476. Roxanne (1987)

Starring: Steve Martin, Daryl Hannah, Rick Rossovich

Director: Fred Schepisi

Running Time: 106 mins

Roxanne is an American film about a small-town, but big-nosed, fireman who falls in love with a local woman. However, that woman has fallen for another man with his personality, but better looks, causing complications to arise between the two.

This film was just a little disappointing. It may have had a charming and funny main character, played brilliantly by Steve Martin, however the story was very weak and cheesy, and the comedy wasn’t necessarily good enough to make up for that.

I’ll start with the obvious. Steve Martin’s fantastic performance is the life and soul of this whole film. The main focus may be on Roxanne, but following and looking into his character is a whole lot more interesting and entertaining than the romance.

What’s brilliant about him is that he’s just so easy to support. Steve Martin does an excellent job of making him witty and fun, as well as being undoubtedly very charming, but it’s the immediate sympathy you feel for him once you see that he’s bullied for his large nose that forces you into adoring his character and then supporting him all the way.

However, apart from that fantastic part of the film, the rest was nowhere near as good quality. Firstly, the cheese. This film is so full of fromage that it does become unbelievably irritating to watch. With annoying Romeo & Juliet references at every minute, and horribly romantic dialogue, there’s not much that you can actually enjoy about the story.

And that’s another issue that arises in this film. On the one hand, you’ve got the ridiculously cheesy 80s rom-com story, but there’s also a side to it that makes you want to take it seriously, which is impossible because of its other qualities, so you get a conflicting and subsequently extremely irritating atmosphere within the film.

And not even the comedy can save it. Steve Martin’s character contributes some degree of comedy, but that’s not really on the part of the writing, rather on the part of Martin’s performance, so the remainder of the film, with relatively mediocre acting and poor writing is barely funny, and ends up focussing so much on the mushy romance that it’s difficult to enjoy.

Overall, I’ll give this a 6.5, because although there was an interesting central role, the rest of the film is of quite a poor quality in all its aspects.