La Dolce DeVito

Throw Momma From the Train

Written by Stu Silver

Directed by Danny DeVito

As the USA/Cheri

HITCHCOCK meets the Looney Tunes in Throw Momma From the Train, actor Danny DeVito's feature film directing debut. Momma is a bizarre, funny, offbeat romp from beginning to end, an irreverent farce inspired by the best and worst from pop culture.

Writer Larry Donner (Billy Crystal) involuntarily screams "Slut!" whenever anyone mentions his ex-wife Margaret (Kate Mulgrew). She stole his manuscript and is gleefully living off the fame and luxury the book's acclaim earned her. Donner loudly proclaims to anyone who will listen that he wants her dead. At the same time, he suffers from a writer's block so intense that he is unable to finish even the first sentence of his novel or make love to his girl-friend Beth, played with pretty, intelligent understatement by Kim Griest.

Those who can't do, teach. While teaching a writing class at a local college, Donner meets Owen Lift (DeVito), a rumpled, childish lunatic tormented by his mother. In a conversation about how to write an exciting murder mystery, Owen misinterprets Larry's advice and decides that Larry wants to swap murder targets with him. He plots to get rid of Margaret, convinced that Donner will bump off his Momma in return.

This is a lot more difficult that it sounds. Momma as played by Anne Ramsey gives new meaning to the word overbearing. She orders Owen around mercilessly, calling him a "clumsy poop" and a "lard-ass". Ramsey's performance is so eccentric and so funny that it is almost shocking. She seems to have arrived from another planet, one inhabited by creatures that are not exactly human.

The laughs in this movie, and there are many, stem from its broad, broad comedic style combined with some of the most irreverent camera work since the Coen brothers' farcical Raising Arizona. DeVito has enough smarts to realize that the unlikely plot machinations of Momma call for unconventional visual tricks and he also has enough imagination to pull them off. The camera swoops and pans at dramatic moments and will pull right up to an actor's face for a gag line. When Donner collapses on the floor after a particularly exhausting encounter with Momma, the camera spirals slowly upwards.

Most of these visual gags are references to Hitchcock and in particular to his classic 1951 film Strangers on a Train from which the plot of the movie is partially lifted. But DeVito also has a strong instinct towards the comic hyperbole of the Three Stooges, say, or Bugs Bunny. The sound effects in the film are as exaggerated as cartoons. In one scene when Larry is scrambling to stay on a building ledge, the noise sounds like the sound Fred Flintstone's feet make when he accelerates his car.

To top it off, characters in this movie speak dialogue that borders on non sequitur. At one point, Larry says "I have an enormous headache. In my eye."

THE performances in this film are uniformly excellent. Billy Crystal's casual, off-hand humor is the perfect match for DeVito's likable, offbeat portrayal of Owen's schleppy innocence. Crystal manages not only to be funny but also to be an attractive, charismatic leading man.

There are two funny cameos--Oprah Winfrey plays herself and Rob Reiner plays Larry's fast-talking agent Joel. Saxophonist Branford Marsalis, making his movie debut as Larry's friend Lester, has a charming screen presence during his regrettably few screen minutes.

There are only several moments when it seems obvious that Momma is DeVito's directing debut. The movie starts off at a breakneck pace that it just barely manages to maintain. But just when you think that DeVito is running out of energy, he comes up with even a sharper sight gag, or Stu Silver's script comes up with another great line.

Throw Momma From the Train is a funky, silly comedy which shows that Danny DeVito has great promise as a director of comedy. He may look like "a troll that should be hanging from a rear view mirror," but he thinks like a combination of Rod Serling and the Roadrunner.