So Fine (1981) July 1st, 2024

So Fine popped up on the Criterion Channel around the time I began the quest to watch more 80s comedies. I loved Paper Moon but hadn’t seen Ryan O’Neal in much else since then and a new-to-me film written and directed by Andrew Bergman the writer of lauded comedies like Blazing Saddles and Fletch was endorsement enough to give So Fine a shot. I should’ve watched anything else.

A senseless farce, So Fine examines the age old question of what would happen if an english professor was forced by organized criminals to work for his father’s clothing company? Nothing funny, that’s what happens. The poorly supported premise plus the dry and unfunny comedy converge into an experience I need like a hole in my pants.

What a convenient and unforced segue! See, Bobby Fine’s (Ryan O’Neal) big break comes when he accidentally invents assless denim jeans which become a huge fad among women. This financial success saves his father’s business but now Bobby’s in a different pot of hot water, he’s schtupping the gangster’s wife Lira (Mariangela Melato)! Eddie, the poorly written brute played by Richard Kiel, learns of his wife’s affairs and sets out to murder the two adulterers. So far we only know Eddie as a criminal because of expository dialogue, I don’t remember seeing him commit any other crimes. Actually, all I really remember him doing is being a little sweetheart. He likes playing pinball, dancing at discotechs, and sleeping in comically long nightgowns. Contextually he’s a bad guy but at the same time, he’s the victim here.

I don’t understand this writing choice, conventional protagonists are relatable and heroic, and if not then they’re at least sympathetic. Bobby isn’t really any of that. He’s a subpar English Professor, a worse fashion designer, and a guy who destroyed someone elses marriage. The climactic confrontation happens when Eddie confronts Bobby and Lira while they hideout on the set of a live opera performance. You can expereince an accelerated version of all that is wrong with So Fine just by watching this one sequence and skip the rest if you just can’t skip the rest all together. They fight but also, they sing. Eddie and Lira perfectly perform the opera at each other, in makeup, on the stage while subtitles occassionally incorrectly translate what they’re singing into words barely contextually relevant to the story. This bit COULD work, it doesn’t but it COULD. The reason it doesn’t is because the subtitled translations appear about half as often and with half as much relevant text as they should leaving about fifty percent of the sequence strangely subtitleless.

Eventually Bobby and Lira marry in Italy and the So Fine experience mercifully ends. There will always be flops, and there will always be dumb comedies I don’t find funny. Humor’s subjectivity is a blessing and a curse. Where I don’t find So Fine funny, you might, but I wouldn’t reccomend you try it to find out.