Overplotted

Gary Busey sits in front of a mirror, putting clown make-up on himself while rehearsing his act. He’s about to go into the dunk tank where his character will spend the night hurling insults at people while jumping and clanging around from behind his cage like an agitated chimp. It’s one of the few moments in Robert Kaylor’s “Carny” that feels really alive and that really seems to fall in love with the carnival life. Sure, this movie always has the nightlife ambience of freak shows, clowns, rides, and girly shows to fall back on but when it’s really trying to find something fascinating within this circus- a plot, human behavior, or anything really!- it usually comes off flimsier than it really should. Cause there is drama galore here.

Take Busey, who when not playing Bozo the Clown is a mild mannered dude named Frankie who has spent so much time in the flimflam business that he knows how to read anyone. Or The Band's Robbie Robertson playing Patch, Frankie’s partner, manager, and general shady character who knows all the scams going on around the carnival and spends his time greasing the right hands so that they can continue.

Add to this bunch Jodie Foster’s Donna, a local girl who turns Carny groupie when she falls in love with Frankie and leaves town with him. But she begins to cramp Patch’s style with her free-loading and upsetting the balance he has with Frankie- Frankie becomes so devoted he won’t even help Patch score with twins anymore.

So at its best the film becomes a journey for Donna to find her place and prove herself- which includes her trying to become a stripper or a booth operator, or whatever- one scene of which offers up the earliest indication of Foster using her femininity to attract other lesbians.


She’s enjoyable here as a girl who’s a little frightened but also determined, plucky, sexy, and confident enough to earn her place. Robertson is good as the flimflam man but its Busey, with his crooked smile and wild man antics, who gets the role he was born to play. He’s a lot of fun as the rambunctious clown but has shades of vulnerability as a man who secretly just wants the love of a good woman.

There’s good stuff here but surrounded by a tsunami of other subplots that are mentioned but then done away with just as fast. There’s a bunch of stuff regarding the exhibitionism of the freaks, stuff regarding a massage parlor owner not happy with the carnival, and the beginnings of a love triangle between Frankie, Patch, and Donna that doesn’t have much motivation past just throwing another dramatic log on this fire.


Maybe all this is meant to up the danger of what can happen during road life but Kaylor doesn’t have the patience or focus to make them pivotal. His subplots wind up feeling bland and left hanging there, and some of this really gets quite ugly, like the final scene regarding the massage parlor owner and Donna’s near-rape. This is disappointing cause the drama inside a carnival is pretty unique. What we’re left with is a cool foundation for a movie that never really feels totally coherent and that detracts from characters with a lot of bland subplots that never come together.