Rhinestone (1984/DVD)

 

Picture: B-     Sound: B-     Extras: C-     Film: B-

 

 

Every movie fan has at least a few guilty pleasures.  You know, the type of film you're practically ashamed to admit you enjoyed.

 

The 1984 comedy Rhinestone is one of my all-time guilty pleasures.

 

When this film was made, Sylvester Stallone was still hot from his back-to-back hits in 1982, Rocky III and First Blood.  Dolly Parton had become a bona-fide movie star with the success of Nine to Five and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.  And director Bob Clark was coming off the biggest hit of his career with Porky's, and had just directed the future classic, A Christmas Story.  When they signed on for this high-concept comedy nobody clearly knew what they were getting into.   Rhinestone would become one of the most ridiculed movies of the 1980s, and an embarrassment Stallone himself makes light of even to this day. In retrospect, however, Rhinestone easily tops Oscar and Stop or My Mom Will Shoot as the most tolerable of Stallone's three stabs at broad comedy.

 

Sure, Rhinestone is dumb, but I found it to be dumb fun in the way of some of Burt Reynolds' "redneck" comedies.  And like those Reynolds comedies, it has some great lines.  And if you have a soft spot for cornpone humor, you might even find parts of Rhinestone as funny as I did.  One thing's for sure: You haven't lived until you've heard Stallone sing a tune called "Drinkin'stein."  In fact, the experience of Stallone trying to sing Country & Western is so bizarre that I actually own an old LP of the Rhinestone soundtrack for posterity.  Unbelievably, though, this isn't the only movie in which Stallone sings.  He sincerely croons the title song in 1978's Paradise Alley.  But his singing in Rhinestone is enough to scare the critters from the barn.

 

Written by Phil Alden Robinson (who would go on to write and direct the beloved Field of Dreams), with Stallone himself credited as co-writer (Stallone was notorious at the height of his stardom for rewriting large portions of any screenplay he involved himself with), Rhinestone stars Parton as Jake Ferris, a Country & Western singer who's the star attraction of a New York City honky-tonk called the Rhinestone.  Jake's manager is a lecherous weasel named Freddie (the always energetic Ron Leibman), who's been trying unsuccessfully forever to get his most-prized, incredibly buxom client into the sack.

 

Tired of Freddie's incessant come-ons and general obnoxiousness, Jake makes a wager with him one night: She claims she'll be able to turn the next person she sees on the New York street into a Country & Western singer in two weeks and make her pupil good enough to win over the notoriously tough crowd at the Rhinestone.  If Jake succeeds, her contract with Freddie will be terminated.  But if she fails, she'll have to sleep with the sleaze.

 

Lo and behold, the first person she encounters is a New York City cabbie named Nick Martinelli (Stallone), a confirmed city slicker who hates country music and can't carry a tune to save his life.  After getting fired from his job as a taxi driver, Nick accepts Jake's invitation to turn him into a country singer out of pure sexual desire of his part.  And soon Jake and Nick are off to her small hometown in rural Tennessee so she can give him a crash course in how to act, walk and talk like a cowboy.

 

What transpires is a classic fish-out-of-water situation pitting big city vs. hillbilly in the form of two stars with distinctly overgrown physiques.  At least this “breast/chest” factor would meet Groucho Marx standards, as Dolly could and still can stills surpass Sly in chest size; a big accomplishment.  And in addition to a lively Leibman, the earthy, ever-likable Richard Farnsworth gives good support as Jake's bemused father, and Tim Thomerson as Jake's former flame.

 

The fact that Stallone could sing well enough to win over any crowd is hard enough to believe, but a thriving Nashville-style Country & Western club in the middle of New York City is even harder to swallow.  It seems as unlikely as the redneck club in 48 HRS. in the middle of downtown San Francisco.  If anybody reading this can prove that such places really existed in the early '80s in these specific cities, please let me know.

 

Rhinestone is one of several recent titles from the 20th Century Fox vault to be released on DVD by the always-interesting Anchor Bay.  It has been given a clean transfer in anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) with better than average sound for a 21-year-old film.  The only extra is a brief original theatrical trailer, which seems more like a teaser.  But the lack of overall extras is understandable in this case for a movie nobody involved obviously is anxious to relive.

 

 

-   Chuck O'Leary