Jumpin 'Jack Flash (film)

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Movie
German title Jumpin 'Jack Flash
Original title Jumpin 'Jack Flash
Jumpin Jack Flash.png
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1986
length 101 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Penny Marshall
script Chris Thompson ,
David Franzoni ,
Charles Shyer
(as JW Melville),
Nancy Meyers
(as Patricia Irving),
Steven E. de Souza
(not mentioned in the credits)
production Lawrence Gordon ,
Joel Silver
music Thomas Newman
camera Matthew F. Leonetti
cut Mark Goldblatt
occupation
synchronization

Jumpin 'Jack Flash is an American feature film by Penny Marshall from 1986. The spy - comedy provided a young black bank clerk ( Whoopi Goldberg ) at the center that receives the call for help of an agent on their computer and then west in the crosshairs and Eastern secret services device. For Goldberg it was the first film after her Oscar- nominated role in The Color Purple and launched her career as a film comedian. While the production of Marshall, who was still inexperienced in the cinema, was largely criticized, contemporary specialist critics praised the performance of the leading actress. The film was produced by Lawrence Gordon ( Lawrence Gordon Productions ), Joel Silver ( Silver Pictures ) and 20th Century Fox .

action

Teresa "Terry" Dolittle is a bank clerk who uses her computer in an open plan office in a New York bank to handle transfers. She talks to her customers all over the world via her computer and gives love advice, cooking recipes and likes to ask how they are. That makes her popular with business partners and colleagues, but not with her boss, the conservative James Page. This prohibits her from continuing to maintain private contacts via the company network. And so it is also difficult for her to break this rule when suddenly a stranger appears in the chat room of the bank computer and introduces himself as Jumpin 'Jack Flash. But since her curiosity prevails, she chats with the ominous Jack, who doesn't really dare to write because the line to her computer is not secure. He demands that she first find out the access key to his computer before he reveals any further information.

Because of the mention of the song Jumpin 'Jack Flash the Rolling Stones Terry can guess the code and come back in touch with Jack. He reveals to her that he is a DIS secret agent who is stuck in Eastern Europe and is being persecuted by the KGB . Terry must now go to the British Consulate , ask for Department C and deliver the important message that the dog is barking and that he cannot fly without a parachute. At the embassy, ​​she meets the alleged head of Department C, Jeremy Talbot. However, he does not take her seriously and sends her home. Discouraged by this, she thinks it is all just a joke again and is also difficult to convince Jack to go to his apartment to take a frying pan with Jack's CIA contacts engraved on it.

In Jack's apartment, Terry realizes that it shouldn't be a joke after all, because the luxury apartment really does seem to be inhabited by a Jack who is also not unlikely to her, as she concludes from details of the furnishings and his voice on the answering machine . She also quickly finds the frying pan and realizes that the situation is more serious than expected because she is being followed. After calling the first name on the frying pan, she meets with Mark Van Meter at the port and tries to chat with him. He pushes her into the East River to save her from an assassination attempt, but is shot herself in the process. When she tries to tell the police about the story, she is declared insane and is only allowed to roam free thanks to the help of her new work colleague Marty.

When Jack finds out about this during the next chat, he is horrified and wants Terry to stop, but she is determined to keep helping him. Finally, he asks her to break into the British embassy to tap into the central computer so that Jack can find out who his contacts are in order to be able to escape from Eastern Europe. Disguised as a Diana Ross imitator, Terry succeeds in entering the embassy. After tapping into the computer with some difficulty, Jack can try to gain access to the computer the next time he chats. But unfortunately he doesn't get very far because the machine is switched off.

Further contact information can be obtained from a previous lover of Jack. But after Terry has transmitted this, she is overwhelmed and wakes up in a dark room in the presence of two KGB agents and Talbot, who turns out to be a mole . They reveal their plan to Terry that only Terry could lead them to Jack and, thanks to the wrong contact details, Jack now runs into a trap. Shortly before Terry is about to be killed, she escapes and rushes to her office to tell Jack via chat that the data is wrong. But the KGB agents and Talbot follow her and can be eliminated by Marty, whose real name is Peter Caine and is an undercover agent for the CIA. Now Jack can return home and keep his promise to have dinner with Terry.

