Bugsy Malone [Region 2]

United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada: LANGUAGES: English ( Mono ), English ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN (1.66:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Biographies, Commentary, Filmographies, Interactive Menu, Making Of, Photo Gallery, Scene Access, Storyboards, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: Bugsy Malone is nothing if not unusual. Very few other films have featured a cast comprised entirely of children, and possibly no other film has called upon those children to play adult roles, let alone adult gangster roles. There's a curiosity value to this concept, but there doesn't seem to be any real reason for its existence -- what's the purpose behind the children as gangsters metaphor? Director/screenwriter Alan Parker has not developed the idea so that there's a real payoff, and as a result the joke wears out long before the film is over. Parker also hasn't developed the 'universe' in which these children exist beyond the basics (whipped cream instead of bullets, pedal-driven cars, etc.). Were the rest of the film more involving, this wouldn't matter, but since it isn't, one keeps waiting for more 'kid-oriented' devices (in much the same manner that one waits for amusing anachronisms when watching The Flintstones.) Paul Williams' score is undistinguished (and often is distinctly not of the period), and though the actors try hard, most lack the experience to pull off what is required of them. Jodie Foster is the major exception, marvelous but wasted in a supporting role. She's the only one who really seems to be an adult caught in a child's body rather than a child overwhelmed by adult clothes. Martin Lev is almost as good, filling his role with more quiet power than one would expect of someone his age. The physical production is attractive, and Parker has shot some of it with great care -- particularly the 'Ordinar...Bugsy Malone

Writer-director Alan Parker's feature debut Bugsy Malone is a pastiche of American movies, a musical gangster comedy set in 1929, featuring prohibition, showgirls, and gang warfare, with references to everything from Some Like It Hot to The Godfather. Uniquely, though, all the parts are played by children, including an excellent if underused Jodie Foster as platinum-blonde singer Tallulah, Scott Baio in the title role and a nine-year-old Dexter Fletcher wielding a baseball bat. Cream-firing "spluge guns" sidestep any real violence and the movie climaxes cheerfully with the biggest custard pie fight this side of Casino Royale (1967).

Unfortunately for a musical, Paul Williams's score--part honky-tonk jazz homage, part 1970s Elton John-style pop--lets the side down with a lack of memorable tunes. Nevertheless, Parker's direction is spot on and the look of the film is superb, a fantasy movie-movie existing in the same parallel reality as The Cotton Club and Chicago. A rare British love letter to classic American cinema, Bugsy Malone remains a true original; in Parker's words "the work of a madman" and one of the strangest yet most stylish children's films ever made. --Gary S. Dalkin