i am a big fan of Woody Allen movies and his comedies, but i couldn't stand Bananas. Aside from a few excellent scenes (like when the the leader of the rebels is addressing the crowd from the balcony)i thought it was really sloppy. the whole thing seemed really cut and paste and amateur. does anyone else feel the same way?
shareI see where you're coming from, but I personally really enjoyed this movie. It is very amateur and cut and paste at times. The 3 second take where Allen is knocked out by the rebels stands out. However, the nothing-to-lose pure silliness is refreshing to see. I'm more accustomed to Allen's more recent movies so I enjoyed seeing his spin of the Naked Gun, Spaceballs-esque humor. The pan of the jury where one is drinking from a fish bowl was great, and my personal favorite is when the translator is randomly approached and then chased by two men with giant bug nets. Overall I thought it was a fun movie with great satire.
shareI'd agree that it's a pretty messy movie, but since I'm personally a big fan of that sort of "Throw Everything Against the Wall and See What Sticks", I personally loved it. Maybe it's an acquired taste, because while I ADORE the movie, my friends all thought it was only OK.
shareI think Allen has always used the technique (if you want to call it that) if the story in this case a 'sloppy' farsical theme then the filming follows suit. I heard him recently talking about this method with regards to his film 'Husbands and wives' he didnt really like the charecters so he took away the niceties of film making i.e. he cut and chopped the films where he liked to reflect the charecters and considering this film basis is slastick so is his editing....if you get what i mean.
(sorry about the spelling)
He just liked this low-budget feel, especially in his early work. Unless it was unitentional, and they really had no money. Either way, it is this kindof low-budget restraints that make this work, I think.
shareHusbands and Wives makes me so uncomfortable when i watch it.
shareJesse, I agree about Husbands and Wives; it made me REALLY uncomfortable (both b/c of its intentionally shaky camerawork and b/c of the way in which Woody's and Mia's real-life troubles seemed to come through so clearly). BUT I couldn't disagree more about Bananas. It's just a young comic neurotically but joyfully cramming in as many jokes per minute as he can, perhaps fearing that he'll never get another chance to put his best gags and ideas on film. Opening a can of ribs? Not the actual Ching itself? The Vatican was doing so well in Rome they decided to open another one in Denmark? "Ralph, how much for a copy of Orgasm? This man wants to buy a copy!" Come on-- that is pure gold. If you're really a Woody fan, maybe try watching this one a few more times? Just my opinion, I know, but I hate to see any Woody fan not getting the most out of this film.
shareYou've made some good points, and i see we agree on his other work. I've got the first Allen DVD box set on order (which contains Bananas) so when it comes in i'll try give it another shot, i might have just been expecting something different.
share"Husbands and Wives makes me so uncomfortable when i watch it."
Okay. Then don't watch it. Yeesh. I loved HUSBANDS AND WIVES -- when Judy Davis lashes out at that poor sap she's supposed to be on a date with..."Don't defend your sex!" she attacks the man who is nothing but an innocent bystander to all her personal drama. God, I love it. As "tossed together" as this film might feel to some, it just goes to show IMHO that great performances and good material do not necessarily need contrived cinematic presentation to be effective. The direct, almost documentary style that Allen often uses creates a kind of wonderful irony. Kubrick did this too.
I'm not a fan of every Woody Allen movie (that CURSE OF THE JADE SCORPION made me wanna heave, but I watched it all the way through and felt something between pity and anger over it). Hey, credit Allen for being the genius he is. And if you don't like one (or two) of his movies, well, chances are he's turned out more better movies using the "less-is-more" approach than many directors that overwork their material.
Case in point: Steven Spielberg's WAR OF THE WORLDS proves to me that a director who is lauded for his "craftmanship" can still turn out crap even with all the money in the world and a tremendous devotion to "filmmaking".
I rented this movie years ago on video and laughed myself silly. To me, the scene "thrown on the wall that stuck.." when Fielding Mellish is commanded to get food for the army. He enters a very nondescript local diner and calmly places an order for five thousand coffees, five thousand seven ups and five thousand grilled cheese sandwitches. The following sequence where the litte diner is overflowing with brown paper bags with order tickets on them......well, what can I say. To me it remains one of the funniest sequences on film.
shareI know not everyone will agree but this is how I feel about Bananas. Despite the fact that it was sloppy at times and didn't really have a coherent narrative, I thought Woody Allen was like a guy at the slot machine who just couldn't lose. That is he just kept hitting comic gold again and again the way most comics will never be able to in a career.
shareIt's the most dated of all Allen movies for me. Some of the jokes require a period feeling. Ir was pretty successful at the box office which proves its professional qualities.
Like all the early works of Woody it has a lot of hits and also some misses. Later comedies (like e.g. BULLETS OVER BROADWAY) have few hits and no misses.
See, when I watched this movie, I got the intense feeling that at some point, Woody Allen had pitched the idea to the producers, and the conversation went like this:
Woody: "I swear to you all, I am reall funny. I promise you that I am funny!"
