Blame it On the Bellboy

Director Herman has chosen to go the safe route with this comedy of errors (his directorial debut), relying on the tried and true formulas of those old British comedies wherein mistaken identities abound and the humor is less cerebral than it is intestinal. All things considered, this really isn't such a bad thing. Pinchot, who seems to be making a career out of playing characters with speech difficulties, is cast here as the inept bellboy of the title. When he accidentally confuses a group of messages left for guests Lawton, Horton, and Orton (Brown, Griffiths, and Moore, respectively), the confusion -- and the movie -- begins. As Lawton, Brown is the standout in this ensemble cast. He's an assassin sent to Venice to make a hit, who finds himself stalking the wrong victim, thanks to guess who. Although the script occasionally lapses into utter silliness (which, in this sort of comedy, must be a bit of an occupational hazard), Brown manages to light up the screen when he appears; you can tell he knows full well this picture is just a lark, he's having fun clowning around. Moore, looking a bit paunchier and a bit more florid, plays Orton, a British real estate buyer scouting out a villa for his tyrannical boss. Mistaken by a Mafia don as the hitman, Moore spends most of the film running down alleyways trying to avoid the don's evil henchmen, and he does this well, with his patented stutters and gimpy doubletakes, though we've seen this routine a million times, really. As Horton, the mayor of a British municipality who is currently out screwing around on his wife, Griffiths is the source of much of the films lowbrow bedroom humor. His eyes roll knowingly, he winks, he grovels, he's the archetypal English naughty boy, his girth as large as his libido. Blame it on the Bellboy is far better than I had been led to believe, though not quite on a par with either A Fish Called Wanda or Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, two films it recalls. Director Herman keeps the pace fast and loose, and the laughs -- though there aren't quite as many as there ought to be -- are genuine. It's lowbrow humor for the masses, and as such, it succeeds quite well.