Under the Rainbow

Dir: Steve Rash

1981

****

Nominated for two Razzie Awards, one for Worst Musical Score and Worst Supporting Actor, 1981’s Under the Rainbow failed miserably at the box office. Leading actors Chevy Chase and Carrie Fisher both declared it at the time as the worst film either had ever worked on, as did many of the supporting actors. Audiences hated it and critics hated it. I on the other hand rather enjoyed it and I have to say I see it as more than a guilty pleasure, I think there is a lot to love about it. Chase had only been in a handful of films by then and Fisher had only been in four; Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Shampoo and The Blues Brothers – so yeah, it was the worst film out of those five – but both stars would go on to star in much worse films than this. The story is quite clever and the best kind of silly as it is based on a humourous rumour of real events. While filming The Wizard of Oz in 1938, the little people that played the Munchkins all stayed at the Culver Hotel where it is said – but unconfirmed – they partied hard, trashing the place and swinging from the chandeliers, full on success and champagne. The movie is actually filmed in what was the Culver Hotel and begins in the same way that Wizard of Oz does with all the main characters starting out in a refuge and hostel for a community of the destitute, homeless and unemployed somewhere in Kansas. A little person by the name of Diminutive Rollo Sweet enters the hostel (which is next to the bus station) with dreams of making it to Hollywood. He falls of the roof while trying to fix the television areal and his dream becomes the film. In the dream he fixes the areal and the announcer introduces a broadcast by the President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It speaks of Hitler's invasion of Germany's neighbors and the scene cuts to the Führer who is instructing his diminutive but aggressive secret agent Otto Kriegling on his latest mission. Otto is to go to California, to a certain hotel, to meet up with an agent of the Emperor from Tokyo, whom he will recognise because he will be Japanese and wearing a white suit. The latter will recognize Otto because of his height – he is 3 feet 9 inches tall. In addition, the Japanese agent will utter to Otto as a secret password "The pearl is in the river", which will prove he is the man to whom Otto must hand over a secret map of America's military defense system. Otto departs, confident that nothing can go wrong with these arrangements. However, when he arrives at the hotel, he is soon shocked to realise that the other guests are made up of one-hundred and fifty little people (all around 3 feet 9 inches tall), their studio assistant played by Carrie Fisher, and a Japanese Amateur Photography Society group who wear white suits as a form of uniform. Meanwhile, Bruce Thorpe (Chevy Chase) is there to meet an Austrian royal duke (Joseph Maher) who has enjoyed the protection of Inspector Collins of Scotland Yard. Thorpe is with the US Secret Service and is to continue personal protection for the Duke and Duchess. He quickly discovers that the Duke lives in permanent dread of assassination, although Thorpe tries to assure him that the likelihood of this being attempted in America is slight. To forestall this, the Duke continually dons a series of childish disguises. His other preoccupation in life is preserving his wife's companion, a dog which she calls Strudl. Fortunately the Duchess has extremely poor eyesight, but refuses to wear her spectacles, so that she believes that almost any dog of roughly the right size and coloring is her beloved pet. The Duke tells Thorpe that a dozen of these animals have already died in one way or another without her noticing and this continues throughout the film. It’s a comedy of errors and a beautifully inventive one in my opinion. Some of the jokes could be seen as offensive but personally I don’t see it and I don’t think you need a thick skin to see the funny side. Chevy Chase and Carrie Fisher are brilliant opposite one another, and the supporting cast is strong. It’s the sort of the few silly comedies that I could watch with my parents and it really is beyond me how it has been so unfairly dismissed. The comedy performances are really tight and I thought the direction was good too, dreamlike as it was meant to be. Steve Rash made some ace films in the 80s, all underrated pleasures and even though this was one of the few films Fred Bauer and Pat Bradley wrote, its incredibly clever and one would have thought they would have been busy and in demand ever since. I think age has been kind to Under The Rainbow, it’s not perfect but it is full of charm and it made me laugh consistently. It made me like Chevy Chase again and love Carrie Fisher even more (if that is even possible). It is important to remember that the Razzies have nominated great films such as Cruising, The Jazz Singer and Saturn 3 in the past and nominated Stanley Kubrick as worst director for The Shining.