The Tall Guy (1989, Dir. Mel Smith)

Synopsis:

Tall and awkward, American actor Dexter King (Jeff Goldblum), hasn’t had much success in either his personal or professional life since he moved to London. Stuck in the same show for 6 years playing the comedy stooge to the obnoxious Ron Anderson (Rowan Atkinson) and seemingly doomed to terrible relationships, things change for the better when he meets nurse Kate Lemon (Emma Thompson) and gets the sack from the show. For a brief moment Dexter’s life seems to get back on track — he’s in love and he unexpectedly lands the lead in a new musical. But it’s not long before things go wrong and this time he only has himself to blame.

I first saw this film on UK tv when I was about 14, though I’m pretty sure I’d heard about it beforehand and had seen some clips (including a snippet of the film’s hilarious sex scene) around the time of its release. A lot of the very funny digs at acting and the theatre scene in general went completely over my head at the time (Dexter’s Berkoff audition, for example, was something I only really got the gag about when I re-watched the film much later as a drama student) but, even so dialogue such as this had me laughing even then, just as they do today.

Agent: 73% of actors unemployed…

Dexter: And yet Roger Moore is still in work…

Agent: Yes, it’s a dark and mysterious world.

The script is by Richard Curtis, at that time best known for writing Blackadder, with this being his first feature length screenplay. In many ways, it’s the template for all of his better known films later on, such as Four Weddings And A Funeral and Notting Hill. If you were ever in any doubt as to how much the casting of Hugh Grant was integral to the success of those films, then you only need to watch this to realize how a different actor playing essentially the same type of character changes the feel of the movie entirely. This is not to say Jeff Goldblum is bad in the role, he’s not at all — in fact it’s worth reminding oneself that he didn’t always play the same role that he does nowadays and which he has been playing pretty much ever since Jurassic Park. But, it is very interesting to see how the typical “Richard Curtis protagonist” is transformed by being played by someone else, especially an American actor.

The film’s only moderate success at the time, meant that it was largely forgotten about by the time of Four Weddings’ release five years later, most of the cast having gone on to much bigger and better things by then. It was certainly forgotten by the time I’d left Drama School in 2000, as I did a day’s work as a sound technician on someone’s real life, serious version of an Elephant Man musical, which this film lampoons (as well as end of the 80s trend for lavish West End musicals, a la Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh, in general) so brilliantly — needless to say I had a hard time keeping a straight face watching the rehearsals that day. I kept waiting for the cast to burst into a rendition of “an angel with big ears” or “packing his trunk” or have some dancing chorus line elephants and a glitter ball. Sadly, the closest they got was Treves and Merrick duetting on a number called “Now we’re face to face” — which with Merrick in the full make up was rendered unintentionally hilarious.

Anyway, when I first watched the film as a 14 year old, I was less aware of how sharp the comedy was about the theatre industry. What I related to most was Dexter’s nervousness about asking Kate out — because like his character in the film, I’d fallen in love with Emma Thompson.

At the time, Thompson was best known as a comedy actress — she’d been part of the Cambridge Footlights alongside Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie and had started off in a tv comedy show with them and Robbie Coltrane — who’d she’d also starred alongside in John Byrne’s Tutti Frutti. Whilst it was clear even then that she was a brilliant actress who could do dramatic roles as well, she hadn’t been given many at the time this film was made and it would only be afterwards, in roles alongside her then husband Kenneth Branagh and her Oscar award-winning performance in Howard’s End, that many realized what an amazing dramatic actor she was as well. If you’ve only even seen her in costume dramas, then you might be quite surprised at her wonderful and extremely sexy performance here — especially the film’s almost show stopping and wonderfully over the top sex scene, which has her and Goldblum literally trashing her character’s flat in fits of passion. For me, it’s her performance which is really the heart of this film.

Rowan Atkinson seems to relish the opportunity to play a really horrible version of himself and it’s telling that his popularity in Blackadder at the time was so huge, that he’s third billed in the credits even though he’s only in the film for a relatively short amount of scenes. Many of the film’s other cast will be known to fans of British film and tv such as Anna Massey, Kim Thomson and Geraldine James and it’s amusing to spot cameos from the likes of Angus Deyton (who at the time had just been the real life equivalent of Goldblum’s character in Rowan Atkinson’s actual stage show) Jonathon Ross, Melvin Bragg and even Curtis and director Mel Smith (who, of course had worked with Atkinson on Not The Nine O’Clock News and would go on to direct the Mr Bean movie) themselves.

Perhaps because it was Curtis’ first screenplay the tone is, at times, a little too uneven. The musical montage scene with Suggs from the band Madness singing “It Must Be Love”, accompanied (at one point) by a singing pair of underpants does seem as if it has wandered in from another movie altogether. Yet despite this, there are enough utterly brilliant bits, lines of dialogue and well aimed satire of the London theatre scene, that you can mostly overlook them and it is still an extremely funny film that now deserves to be rewatched not only for its great script and performances but also as fascinating reminder how Curtis, Thompson and even Goldblum to a certain extent, were before mega stardom beckoned.

Sadly whilst this was available on DVD for a while it’s now long out of print and there’s no Blu-Ray version available. However, there is a DVD quality version of the whole film available on You Tube which I’ve included a link to below.