Producers (whispering to eachother):"If we throw money at him, maybe he'll go away..."
The movie just... irritated me. I never liked seeing his films, and this one illustrates why perfectly. Woody Allen's characters remind me of the character on South Park referred to as "Kyle #1". (Kyle's stereotypical jewish cousin from NYC.) I HATED this movie. It actually gave me a headache. The only memorable scene was the one where the new president declared the new national language to be Swedish.
Producers (whispering to eachother):"If we throw money at him, maybe he'll go away..."Producers: "We can't laugh about him but he will double every dollar we throw at him. Let's ask him about a sequel before someone else does"
It is the most dated and it's also probably the most politically incorrect. For example:
"What's the primary export of San Marcos?"
-- "Dysentery".
See, I loved this one, but I hated Sleeper... I don't know why, they're basically the same type of humor... A really goofy Woody Allen flick based on an absurd plot. This one reminded me of an old Marx Brothers flick.
shareI agree that Bananas is far superior to Sleeper; I love the former but only like the latter. I also agree that Bananas is reminiscent of the Marx Brothers, who were obviously a big influence on Woody (as he seems to proclaim with his epiphany scene in Hannah and Her Sisters). I think that Sleeper is reminiscent of the Marx Brothers, too, but one of the less successful Marx Brothers movies like Horsefeathers. In my opinion, Woody got into trouble in his early films whenever he tried to move beyond his incredibly funny (but idiosyncratic) observational humor and develop an action/adventure plot. Bananas starts to go downhill once the San Marcos revolution moves into full swing (after the lunch counter holdup); Love and Death starts to go downhill once the assassination plot starts to develop; Take the Money and Run starts to go downhill about 1/3 of the way into the movie, too.
But many of the Marx Brothers films work in the same way. They're usually funnier in the beginning and they start to bog down when the crazy plots take over (as with the war in Duck Soup or the ocean liner action and subsequent trial in Night at the Opera).
In Woody's "peak" movies, such as Manhattan, Annie Hall, and Hannah and her Sisters, plot development was never detrimental to the film because there were real characters and stories, as opposed to the caricatured nebbishes from his earlier movies.
So you're saying, "Something's missing"?
And that may be true in a sense but I love this movie so, so very much, regardless of its "scotch-taped" quality and occasional "hit and miss humor" and here's why...
Remember, this was only around Woody's eigth shoestring budget film...made in '71, when he was still spreading his wings as to the boundaries of what would translate comically on film. Of course, 35 years later it's not going to have the lustre it did upon its release, however, it's charm persists due especially to it's blatant "spaghetti against the wall" fearlessness and, subsequently the majority of jokes that do work as a result! Honestly, even those that don't still do "if you squint." Regarding production value, I find its grainy, chopped together quality a bonus as one would the scratches on a classic record album. A glimpse into the past as to when the filmmaker may not have been perfect, but his humor was still able to shine through brilliantly regardless.
Of course, then there's Marvin Hamlisch's score which is incredibly underrated and undeniably memorable - at least to me. (weird memory) I remember finding a squeak toy that made the same "squeak" as the one in the song in the rebel encampment training scene -- a plastic gun with a bulldog's face in place of the barrell, (I know, odd) but a toy you may have seen at some point in your life. Correct me if I'm wrong, but these bulldog-head guns, although disturbing, are pitch perfect to the song! Regardless, I'm sure it was probably a kazoo in the actual recording but it was instant aural recall upon squeezing the trigger.
Back to the point, this, apart from a very few select other comedies renew my faith in humor whenever I watch them and I hope you that find fault in this film are also able to realize that its good qualities far outweigh its "deficiencies."
"So long, suckers."
The only problem I had with this film was he hadn’t gotten around to using the black on white titles yet.
There's something comforting about those titles. lol
Any other flaws are easily over look through the film just being so funny.
"Enough with the badges! When do we get the freakin' guns!?"
How could you not love the Orgasmatron? To this day whenever I love something I call it orgasmatronic.
shareBananas is not Woody's best movie, but I LOVE the scene where Fielding is trying to buy the dirty magazines and he's trying to be all stealthy about it so no one notices. Then the guy at the counter yells "HEY, HOW MUCH FOR THIS COPY OF ORGASM??" priceless!
sharehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY2s-OvXT3g this proves that he wanted it to be sloppy
shareLMAO!!!!!
I love this movie...and that scene is exhibit A as to why.
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I didn't really hate "Bananas". Truth to tell, I nearly laughed myself silly over it when I first saw it (1984 on Showtime).Those who were really laying into this movie seemed to be forgetting "Sleeper" and "Take the Money and Run". Those two movies probably woudn't net any critical acclaim either, but they were VERY entertaining.
shareWoody Allen has stated that he likes his films messy and his writing to be perfection. Give him a break, it was his second film.
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