramu who wants to live the American dream and become famous, moves to New York and finds only menial work in restaurants. But when he mistakenly gets cast in a skin flick, he meets a sweet and thoughtful porn star (Heather Graham) whose philosophical mix of sex and spirituality come in handy when Ramu has to pretend to be a swami for an upper-crust birthday party. The birthday girl (Marisa Tomei) seizes upon Ramu's cribbed aphorisms and leads Ramu into a career as a sex guru. The Guru's uneven script squanders much of its comic potential, but the stars have charm to burn--and when the movie launches into its glorious musical numbers, it enters a realm of delirious glee. --Bret Fetzer

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

One never tires of watching Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, a distant relative of Jaqueline Susann's bestselling novel, Valley of the Dolls, and its filmic counterpart, Valley of the Dolls. Kelly McNamara (Dolly Read), Casey Anderson (Cynthia Myers), and Petronella Danforth (Marcia McBroome), star as the hot female trio who clumsily navigate Hollywood during the Swingin' Sixties to promote their band, The Carrie Nations. Written by Rogert Ebert, Ebert calls the film the "first rock-horror exploitation musical," because BVD, as it's called by fans, encompasses all that was sexy, funny, hip, schlocky, stylish, and horrific about America's most interesting cultural period. BVD can be viewed as a Sixties' artifact, packed with consummate party scenes (and a cameo appearance by Strawberry Alarm Clock), as the original skin flick, as a proto-cult classic, or as a benchmark in American cinema, since it is actually well- written, artfully shot, and finely edited. This special edition re-release includes a second disc comprised of five featurettes, whose topics include Meyers' biography, the Carrie Nations music as soundtrack, Casey and Roxanne's titillating lesbian love scene, and the political climate during the Sixties. Revisiting Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, especially after Russ Meyer's recent death, reminds viewers to treasure his visionary obsession with female beauty. --Trinie Dalton

When three female rock'n'rollers travel to Hollywood to claim an inheritance, they meet up with a kinky music promoter who turns them on to a whole new scene. At first, all seems very exciting and the naïve trio becomes submerged in his dangerous tinseltown underworld-before they discover his true motives.

The Beverly Hillbillies

Jim Varney, Cloris Leachman, Lily Tomlin and Dabney Coleman star in the riotous rags-to-riches story of America's favorite backwoods billionaires. It features hilarious cameos by Dolly Parton, Buddy Ebsen and Zsa Zsa Gabor. Instant oil baron Jed Clampett moves Granny and his kin from the Ozark hills to Beverly Hills. Though unsophisticated, the Clampetts are decent, hard-working, trusting people- in other words, perfect marks for the swindlers, social climbers and gold diggers who can't wait to welcome them! Even their Fawning bankers, Miss Hathaway and Mr. Drysdale, may not be able to keep the Clampett cash from disappearing into the Hills!