Seeing a comedy with a small audience always works 
against it, and that's the way I saw <cite>Johnny Dangerously</cite>.  
With fewer people in the audience to build up the laughter, 
comedies just don't seem as funny.  Keeping this in mind, 
I would rate <cite>Johnny Dangerously</cite> as a fair comedy.  
Even with a slight dispensation for poor attendance at 
an early show, it isn't really funny enough to get by.  
The idea behind it is neutral.  A spoof of gangster films 
starring Michael Keaton could have been quite funny, or 
it could have been a total loser.  <cite>Johnny Dangerously</cite> 
winds up somewhere in between.
<p>
The story is told in flashback, as Keaton, a pet store 
owner, cautions a youth against a life of crime, using 
his own life as an example.  This setup is a little 
shopworn, and is fairly typical of the entire film: 
a few good ideas well executed, a few good ideas thrown 
away, and several not so good ideas.  The remainder of 
the film is a parody of the rise-and-fall-of-the-gangster 
cliche.  Johnny, a basically good boy, is forced to enter 
a life of crime to pay for the treatment of his mother's 
bizarre ailments.  Meanwhile, his kid brother is studying 
law to become a crime-fighting DA.  Befriended by a kindly 
mob boss (Peter Boyle), Johnny Malone, under the pseudonym 
of the title, is becoming a wealthy and important figure 
in the crime rackets.  Eventually, inevitably, his incorruptible 
brother sets out to nail him, little knowing that his sibling 
is the notorious gangster.
<p>
They probably made a couple hundred films using variations 
on this plot during the 1930s, so it's ripe for parody.
The filmmakers have unwisely chosen to use <cite>Airplane!</cite> 
as their role model, however.  Without the zany inventiveness 
of the makers of that film, the all-out, anything-for-a-laugh 
approach collapses under the strain of too few funny jokes.  
The anachronisms and irrelevancies become tedious instead of
funny.  Somewhere along the line, someone must have thought 
that having Johnny switch from a Charleston to break dancing
was funny, someone must have thought that the mere mention 
of the Cambridge diet plan was amusing, and someone must have 
thought that having Maureen Stapleton, as Johnny's mother, 
perform obscene gestures was uproarious.  Well, they're not 
funny.  The ideas aren't funny and the execution isn't funny.
<p>
The last of these, the continuing and unlikely vulgarity of 
Maureen Stapleton's character, points up another plus and
minus of <cite>Johnny Dangerously</cite>.  There's a lot of sex and 
toilet humor in this film.  Most of it isn't funny, but some 
of the film's best moments come when an immigrant crime boss 
of unknown provinence mangles various dirty words into hilarious 
distortions which are clearly recognizable and yet almost
printable in family newspapers.  A couple other very funny 
moments arise from sex jokes.  Director Amy Heckerling, who 
last did <cite>Fast Times At Ridgemont High</cite>, is perhaps too 
willing to prove that being a woman doesn't keep her from 
telling dirty jokes.  I think the point is made after two 
films full of them, so she can now go ahead and only tell 
the funny ones.
<p>
<cite>Johnny Dangerously</cite> is filled with ambivalences.  Its 
treatment of violence is a good case in point.  Most of 
it is of the Roadrunner variety, where bombs explode and 
the victims emerge with scowls on their blackened faces.  
I would say that this is certainly the right approach, 
since you can't easily switch gears from farce to black 
comedy, and the latter is the only way death plays funny.  
Why, then, did the filmmakers choose to actually kill a 
couple of people?  At least one of the deaths seems motivated 
by plot demands, but working around it would very likely 
have provided a funnier twist.  The occasional outburst of 
real death is rather like finding a bit of bone in a 
chocolate souffle.
<p>
Michael Keaton doesn't seem as funny in this film as in 
<cite>Mr. Mom</cite> or <cite>Night Shift</cite>.  I don't think that parody is
Keaton's forte.  He seems to be more inventive in a realistic 
setting.  Also, Keaton shows no aptitude for working in a 
comic ensemble.  His previous films gave him almost all the 
jokes, with everyone else mostly serving as straightmen 
(and -women).  He's not nearly as good at receiving a joke 
as at telling one.  Joe Piscapo has a medium sized part
as a psychopathic hood.  As with Keaton, this part doesn't 
seem to play to his strengths.  Peter Boyle is amiable, Danny
De Vito is good as a corrupt DA, and Dom Deluise puts in a 
mercifully brief appearance.  Maureen Stapleton does well
enough with the persistent vulgarities dealt to her, but 
she deserves better.  Marilu Henner is OK as Johnny's 
girlfriend, and even gets a couple of good lines.  A number 
of fairly well known character actors show up for brief scenes,
and are mostly wasted.
<p>
<cite>Johnny Dangerously</cite> just isn't funny enough.  Everyone 
involved tries hard, but this sort of comedy makes me yearn
for the professionalism of the Marx Brothers, who tried out 
their gags on stage in front of audiences before putting them in
films.  Modern comedians and their directors could do much 
worse than to follow this example.
<p>
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