Smile Orange (1976)

[lester1/2jr]

          This was a kind of ridiculous movie made by the guy who did "The Harder they Come".  The first thing you notice is that at least half the time  it's hard to understand the jamaican patios however you spell it.    The other half of the time  it's IMPOSSIBLE to understand!    But like a vacation in the bahamas, it doesn't really matter.  The material here is mainly based around the various images and scenerios often seen in the tourist industry there: a spendthrift, booze guzzling fat guy.   A guy so obsessed with "value" that he demands everything on the menu and gets sick.    waiters training other waiters in how to score with guests and of course, native bahamanians who cannot swim despite growing up on a small island. 


                       Some of the comedy is pretty corny.  At one point, the uptight manager of the hotel slips on a banana peel. Another time two people having a romantic interlude in some bushes discover they are rubbing against a poison ivy bush.  Not exactly Dennis Miller's HBO special.  But there is some pretty funny stuff and the focus on the absurdity and reality of the tourist trade provide the director with plenty of material.  and of course there is a reggae soundtrack.

      I find comedy is one the hardest genres to find quality in.  Despite a myriad of offereings, I generally watch seinfeld and the Simpsons because i just can't deal with what cartoonist bill griffith (zippy the pinhead) once called the "brightly lit couch" sit com.  Where there is a bunch of people saying stuff to each other in a living room.  The type of thing we thuoght "Married with Children" would put an end to.

       So it's always good to see a relatively not lame comedy and I wouldn't mind seeing this again.

   

[RCMerchant]

By the title I thought it might be another LSD freak-out movie ala BLUE SUNSHINE! 

[lester1/2jr]

same year

[montanza]

no offence Lester

to those who are not black but at the end of the day a person who is not black will not understand this film right away its the same as a black person trying to understand a hindi film. this film really pokes fun at white people in general and that is probably why you don't like the film as this is the way people acted in 1976

[lester1/2jr]

I did like it, signified by the thumbs up.