Johnny Dangerously

A spoof of ‘30s gangster movies, Johnny Dangerously follows Michael Keaton’s title character as he climbs through the ranks to become a powerful mob boss. Filmmaker Amy Heckerling delivers a briskly-paced yet mostly inert comedy that boasts little in the way of actual laughs, as scripters Norman Steinberg, Bernie Kukoff, Harry Colomby, and Jeff Harris suffuse the proceedings with a whole host of jokes and gags that fall absolutely flat. (There is, for example, an entire subplot revolving around a mobster who speaks with a “funny” accent.) Keaton’s go-for-broke performance admittedly does help allay one’s total boredom, and it’s clear, too, that the movie benefits from the efforts of an eclectic supporting cast that includes Peter Boyle, Danny DeVito, and Griffin Dunne. But there’s simply never a point at which one is drawn into the purposefully familiar storyline, with the arms-length atmosphere perpetuated by an almost total absence of wholeheartedly compelling attributes and elements (ie the whole thing just feels so stale). And although Heckerling has admittedly peppered the picture with a very small handful of amusing moments, Johnny Dangerously, for the most part, comes off as a misguided, unfunny piece of work that squanders solid work from a talented cast.

** out of ****