THE IMPOSTERS

• Starring Stanley Tucci, Oliver Platt (pictured) and Steve Buscemi
• Directed by Stanley Tucci
• Rated R, with profanity and sexual references; running time 102 minutes
• With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film an 8

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(Oct. 2, 1998) -- Manic movie gives us a heap of high jinks on the high seas Think of acting as a con game. It's the big lie, elevated to an art form.

And that's how Arthur and Maurice survive in The Impostors, the amusing new slapstick farce from writer-director-actor Stanley Tucci.

Arthur (Tucci) and Maurice (Oliver Platt) are out-of-work actors of the 1930s who practice their craft whenever they can.

They stage a mock duel in Central Park to shock passers-by, and they enact an elaborate melodrama in the neighborhood pastry shop to fool the baker to feed them free cream puffs.

But their acting gets more serious when they become stowaways on a cruise ship -- and their performances become a matter of life and death. After all, a mad anarchist (Tony Shalhoub) is on board, and he plans to blow the ship to smithereens. And the mad bomber is just one of many problems.

Created by Tucci in the madcap style of Laurel and Hardy or the Marx Brothers, The Impostors follows the idiotic misadventures of Arthur and Maurice on a virtual ship of fools.

Among their shipmates is a despairing, suicidal singer, ironically named Happy (hilariously played by Steve Buscemi), a love-sick Prussian head steward (an equally hilarious Campbell Scott), a pretentious, overacting thespian (a flamboyant Alfred Molina), a gay Scottish tennis player (Billy Connolly), a mysterious queen (Isabella Rossellini) in flight from a military coup, and a charming, unruffled head stewardess (Lily Taylor).

Scott, Shalhoub and Rossellini previously worked with Tucci in the more restrained and sublime Big Night. In comparison, all stops are out as comic anarchy rules in this latest outing.

It's foolhardy for a film to consciously invite comparisons with Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers, because few performers can hope to maintain that classic comic intensity. And, indeed, The Impostors sometimes sags.

But fortunately, Tucci's clever script and talented cast generate more than enough laughs to regain the viewers' attention.

As the bungling, straight-faced heroes, Tucci and Platt look like they've been doing this sort of schtick for years (and, indeed, the film traces its roots back to acting exercises they devised years ago).

The supporting actors, especially Buscemi and Scott, have definitely caught their manic spirit. And so will the audience. This much fun is contagious.