THIS MOVIE WILL HAVE YOU IN STITCHES. BETTE MIDLER IS AT HER BEST HERE AND,OF COURSE, WHAT CAN YOU SAY ABOUT LILLY TOMLIN. SHE IS A GREAT ACTRESS. THEY EACH PORTRAY "BOTH" OF THEIR CHARACTERS WITH PERFECT HARMONY AND THE BEST COMEDY. A MUST FOR ANYONES COLLECTION. A MOVIE THAT WILL GET YOU IN THE ACTION.
All Time Classic
Big Business is a wonderful movie. Lily Tomlin and Bette Midler are top notch in this movie. This movie is a must have for your home.
"I'm Gonna Be Like Joan Collins And You Aint Gonna Stop me!"
I cannot recall a time when I did not love this hilarious movie, which is my favourite from the 1980's by far. The superb Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin enjoy a magical screen chemistry in "Big Business",that reminds me of some of the great comedy teams from Hollywood's Golden Age. A total laugh feast from start to finish this film strangely doesn't seem to have a high profile as comedies go however it is recommended viewing for anyone wanting a good old fashioned belly laugh and to see a comedy with probably the highest number of side splitting one liners in living memory. The premise of identical twins being mixed up at birth and meeting years later creating amusing complications is a tried and try formula for comedy however in "Big Business", it is given a new freshness by the two leads who literally fly away with the material here creating an unforgettable romp that takes us from humble Jupitor Hollow to the height of New York's business world.
The story begins in a flash back when wealthy New Yorkers Hunt and Binky Shelton are passing through rural backwater Jupitor Hollow when Binky goes into labour. At the same time locals Garth and Iona Ratliff also are expecting and both women give birth at the same moment and both produce twins which are not only given the same names of Sadie and Rose but are also mixed up. We move forward forty years to where Sadie Shelton is the corporate head of Moramax that is wanting to off load its ownership of Holomade, the local industry in Jupitor Hollow. Getting wind of their plans the militant Jupitor Hollow resident Rose Ratliff decides to go fight these "Pinstriped Trouser Snakes", on their own territory and Sadie eagerly follows along anxious to get out of boring Jupitor Hollow. Through a mix up they end up staying in the Plaza Hotel unknowingly right next door to their city twins where they discover such wonders as "sinks in the living room", and "soaps in the shapes of swans"! Complication piles on top of complication as Sadie Shelton's ex husband Michael (Barry Primus), can't believe the transformation when he mistakes the rural Sadie for his hard nosed wife and Jay Marshall(Michael Gross), can't for the life of him understand why Rose (Ratliff) is being so hostile towards him when he believes he is talking to demure Rose (Shelton). All comes to a head in the ladies room of all places where in a classic scene both sets of twins finally encounter each other and realise that there was a mix up at birth and that the two Sadie's are really the city Sheltons while the two Rose's are really the twins meant to be in Jupitor Hollow. The fast approaching stock holders meeting really puts the girls to the test when Sadie (Shelton), is locked up in a closet to prevent her from selling off her birthplace and its up to Sadie (Ratliff), to put all her watching of her idol Alexis Carrington in "Dynasty", to good use when in a hilarious moment she has to take over the meeting and turn the vote around from allowing Jupitor Hollow to be strip mined which she does beautifully.
Classic comedy if ever there was in my book and it reminds me of the antics of the pair of identical cousins, on the classic 1960's comedy series "The Patty Duke Show". I dont think I've ever seen Bette Midler in finer form than in "Big Business". Her comic timing and facial expressions are first rate and her switch from playing the hard as nails Sadie Shelton who's all "hostile takeovers" to the naive and totally impressionable country bumpkin Sadie Ratliff who only wants to be able to say "keep the change!" is a revelation and will send you into tail spins of laughter. Her classic mirror sequence with her "twin", is a total riot and her statement that "this whole thing has got UFO written all over it!",will have you breaking up with laughter. Equally Lily Tomlin as both country activist Rose Ratcliff, "I'm gonna go kick some snooty New York Ass!", and as Rose Shelton the awkward out of place city girl "I hate shopping and I hate New York in June!",is also top rate. Her rejection of Jay's engagement ring as a supposed "bribe" and when she then refers to the poor puzzled man as a "great big belly scraping pile of cow plop!", is one of the absolute comic highlights of the whole movie and is a scene I never tire of replaying a dozen times with each screening I have of this movie. Of course with the two sets of twins winding up both staying in adjoining suites at New York's Plaza Hotel there are many hilarious moments when outsiders get the pairs mixed up. Two of my favourites are the unfortunate desk clerk's (Joe Grifasi), continual mixing up of Sadie Shelton/Ratliff which results in his receiving a broken jaw instead of the passionate night of love making he imagined, and especially Fabio Alberici's (Michele Placido), total confusion about just who are the women who he is supposed to be doing business with - one minute they are corporate killers, the next ladies too afraid to pick up a car phone! The hilarious crossovers of characters walking in one door and coming out as another is beautifully played out in the breakfast room scenes when both women (one from the country and the other from the city), seemingly sit down for two breakfasts each much to the total confusion of each other and also the staff. It is however the unforgettable one liners that are liberally sprinkled throughout the script that create the greatest laughs and congratulations have to go to both Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin for making them seem just as fresh and funny on the tenth screening as on the first. Classics like: "Im gonna dip him in flour and fry him in his own grease!","Oh my God it's so COSMOpolitan", "Oh sure its full of crowds, smog, sex fiends, and white slavers, it's a pistol, I've got about as much use for it (New York), as a Toad has for spit pearls!", "Computer chips, they've got their ways!", and "Have you got your brains and your balls in your briefcase?", are guaranteed to crack you up with laughter as each new misunderstanding presents itself in the convoluted script.