However, Terry is transferred to dinner together. Instead, Marty appears shortly before the shop closes and tells her that Jack could not come because he was held up in London because of the Queen . The next day, Jack reports to Terry again on his computer. But she is still so deeply disappointed that she lets him off. But this time Jack has really appeared and is already sitting in the same open-plan office, so that the two of them finally meet.

production

The shooting of the film with the original working title Knock, Knock (alluding to the chat greeting used by Jacks and Terry) was problematic. During the shoot, the script was constantly rewritten. Director Penny Marshall replaced the originally planned Howard Zieff , who had been released ten days after shooting began due to "artistic differences". She had previously only worked as a director for television. Marshall was by the two producers Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver and the production manager of Fox , Barry Diller selected. Marshall worked with them to direct four episodes of the Laverne & Shirley series for Paramount Pictures .

Marshall described the "dirty" language used by leading actress Whoopi Goldberg as a problem during filming (the white actress Shelley Long was originally intended for the part). “Since I've been involved in television for a long time, I work a little cleaner than Whoopi. It avails itself of the comedy clubs and a freedom of language that television simply does not allow. We can't even say 'doing it' on TV, ” says Marshall. The director had to clean up the dialogue, which was rather designed for the economically less favorable R-Rating . This would have prohibited viewers under the age of 17 from attending the performance without an adult.

publication

The film was released in US theaters on October 10, 1986, and was able to bring in $ 6 million of its $ 18 million production costs in 1080 theaters on the opening weekend. Overall, the film had grossing US $ 29.8 million and reached third place as the highest place on the American box office. In West Germany , the film was shown in cinemas from March 5, 1987 and landed at number 28 in the German cinema annual charts in 1987 with 862,051 admissions. And after the film was released on VHS in January 1988 , its first German television broadcast was on November 4, 1994 Sat.1 .

criticism

The film received mostly poor reviews. The Rotten Tomatoes website counted only 5 positive out of 18 professional reviews, which corresponds to a value of 28%. However, the film was received by the general public with mixed to partly benevolent reactions, because at the same time 55% of 45,261 users rated the film positively. This in turn is confirmed by the online film archive IMDb , another platform on which normal users can submit their film reviews, because there 13,216 users gave the film an average of 5.7 out of 10 possible points. (As of October 20, 2014)

English language review

Roger Ebert criticized in the Chicago Sun-Times that only Whoopi Goldberg in the film was original and interesting (Whoopi Goldberg is the only original or interesting thing about “Jumpin 'Jack Flash”.) . She is also so good that she outbids the script, which only offers her a character who lives lonely and has no real friends. This is not only a waste of talent, but also a lack of sympathy and human warmth (Her character lives alone, seems to have no real friends and is treated by the screenplay at arm's length. This is a waste not only of talent, but also of warmth and charm: Despite everything, Goldberg survives this movie as a likable, interesting, warm and infectiously funny person.) . He also heavily criticized the director's shaky hand, who simply does not manage to present a coherent story (Under the shaky hand of director Penny Marshall, the story doesn't even achieve coherence.) .

Vincent Canby praised Whoopi Goldberg's good and disciplined performance in the New York Times and her ability to take back herself in order to be fully absorbed in a character (good, disciplined performance […] capable of submerging her own personality in the interests of a particular characterization) . However, he also hoped that Goldberg's first comedy to date would also remain her worst so far (her first and - let's hope - her worst motion-picture comedy) . And he continued to criticize the film, which in his opinion is an extremely weak espionage story (extremely dim espionage caper) .

