After a life-threatening illness derailed his career in the 1970s, Peter O'Toole (Lawrence of Arabia) seemed poised for a comeback. He secured well-deserved Oscar nominations for The Stunt Man (1980) and My Favorite Year (1982), and made a lasting impression as the Roman general Silva in the sprawling Masada miniseries (1981). And then something happened, something horrifying, tragic and terrible. And that thing is called Club Paradise.
Wow, is this movie bad. Club Paradise is the unfortunate type of comedy where you don't laugh at all. You can't laugh. All you can do is stare and wonder how it even got made.
Robin Williams plays Jack, a retired firefighter living in the tropical paradise of St. Nicholas. Eventually he decides to refurbish and manage a resort with his buddy Ernest (played by reggae artist Jimmy Cliff). The problem is that despite their best efforts, their resort is a piece of trash and is literally falling to pieces. Jack and Ernest spend much of the movie trying to keep the place together so their guests can have a good time. Another problem is that a ruthless American businessman and the island's prime minister are plotting to force the locals into a tourism sucking cycle of servitude, leaving them destitute forever and unable to climb the economic ladder. Grr! Evil foreign capitalism!
...
Yeah, you read that right. Look, I'm not saying that fancy foreign businessmen and their big fancy resorts haven't played their parts in preventing economic equality on some of these islands, but this theme seems kind of heavy for a movie as crappy as this.
The biggest shame is that the cast and crew is full of talented artists. We all know what insane joyfulness Robin Williams is capable of bringing to the table, but he is terrible here and constantly changing character. He is actually acting like he is doing a standup routine, which makes for a pretty bad character performance. Was he trying to make the crew laugh maybe? The bad guys are played by Brian Doyle Murray (Bill Murray's brother and a fine comic actor in his own right) and the Oscar-nominated Adolph Caesar (A Soldier's Story). The hotel guests include fine actors like Rick Moranis (Ghostbusters), Eugene Levy (American Pie), Andrea Martin (SCTV) and Joanna Cassidy (Bladerunner). The director is the gifted Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day) and the script was co-written by Ramis and Murray, both of whom are really fine writers.
And then there is Peter O'Toole. I love that man. His brilliance in film, on stage, and in bars is legendary. He has risen above terrible material and delivered gold. And in this movie, he just...isn't any good. I don't know what is going on, but he is really off. To me, it's a big disappointment. Sure, he has the best line in the movie (see below), but it is the line that it clever, not O'Toole's delivery. And from my perspective, all the good will built from The Stunt Man, My Favorite Year, and Masada vanished. This was the beginning of the "unfortunate" period, that included such classics as Supergirl, Creator, King Ralph, High Spirits, Phantoms, The Seventh Coin, and Phantoms. Sure, there was that quality blip on the radar (The Last Emperor), but overall this was not a good time in O'Toole's career. Of course, who am I to judge? He probably had a lot of fun and made a lot of money doing these films. But wow...painful.
Actually, that is a good word for this whole movie: painful. Please avoid it. Please.
BEST LINE:
Governor Hayes (referring to his island): "Either the Americans will move in and turn it into Miami Beach, or the Cubans and Russians will come and turn the entire island into bloody Albania. There really is no hope."
MVP:
I have to go with the non-actor of the bunch, Jimmy Cliff. I don't think he made that many movies, but he actually has a nice screen presence. Everyone else seems to be trying too hard, while Cliff just goes with the flow. He gets my MVP, for sure.
TRIVIA:
The movie was originally supposed to star Bill Murray and John Cleese, both of whom would have been more appropriate in their roles than Williams and O'Toole. I don't know why they dropped out, but the decision probably ranks among their best career moves. Easily.
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