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Written by Mandroid3000
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HOT TO TROT
*1/2 out of *****Genres
Comedy
1988
Directed by
Michael Dinner
Written by
Hugo Gilbert (screenplay)
Hugo Gilbert (story)
Stephen Neigher (screenplay)
Stephen Neigher (story)
Charlie Peters (screenplay)
Cast
Bob Goldthwait .... Fred P. Chaney
Dabney Coleman .... Walter Sawyer
John Candy .... Don the Horse (voice)
Virginia Madsen .... Allison Rowe
Cindy Pickett .... Victoria Peyton
Jim Metzler .... Boyd Osborne
Tim Kazurinsky .... Leonard
Santos Morales .... Carlos
I’ll come out and say this right now: I like Bobcat Goldthwait. I even find him amusing in movies where he has no decent jokes (like the Police Academy series). I highly recommend his stand-up comedy where he does have serviceable material to work with. I say this to help you judge how much you’d like Hot to Trot. If you really like Bobcat, then it’s pretty lame. If you can’t stand him then it will be likewise for the movie.
Bobcat’s mother has just died, and no sooner has this happened than Bobcat’s dastardly father-in-law Walter Sawyer (Dabney Coleman wearing prosthetic teeth) kicks him out of the house. But he didn’t count on Bobcat inheriting half of the family brokerage and a talking horse. Walter offers to buy Bobcat out for $500, he refuses. With the help of the Don the talking horse Bobcat starts work at the brokerage and becomes the hit of Wall Street. Not because either is a financial genius, but because Don overhears stock tips in the stables and phones them in to Bobcat (no, they never show him dialling).
I’m a pretty optimistic guy, so I wasn’t completely discounting the chance of getting some enjoyment out of Hot to Trot. But the main problem is that there’s a talking horse in it. When Bobcat loses everything in a bad trade, and bets Walter that Don will win a big horse race (for all his horses vs. Don to the dog food factory) I realised that Don was just holding things back. The plot was jumping around to accommodate a talking horse, but doing it with no wit or creativity. And Bobcat is enough star for any movie.
Not only does the plot strain at the joins to accommodate him, but Don’s character isn’t worth the effort. Don isn’t funny, Don isn’t charming. Don the horse is shit. There are limits to the number of times someone being surprised by a talking horse is funny (zero). And there are limits to the number of times a talking horse can imitate the Three Stooges and be funny (less than zero). And for large stretches he has nothing to do so he just gets left in Bobcat’s apartment.
Don would have been an uphill struggle to make funny anyway. An important factor the makers of Hot to Trot overlooked is that the horse is not the most comedic of animals. It ranks just below the Bongo, but just above the Eagle. I’ve never seen anything related to Francis, the Talking Mule, but he’s a goddamn mule so obviously has the head start in the humour stakes. I don’t know if changing Don to a jive-talking chimp would have improved the film, but he wouldn’t have had to compete in the stupid race at the end.
But before I put you off entirely there is one shining light in this film, the music by Danny Elfman. It’s a sort of blues/rockabilly played on harmonica and accordion. It put me in the mood for a rollicking comedy, and it’s not Elfman’s fault that there was no rollicking to be found. Oh yeah, and one of the writers last names is Neigher (actually that’s real lame). I did still find Bobcat amusing, but as with most of his films, not for his jokes. I guess you could say he transcends the material, and isn’t that one of the signs of a true movie star?
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