The film received two reviews in the Washington Post within a few days. On October 10, 1986 , Rita Kempley praised Whoopi Goldberg as a charismatic comedienne , compared her to Eddie Murphy and his film Beverly Hills Cop and said that she turned a normal action comedy into an extraordinarily entertaining escapade (Goldberg is to " Jumpin 'Jack ”what Eddie Murphy was to“ Beverly Hills Cop ”, a lone actor who turns a generic action comedy into an exceptionally enjoyable escapade) . However, only four days later, on October 14, 1986, Paul Attanasio completely tore this film down. He noted cynically that even four screenwriters could not write any real human conflict into the film and that even the director was of no help to them (It took four screen writers (let's leave them, with mercy, anonymous) to come up with a story that has no real character conflict, and director Penny Marshall, in her debut, doesn't help them any.) . She also patronized Goldberg (Worse, Marshall patronizes Goldberg) and Attanasio wondered if Goldberg was even able to play comedies (Whether Goldberg has a talent for movies (and I leave that to you), “Jumpin 'Jack Flash” is engineered around her, to an overwhelming degree) .

German language criticism

The contemporary German-language critics were largely just as impressed by Goldberg's talent as a comedian, but criticized the film. The film service found the gifted Whoopi Goldberg was selling below value after her Oscar- nominated role in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple (1985). The story of her second film is “too simple” and “too keen on satisfying all ages.” Except for a few “pretty gigs” , Jumpin 'Jack Flash remains clichéd and too interested in the marketing of Goldberg.

Eva-Maria Lenz ( Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ) remarked that Whoopi Goldberg in the lead role of Terry shows himself from an astonishingly different side, “as a boyish, capricious joker” , which does not leave the viewer indifferent. With regard to the role of the computer, Lenz drew references to John Badham's film WarGames (1983). Jumpin 'Jack Flash series “less conclusive than spectacular” hair-raising and breakneck dangerous situations. The “cheeky comedy” is also an “electronically equipped, emancipatory version” of the fairy tale Cinderella . In the end, however, it is not the wedding that stands, but the improved career prospects of the main character.

Die Zeit , who complained about the script texts of the lousy film that was put into the mouth of the “talented live entertainer” , made similar observations about Whoopi Goldberg . Goldberg himself is not yet the female counterpart to Eddie Murphy , but the American counterpart to Didi Hallervorden .

The lexicon of international films saw in the film a “partly funny and exciting espionage adventure with a romantic background, whose parodistic approaches get stuck in the naive worldview.” Ways."

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Company credits in the Internet Movie Database (accessed May 16, 2011).
  2. ↑ a b Abramowitz, Rachel (2000). Is That a Gun in Your Pocket? Women's Experience of Power in Hollywood . New York: Random House, ISBN 0-679-43754-1 , p. 296-298.
  3. ↑ cf. AP : Penny Marshall Directs First Film . October 28, 1986 (accessed via LexisNexis Wirtschaft ).
  4. ↑ cf. Lormand, Richard: 'Laverne' (or is it Shirley?) Tries her hand at directing . In: The Globe and Mail, October 16, 1986, p. D4.
  5. ↑ Jumpin 'Jack Flash on boxofficemojo.com , accessed on May 15, 2011th
  6. ↑ TOP 100 DEUTSCHLAND 1987 on insidekino.de , accessed on October 23, 2011
  7. ↑ Jumpin 'Jack Flash on ofdb.de , accessed on May 15, 2011th
  8. ↑ Jumpin 'Jack Flash on rottentomatoes.com , accessed on May 15, 2011th
  9. ↑ Roger Ebert: Jumpin 'Jack Flash on suntimes.com from October 10, 1986 ( English ), accessed on May 15, 2011.
  10. ↑ Vincent Canby : SCREEN: WHOOPI GOLDBERG IN 'JUMPIN' JACK FLASH ' on nytimescom from October 10, 1986 ( English ), accessed on May 15, 2011.
  11. ↑ Rita Kempley : 'Jumpin' Jack Flash '(R) on washingtonpost.com of October 10, 1986 ( English ), accessed on May 16, 2011
  12. ↑ Paul Attanasio: 'Jumpin' Jack Flash '(R) on washingtonpost.com October 14, 1986 ( English ), accessed May 16, 2011
  13. ↑ cf. Critique in film-dienst 04/1987 (accessed via Munzinger Online ).
  14. ^ Lenz, Eva-Maria: Comedy with moments of shock . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 13, 1987, p. 29.
  15. ↑ cf. Contemporary criticism at zeit.de, March 13, 1987 (accessed May 15, 2011).