SUMMARY: RUNNING TIME: 1 Hr., 35 Min.
Harold Ramis both directed and co-wrote this 1986 Warner Bros. comedy. As before with Ramis on 1980’s Caddyshack, Brian Doyle-Murray is among the script’s collaborators and appears in a supporting role. For the film, several of Ramis and Doyle-Murray’s fellow SCTV alumni: Rick Moranis, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, and Joe Flaherty, among them, help fill out the ensemble cast.
Reaping a disability insurance windfall, thirty-ish, ex-Chicago firefighter Jack Moniker (Williams) retires to the Caribbean island of Saint Nicholas. Co-owning his musician friend Ernest’s (Cliff) seedy beachside club, Jack also now faces the wrath of the island’s corrupt prime minister, Solomon Grundy (Caesar) over Ernest’s unpaid taxes. Needing viable cash flow, Jack is persuaded by his new girlfriend, Phillipa (Twiggy), to push Club Paradise as an ideal tropical resort option for gullible tourists.
Coinciding with Club Paradise’s first wave of mostly unimpressed guests, Grundy and the island’s wealthiest hotel owner (Doyle-Murray) scheme to sell off Saint Nicholas to foreign developers. The only remaining obstacle is Club Paradise, which resides on the island’s best section of beach. It’s up to Jack, Ernest, and the island’s aristocratic British governor (O’Toole) to save an imploding Saint Nicholas from a violent revolution once they decline to sell out.
Jack Moniker: Robin Williams
Phillipa Lloyd: Twiggy
Ernest Reed: Jimmy Cliff
Gov. Anthony Croyden Hayes: Peter O’Toole
Terry Hamlin: Joanna Cassidy
Voit Zerbe: Brian Doyle-Murray
Barry Nye: Rick Moranis
Barry Steinberg: Eugene Levy
Prime Minister Solomon Grundy: Adolph Caesar
Linda White & Dr. Randy White: Andrea Martin & Steven Kampmann
Pamela: Antoinette Bower
Mary Lou: Robin Duke
Model: Carey Lowell
Portia: Louise Bennett
Jackie: Mary Gross
Pilot: Joe Flaherty
Mrs. Geddes: Leonie Forbes
Ernest’s Band – Flamboyant: Sydney Wolfe, Ansel Collins, Bertram McLean, Chinna Smith, Wilburn Cole, & Christopher Meredith
Toby Prooth: Simon Jones
Swiss Businessman: Louis Zorich
Dave: Bruce McGill
REVIEW:
Given its middling script, neither Bill Murray (who had declined the lead role) nor Tom Hanks would have fared any better headlining Club Paradise. Riding a steady flow of smooth Jamaican reggae, an easygoing vibe and gorgeous scenery exude this film’s most appealing elements. Still, feel-good sentimentality doesn’t disguise a weak cliché-fest lazily packaged as a contrived big-screen sitcom. Club Paradise’s paint-by-the-numbers plotting has inhabited any number of better comedies, but this good cast simply isn’t given anything funny to do.
It mostly falls on Harold Ramis and his screenwriters that the comedic firepower of Robin Williams, Eugene Levy, Rick Moranis, and Peter O’Toole is squandered. Case in point: Moranis and Levy’s moronic cannabis subplot goes nowhere, much like the predicaments of other Club Paradise guests.
If, during filming, Ramis had hoped Williams’ manic improvisational energies would somehow salvage such formulaic dreck, then all involved miscalculated. The mellow Robin Williams that filmgoers instead get in Club Paradise is his increasingly harried ‘Jack’ too often fading into the background.
The sole pleasure in Club Paradise, suffice to say, is for its feature-length commercial hyping Jamaica. Then again, if one is ever given a dubious option between viewing Club Paradise or 1990’s Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan tropical bore, Joe Versus The Volcano – Robin Williams wins. His Caribbean clunker, at least, scores a few sporadic laughs.
BRIAN’S ODD MOON RATING: 3½ Stars
IMAGE NOT AVAILABLE
