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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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082889
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08288900.061
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1990-09-17
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CINEMA, Page 64Came the Don
COOKIE
Directed by Susan Seidelman;
Screenplay by Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen
We gather to praise the forgettable comedy. Some movies can be
faulted for nothing but low ambition. They aim not for the Academy
Award. They disdain the zillion-dollar gross. Not for them a
double-domed debate on the op-ed page. But some sweltering August
evening, they afford easy wit, engaging performances and, for
moviegoers, the satisfaction of 90 minutes well wasted.
Such a one is the film under consideration -- a Mafia comedy.
Already the mind contracts with diminished expectations!
Non-Italian actors gesturing rambunctiously, speaking with cotton
candy in their mouths, plotting elaborate revenge with dim-bulbed
resources. Cast Peter Falk as Dino Capisco, a dapper don just
sprung from Sing Sing. Give him a score to settle with his weaselly
partner Carmine Tarantino (Michael V. Gazzo) and a slick, Rudolph
Giuliani-style D.A. (Bob Gunton) with an eye to nailing Dino's hide
on the front page. Saddle him with a dog-stealing wife (Brenda
Vaccaro) and a devoted but ditsy mistress (Dianne Wiest). And do
make sure his life finally depends on the skeptical love and
untested intelligence of his daughter Carmela Maria Angelina
Theresa Voltecki, a.k.a. Cookie (Emily Lloyd).
Lloyd, the English teenager who won prizes for her role in Wish
You Were Here, imports a fetching presence and an acute mimicry to
her Brooklyn punkster. The rest of the cast has fun playing in a
farce summer-stocked with plot twists and cunning character
studies. A perfect forgettable comedy -- now what was its name? Ah,
yes. Tasty, brittle, sweet, of no nutritional value . . . Cookie.