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Proving that hope springs eternal in the hearts of idiots and madmen, Taking Care of Business features the Cubs in a World Series and Jim Belushi in one of those showcase roles in which a nominal comedian gets to demonstrate his alleged madcap skills. Occurring in that weird twilight zone of cinema where once-topical humour is briefly funny again in a retro-Gen-X way (Jim's exclamation upon entering a mansion, "I'm on freakin' 'Dynasty'!" would find a home in any neo-Tarantino screenplay), Taking Care of Business also features two "Star Trek: The Next Generation" stars (Gates McFadden and John de Lancie)--the one making a joke out of her breasts, the other nodding quietly in appreciation of them. The flick is, to summarize, interesting in a surreal sort of way.
Jimmy (Belushi) is a lovable screwball who wins World Series tickets while in the pen and conspires to break out to enjoy them. Freshly sprung, he picks up the day-planner of Spencer (Charles Grodin) by chance and proceeds to hijack Spencer's identity in a series of "amusing" misadventures. The Japanese are made the butt of a few jokes, a few women are leered at, and Spencer learns to loosen up while Jimmy learns responsibility. Because the film is a product of a very particular tradition of suck, Jimmy ends up in drag somehow, and Grodin dons a priest's garb.
The only thing more excruciating than watching all of Taking Care of Business in one sitting is to do so without the aid of narcotics. Written by the brain-trust behind Gone Fishin' (Jill Mazursky and Jeffrey Abrams), the picture is a series lame jokes and clunky plot machinations that would strike as cynical were they not so obviously desperate. I'm not sure what buttons were pushed in the green-lighting of this film, though I suspect the pitch probably had something to do with wanting to compete with Dana Carvey's similarly misguided star vehicle Opportunity Knocks (released concurrently in 1990), that Grodin on a road trip was still a hot ticket after 1988's marginally successful Midnight Run, and that after 1989's The Experts (1989), any film concept might seem like a good one.
Taking Care of Business is just awful--you can practically see the flop sweat beading on Belushi's expansive dome as he's forced, beyond his modest Tom Arnold-ian means, to carry a major studio vehicle. It has an idiot plot that besides being preposterous lacks the oomph (like its star, curiously) to justify a full-length treatment. Gaining a bit of pop art--almost Dadaist--credibility now, Taking Care of Business has become an illustration of that peculiar divide where the very intelligent and the very stupid like it equally--one from kitsch IQ, one from zero IQ.
Hollywood Pictures Home Video presents Taking Care of Business on DVD in a fullscreen 1.33:1 presentation that looks consistently awful from start to finish. Grainy, not colour-corrected, and dishwater dull, the transfer suggests a film twice its twelve years. Although I find such carelessness of restoration to be a shame unconditionally, I'm not able to work up too much of a lather about it in the case of Taking Care of Business. The Dolby Digital 5.1 remix starts out with the dialogue sounding as if recorded into a bucket and continues with sporadic periods where the centre channel is swallowed whole by the rest of the soundtrack; distorted bass and tinny reproduction rule the day. There are no extras on this disc.-Walter Chaw
© Film Freak Central; filmfreakcentral.net. This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in part, without the express consent of its author.
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DVD GRADES:
Image D
Sound D |
DVD VITALS:
Running Time
108 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
Standard 1.33:1
Languages
English DD 5.1
CC
Yes
Subtitles
None
DVD-9
Region One
Hollywood
the critic
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Published: May 1, 2002
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