3 out of 5

Directed by: David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker

Describing Ruthless People’s plot, it’s quite clear that it’s a dark comedy: a man plans to kill his wife to inherit her cash and shack up with his mistress, only to have his plans foiled by some kidnappers who take his wife, ransoming her for money with the threat of death. But of course, since that threat is what the man wanted, things go not quite the way the kidnappers expected…

Visually, Ruthless People is a broad, screwball comedy. Beyond animated titles, with a theme sung by Mick Jagger, we get big 80s outfits and decor, with Danny Devito playing the man with all sorts of mustache-twirling aplomb, and Bette Midler his wife, doing the same scenery-chewing as a stereotypical housewife shrew. Even though this is the 80s, the look and sound of the movie is as big and bold as it can be, gleefully slinging around winning one-liners to cap off any given scene.

And then rumbling beneath the surface, there’s a slightly different type of comedy asserting itself, something that’s tethering the dark to the broad stuff: the direction (and involvement) of smart / stupid slapstick kings, David Zucker, Phil Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker – ZAZ. You can see it in some of the scene juxtapositions, and the general way some of the most ridiculous characters are played off of relatively straight ones, but as the trio get a better hold of the tone as the movie kicks into higher gears, we see some classic visual puns and the slightest touches of their classic movies’ magical realism.

But: the core story is also good; but: the broad appeal of the movie is also omnipresent throughout. During almost every scene of Ruthless People, I would think to myself how smart and funny the movie is, while not necessarily being engaged in the narrative, or laughing out loud. Which isn’t to say it’s not enjoyable and didn’t make me consistently smile – just that the effect of the movie feels slightly removed from its execution.

After Ruthless People, ZAZ would make one more film all together – The Naked Gun – before working in pairs, or on their own. Working on a movie that wasn’t their own script, and not in the direct style of their previous farces, was known to be difficult; I do feel like that translates to the screen as suggested above – a lot of this doesn’t have a firm directorial style, but rather works in broad strokes, letting actors fill in much of the emotion / energy in broadly shot scenes. There was a clear vision for the opening, for sure, and it delivers a nice zinger – starting with Devito describing killing his wife – but up until several plot pieces are in place and the team can riff on that, we’re just kind of collecting vignettes, with the timing of some of the jokes off, as, I imagine, this kind of “scripted” humor just wasn’t exactly the trio’s wheelhouse at the time.

It’s definitely to the actors’ credits – with further highlights going to Judge Reinhold as a kidnapper, and Bill Paxton as a very dumb dude – that the unevenness of these early scenes still essentially “work,” and to ZAZ and their editors (Gib Jaffe, Arthur Schmidt) for finding the film and keeping it on a tight 90-minute runtime. That is: despite its flaws, it’s still very watchable. And when it does begin to click, there really is some magic that makes me wish we’d seen more ZAZ projects of this type.