It’s Friday and you are looking for some fun with your mate for under $10.00. Your Uncle John knows what to do. Rent “Club Paradise,” make some Pina Coladas (“the elixer of love”) and if you need condoms you’ll still be under budget. For another $10.00 buy a pizza….And have fun!
By John E. Carey
Peace and Freedom
March 9, 2007
Fireman Jack Moniker (Robin Williams) gets injured while risking his life to save an angry German Shepard. So he collects his disability insurance and retires to the Caribbean.
Williams hooks up with Ernest Reed (Jimmy Cliff), the owner of a run-down resort. The evil ones on this island want Ernest’s beach front property and they’ll buy it or steal it and kill the current owners.
They don’t care which.
The evil ones bribe the very British Governor Anthony Cloyden Hayes played by Peter O’Toole who seems half in the bag throughout the film.
“I hate beauty,” O’Toole grouses about this “Garden of Eden” Island. “Do you know how boring it gets looking at beauty all the time?”
This is the same Peter O’Toole nominated this year for an Oscar for “Venus” and the same Peter O’Toole that played T.E. Lawrence in “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962). He also brought to life King Arthur in “Camelot” (1982).
Peter O’Toole’s performance as Alan Swann in “My Favorite Year” (1982) is ranked #56 on Premiere Magazine’s 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.
He’s terrific in every film he ever made!
Williams gets to enforce the rule prohibiting nude sunbathing. He dives with a towel on a topless beauty.
And this in a Peter O’Toole movie!
Twiggy accuses Robin of being a smuggler but he says she heard wrong: he is a SNUGGLER!
Williams hits a home run with a beautifully illustrated travel brochure. After that, the vacationers (and the movie) takes off.
There is a touch of “Six Days, Seven Nights” (Harrison Ford and Anne Heche, 1986) and the beach scene of “10” (Bo Derek, Dudley Moore, 1979). The three films together would give you a wonderful winter get-away right in your den, especially if you make a blender full of Pina Coladas.
Just as Bo Derek runs across the beach sexily and into Dedley Moore’s arms in “10,” in “Club Paradise” it is Rick Moranis running into Eugene Levy’s.
Robin gets the best lines but there are plenty of good ones in this well written comedy for everyone.
Williams: “Do you think I LIKE looking like a Hawaiian pimp?”
Williams again: “Last time I smoked that they found me on top of the Sears Tower trying to build a nest.”
Twiggy tells Robin, “No man is an Island” and he fires back with, “What’s that? No man is a woman either.”
Rick Moranis and Eugene Levy provide the dweebs for this beach party.
One of the great scenes occurs in the shower after an overzealous repairman jacks the water pressure all the way up. Goofy Andrea Martin gets hosed. She also delights in the limbo dancing scene, while hang-gliding, drunk and singing in the bar and gambling. She is the bored suburban house wife hell bent on having fun.
Her husband flips out when she says, “I want to be naked for the rest of my life!”
Joe Flarity plays the pilot: he gets lost and has no idea how to get to the island. Looking at the air chart he estimates there are about 2 inches to go!
Woman love interest to Peter O’Toole: “No little mouths to feed?”
O’Toole: “No. One big one but my wife left me.”
Robin Williams [taking a breath in what he thinks is an oxygen mask , says in a high squeeky voice] “Now you stay here and honk if there’s any troub…” [realizes his voice is higher] “Wait a minute!”[takes another breath in the mask, then annoyed]“This thing’s helium. Goddamnit, I brought the wrong tank!”
Levy and Moranis pick up some babes and offer them a night of cannabis and copulation. “The four of us will get totally demented.”
It takes a while but they finally score a trash bag full of weed. Levy figures it will take 20 years to smoke and they’ll get 20 years in the slammer.
The band is called “Ernest Reed and the Flamboyants” and they play zany Caribbean favorites like the opening number: “I am An Ape man.” Not to be missed.
The leadership lessons come about when trying to navigate through the jungle naked and by fighting a tropical snake. You’ll laugh heartily.
When the rebels get restless, Williams says, “Club Paradise: Fun with Guns and Rum in the Sun!”
Buy, rent TVo or steal “Club Paradise.” It’s a hoot.