Total escapism perhaps but this comedy never fails to get me laughing and coming back for more. It is a real pity that "Big Business", so far has marked the only time that Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin have worked together as the pair combine so well and would be wonderful together again in some other comedy vehicle. This film is a true comic treasure and can be enjoyed by all ages. I've been introducing it to my friends and family for years and the film now has many people as devoted and fanatical about it as I am! So I'd say to you that unless you have your brains and your balls in your briefcase get out there and find yourself a copy of this classic film soon if you haven't already. You wont regret it for one minute if only to enjoy these two comic legends, in Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin battling it out in a country values vs city profits laugh feast in "Big Business". Enjoy!
Sometimes a movie works despite all its faults. Outrageous Fortune has a flimsy, formulaic script, so-so production values, and an odd combination of stars, but somehow it's engaging and fun. Shelley Long and Bette Midler play two struggling actresses--one a hoity-toity priss and the other a brassy slob--who learn they've been sleeping with the same guy (Peter Coyote) when he gets blown up in a terrorist assault and they confront each other in the morgue. When they discover that he's still alive, the bickering pair track him down, traipsing across the U.S. in high heels, pursued all the way by government agents, using their dubious acting talents to get them out of tough situations. The absurd plot keeps things moving and director Arthur Hiller (Silver Streak, The... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Shelley Long - Bette Midler Director(s): Arthur Hiller DVD Release Date: Released the 30 October 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler, and Diane Keaton prove that revenge is a dish best served cold. Former college buddies, they reunite at the funeral of a dear friend who took a swan dive onto Fifth Avenue. All three discover they share the same unhappy history of husbands who dove into middle-age by dumping them for trophy wives. Forming a warring triumvirate, they decide to get even, and along the way remind themselves of long-forgotten capabilities. The action gets a little too "wacky" at times, but the gals are great. Portraying an aging actress, Hawn is sometimes a little too flamboyant, but there is much fun to be had in her flashiness, especially when she pokes fun at Tinseltown and her persona. Instead of her usual brashness, Midler stretches herself and shows us a woman who is not just... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Bette Midler - Goldie Hawn - Diane Keaton Director(s): Hugh Wilson DVD Release Date: Released the 01 December 1998 Usually ships in 24 hours
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A milestone comedy of the 1980s, Ruthless People delighted critics and audiences alike and set the tone of Hollywood comedies for years to come. Along with that other popular farce about wealthy Californians, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, this ingenious romp revived Bette Midler's career and launched Disney (by way of its subsidiary, Touchstone Pictures) into the lucrative production of R-rated comedies; it also ensured the star power of then-TV star Danny DeVito. Dale Launer became Hollywood's hot screenwriter du jour by cleverly reworking O. Henry's Ransom of Red Chief into a wicked tale of marital malice heightened by a bungled kidnapping. Midler is sublime as the victim of low-rent abductors ("I've been kidnapped by Kmart!"), and DeVito's the gleeful philanderer... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Danny DeVito - Bette Midler - Judge Reinhold - Helen Slater Director(s): Jerry Zucker - Jim Abrahams - David Zucker DVD Release Date: Released the 02 April 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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I purchased this movie for my daughter. When she was little we would have movie night together, and this was one of her favorites. I purchased it, so one day she and her daughter could have movie nights together. More Info about this DVD Director(s): Jeff Kanew DVD Release Date: Released the 25 March 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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With a nod to Preston Sturges's classic dark comedy Unfaithfully Yours (about a man who fantasizes about murdering his possibly philandering wife), this 1980 cotton-candy-feminist-vendetta film concerns a monstrous boss (Dabney Coleman) whose more capable underlings dream of ways of punishing him. That much of the film is particularly fun, but the rest of it descends into silliness when the women stumble onto a real-life opportunity to teach him a lesson. Fonda, the biggest star in the film at the time, takes a back seat to Parton's and Tomlin's showier roles. Written and directed by the late Colin Higgins (who made a lot of people happy in the '70s with his script for the beloved Harold and Maude). --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Jane Fonda - Lily Tomlin - Dolly Parton Director(s): Colin Higgins DVD Release Date: Released the 17 April 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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