A funny thing happened on the way to the bus station
We go onboard of our Tribe Time Machine today heading to August 1987, when Madonna‘s third major film, Who’s That Girl was released in the US.
The film, which had the working title of “Slammer”, is a nice and funny screwball comedy, which didn’t meet the hoped success but still remains a favourite of many Madonna fans. It was directed by James Foley with original music by Stephen Bray.
Vincet Canby from the New York Times who reviewed the film on August 8 1987 noted:
…two things are clear: Madonna, left to her own devices and her own canny pace, is a very engaging comedian, and the screenplay, by Andrew Smith and Ken Finkleman, contains a lot of raffishly funny ideas that get lost in the busyness of the physical production.
The story, which qualifies as screwball, is about 24 consciousness-raising hours in the life of Loudon Trott (Griffin Dunne), a yuppie Manhattan lawyer who’s about to marry his boss’s beautiful, frightfully rich, debutante daughter, Wendy Worthington (Haviland Morris). On the day before the ceremony, Dad Worthington (John McMartin) asks Loudon to do him one little favor, that is, pick up a young woman, Nikki Finn, from the prison where’s she been serving a four-year murder sentence and put her on a bus to Philadelphia.
Nikki Finn (Madonna) is a fast-talking amalgam of Bo-Peep, Marilyn Monroe and Calamity Jane. She’s perfectly willing to get on the bus, she tells Loudon, just as soon as she finds the rat who framed her. Involved in the ensuing mayhem are a handsome, 160-pound cougar, the ”baby” that Nikki elects to bring up, a magnificent Rolls-Royce Corniche convertible that, in the course of the 24 hours, is reduced to scrap, a pair of musical-comedy crooks and a pair of earnest New York cops assigned to tail Nikki and Loudon.
When Madonna’s no-nonsense pragmatism isn’t being twisted into poses of lovable eccentricity, the actress is sexy and funny and never for a minute sentimental. At times she looks amazingly like Marilyn Monroe, but the personality is her own, more resilient and more knowing. As the WASP-y sleeping prince, Mr. Dunne (”After Hours”) gives the most stylishly comic performance of a career that’s been largely underrated by the public. Though he seems to be Madonna’s foil, he provides the movie with its backbone, even in its most ludicrous moments. He may well be one of the most truly sophisticated straight men in the business today. The film is very short on outright guffaws. Its funniest moments are not the elaborately choreographed chases, not the big confrontation scenes nor even the scenes in which the cougar does some remarkable tricks. The laughs are almost all peripheral, as when Madonna explains why Cartier’s expected her to shoplift the gold cigarette case on the counter. ”They’re in business to sell jewelry,” she says. ”They use gold cigarette cases as loss-leaders.”
THE CAST – WHO’S THAT GIRL, directed by James Foley; screenplay by Andrew Smith and Ken Finkleman; story by Mr. Smith; director of photography, Jan DeBont; edited by Pembroke Herring; music by Stephen Bray; production designer, Ida Random; produced by Rosilyn Heller and Bernard Williams; released by Warner Brothers in summer 1987.