← Back to Reviews
in
I'm always amazed when a film lives up to its reputation, whether good or bad, and the humorless 1984 comedy Rhinestone effortlessly lives up to its reputation as a lame comedy and a low point in the career of its stars.
Allegedly based on the classic Glen Campbell song "Rhinestone Cowboy", the film stars Dolly Parton, in her third film, as Jake, a singer in a 2nd rate country and western bar run by a wealthy sleazeball (Ron Leibman), who makes a bet with the sleazeball that she can teach an obnoxious Italian cab driver named Nick Martinelli (Sylvester Stallone) one country song and can perform it on the stage of the club without being booed off the stage and is given two weeks to do it.
The premise is plausible enough, but instead of just taking Nick to a rehearsal studio and teaching him how to sing, Jake decides she has to fly Nick to Tennessee and completely immerse him in country culture and that's where the story strays off course into a lot of offensive stereotypes about being southern and Italian that grow tiring LONG before the closing credits.
Bob Clark, who directed Porky's, has constructed a comedy that depends on culture stereotypes and sleazy sexual double entendres that actually makes Porky's seem like Shakespeare. The screenplay, actually co-written by Stallone and Phil Alden Robinson, who would be nominated for an Oscar five years later for writing Field of Dreams provides a really annoying character in Nick, whose lack of intelligence doesn't mesh with the overly clever dialogue.
Sylvester Stallone easily gives the worst performance of his career in a character with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Parton somehow manages to maintain her dignity here as does the always reliable Richard Farnsworth playing her father, but as for the rest of this film, it's a pretty much a steaming pile of crap that did not motivate a single laugh. So unless you have nightly wet dreams about either Stallone or Parton (who both look amazing here), I would give this one a pass.
Allegedly based on the classic Glen Campbell song "Rhinestone Cowboy", the film stars Dolly Parton, in her third film, as Jake, a singer in a 2nd rate country and western bar run by a wealthy sleazeball (Ron Leibman), who makes a bet with the sleazeball that she can teach an obnoxious Italian cab driver named Nick Martinelli (Sylvester Stallone) one country song and can perform it on the stage of the club without being booed off the stage and is given two weeks to do it.
The premise is plausible enough, but instead of just taking Nick to a rehearsal studio and teaching him how to sing, Jake decides she has to fly Nick to Tennessee and completely immerse him in country culture and that's where the story strays off course into a lot of offensive stereotypes about being southern and Italian that grow tiring LONG before the closing credits.
Bob Clark, who directed Porky's, has constructed a comedy that depends on culture stereotypes and sleazy sexual double entendres that actually makes Porky's seem like Shakespeare. The screenplay, actually co-written by Stallone and Phil Alden Robinson, who would be nominated for an Oscar five years later for writing Field of Dreams provides a really annoying character in Nick, whose lack of intelligence doesn't mesh with the overly clever dialogue.
Sylvester Stallone easily gives the worst performance of his career in a character with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Parton somehow manages to maintain her dignity here as does the always reliable Richard Farnsworth playing her father, but as for the rest of this film, it's a pretty much a steaming pile of crap that did not motivate a single laugh. So unless you have nightly wet dreams about either Stallone or Parton (who both look amazing here), I would give this one a pass.