"All of Me" is one of those movies that has a major star turn (i.e. Martin as the attorney Roger Cobb), a couple of secondary characters with not much to say about them or their associated performers, and a plot device that has been used repeatedly. If you have ever seen "Heart Condition", "Heaven Can Wait" or "Switch" then you have the basic gist of what happens in "All of Me". Someone dies (in this case it's Lily Tomlin's Edwina Cutwater), the errant soul is attached somehow to the unintended 'hero' (i.e. Martin's Cobb) and then as the two supposedly conflicted characters/souls/identities work through the problem facing the live character (in this case Roger Cobb can't control if and when Edwina surfaces, and when she does it causes all kinds of slapstick craziness) by film's end there is a resolution that makes all happy (and no, I won't spoil this flick even though you probably have seen it anyway).So what was it that made this film work so well and transformed Steve Martin into the actor who would be called in to make "Sgt Bilko" or "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels". Simple...Martin is able to adapt his unique sense of physical humour with several belly-laugh inducing scenes to give the audience a film low on subtleties but high on fun. This isn't as surreal as "The Jerk" or as mannered as "The Lonely Guy"; "All of Me" succeeds because Steve Martin excelled at that stage in his career in adult slapstick.
I haven't said too much about the supporting actors and their characters, and to be honest I don't think that is a great disservice. Lily Tomlin is barely present physically in the movie, instead it's her voice over work as her character Edwina riffs off Martin's Roger that forms the bulk of her performance. I guess the best thing that can be said about her is you can almost suspend your belief as the audience and enjoy the absurd love/hate relationship between the two unwillingly joined characters. Victoria Tennant is fairly cardboard-esque in her role as Terry, and to be blunt Tennant is at her best when she is in lingerie. Her best performance was to come later in "LA Story", and considering she and Martin were romantically linked at the time of "All of Me" their scenes together are fairly average.
The best of the supporting actors and characters is Richard Liberti as Prakha, the Indian mystic who effectively stuffed up the soul transference process that forms the central plot device in "All of Me". Just like Peter Sellers in "The Party", Liberti makes great play out of a faux Indian repeatedly saying something barely intelligable. Prakha's "fix bowl" is up there with "Birdy Num Num", and it does continually wring giggles out of the viewer. Okay, so perhaps it's a tad prejudiced but we are talking 24 years ago.
This was actually the first Steve Martin film I saw in the cinema, whereas films I consider to be better from this stage in his career (i.e. "The Jerk", "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" and "The Man With Two Brains" and "The Lonely Guy") I only caught thanks to video. Again due to the paucity of a place to see movies in Armidale at the time I had to wait till I returned to Sydney and took in a $5 cheap Tuesday session at the Hayden Cinema (them's were the days folks!). I can't recall too much about that session but for some years afterwards I always looked forward to the next Steve Martin release that followed "All of Me". Unfortunately as his film roles and the actual movies themselves became more mainstream my interest in Martin's films have waned. "All Of Me" is not the most successful Steve Martin flick, nor is it my favourite. Yet just as it marked a watershed in his career so it also forged a new (if slowly diminishing) appreciation of his performances.
My Rating: 2.5 Bills
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