The Distinguished Gentleman (1992)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Fantastic!

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Masquerading as light comedy, this is actually a really clever satire for what it is. Its better than Wag The Dog and Idiocracy and is an easily digestible version of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). Eddie Murphy plays a naive but slightly corrupt huckster who believes getting into office in Washington will give him the kind of cushy job that will pay him well to do very little actual work. When he encounters what the job actually entails, he is forced to question his place in the world and in a heartwarming way achieves what in reality is utterly impossible; doing the right thing in Washington free from the unnecessary corruption that drives it.

Eddie Murphy and political satire. They don't seem to go there. In reality, though, it is Murphy that saves this film. The actual political satire is fairly worn in all forms of entertainment, big business and lobbyists control the government, while some brave insiders fight to preserve the integrity of the institution. This, in a way, is the weakest part of the film. It's not hard hitting enough to provide any real insights but hard enough to sometimes distract from the humour. It doesn't break any new ground but Murphy is charming and funny in his role. He has some good one-liners. The redemption story at the end is, of course, hacked on and expected. How easy it was to expose their corruption, though, only seeks t undermine the previous points about its systematic nature. For all this, it's worth watching for Eddie Murphy's performance.

"A Distinguished Gentleman" is about a con man Thomas Jefferson Johnson (Eddie Murphy) who realizes that the best con that he could pull is not as a small time operator in Florida, but as a Congressman in Washington D.C. making shady backroom deals with corporate lobbyists. All he has to do is vote a certain way on certain pieces of legislation and then get rewarded down the road with "donations" from corporations and other interest groups (including the gun lobby).The three-fifths of "A Distinguished Gentleman" is great. There are many clever scenes in this film that expose Congress and corporations as rotten to the core and I personally think that it is sad that more films, like this one, are not made about the rottenness of Congress and Corporate America; and that the Hollywood establishment is reluctant to admit that, in today's America, we really have government by the corporations and not government by the people. But what also makes the first three-fifths so good is the use of humor as for indicting not only the political system, but also in a subtle way American society. I am referring, for instance, to that scene where an automatic weapons manufacturer explains that his autonomic guns should be sold because they are needed for hunting. Next you see Johnson, Chairman Dodge (Lane Smith in a marvellously wicked performance) and the manufacturer in a hilarious scene firing their automatic guns at ducks (when regular rifles would suffice). Wonderful. Another wonderful scene involves Terry Corrigan (Kevin McCarthy) explaining to Johnson that But then this film goes downhill, albeit slowly. I was entertain until the end, but I felt that the last two-fifths were not at good as the stellar three-fifths. Why? The first reason is the corny love story between Johnson and Celia Kirby (Victoria Rowell) which I thought distracted from the already clever story line. The other thing I object to was the decision of the producers to go for a happy ending, which creates the impression that all is write in the world as far as Congress and corporations are concern. The reality is that Congress is just as rotten now as it was in 1992 (when the film was made). The culprits were never held accountable. Meaningful, transformative changes continue to be held back. Reasoned bi-partisanship to resolve the country's outstanding problems, which include the environment, the deficit, the loss of middle class jobs and others, is non-existent.

This is passable 80's Eddie Murphy winding its way into the 90's. The premise is o.k. mostly works. Of course there has to be the inevitable "I didn't care at first but now I do" moments. You can't have a movie about our superiors in DC without the requisite message that Good must thwart Evil. In this case it is a little waif bald from her radiation treatment as a result of cancer from dastardly power lines. Yeah, that issue still resonates.The first half of the movie is prime Eddie and punctures the fatuousness of Pols in general. Then it takes a left turn and pretty much spews out basic Hollywood rhetoric - Big Business Bad, Big Government Good. It almost spoils the movie entirely. But it pulls up a little and ends humorously enough.Murphy has put out worse, so by comparison, this deserves a 6 out of 10.