# Rhinestone (1984)

### reviewed by
James Sanford

Think of all those great cinematic couples: Clark Gable and Carole Lombard; Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy; Rock Hudson and Doris Day; Woody Allen and Diane Keaton. Does the teaming of Sylvester Stallone and Dolly Parton sound like a pairing to rank with the likes of those? If you say no right off the bat, you can spare yourself the agony of sitting through "Rhinestone," which takes two miserable hours to demonstrate the total lack of chemistry between these two stars, both of whom proceed through the film looking as if they lost a bet with their agent. "Rhinestone" tells of successful country singer Jake Ferris (Parton, not exactly cast against type) who, thanks to a lousy contract, is stuck performing nightly in the Rhinestone, the rowdiest club in New York. Tired of dodging her boss (Ron Leibman) and his lecherous moves, Jake makes a deal with him: If, within two weeks, she can turn an ordinary guy off the street into a convincing balladeer, he'll have to release her from her glitzy prison to seek better prospects. And who should stumble onto the scene but Nick Martinelli (Stallone), a mouthy Italian-American cab driver who claims to hate country music "worse than liver," one of the film's many rib-tickling one-liners. After Jake's meddling costs him his job, Nick agrees to go along with the transformation process. "My Fair Rocky," anyone? "Rhinestone" is a depressing affair and much of the blame can be placed squarely on Stallone's brawny shoulders. His idea of comic acting is to yell as loud and as often as possible, generally while striking goofy poses. But even that shtick is preferrable to his singing, which frequently sounds like a malfunctioning chainsaw and would be better-suited to a heavy-metal act. In addition, through his overhauling of Phil Alden Robinson's screenplay, Stallone has managed to squeeze himself into nearly every scene, banishing Parton to the sidelines, where she tries valiantly to look amused and charmed by his antics; she succeeds only in coming off like a weary hostess waiting for an obnoxious drunken guest to pass out so she can put the lampshade back where it belongs. Parton gets no respect from director Bob Clark ("Porky's") either, who seems to have been unable to utter the word "cut" when it came to Stallone's hamming. Small wonder Parton only looks at ease when she's singing, and thankfully Stallone excuses himself from the picture on a couple of occasions to allow her time to warble a few pleasant tunes. Parton should not feel alone in having been slighted by the script, which doggedly goes out of its way to offend everyone in the vacinity -- not to mention the audience. At least it's equal-opportunity stereotyping, as Stallone's wildly gesticulating, lip-smacking parents are every bit as intolerable as Parton's "golly gosh" backwoodsy friends. A breezy pace might have helped to obscure the poor writing and awkward performances, but Clark offers no help in that department. "Rhinestone" plods along, stopping dead in its tracks everytime Stallone feels the need to mug for the camera or deliver an unintelligible, unfunny ad lib. The capper to this fiasco is an utterly ridiculous finale in which Jake and Nick storm the stage of the Rhinestone, wailing "Stay Out of My Bedroom" ("Stay Out of the Theater" might have been a more inspired choice) and wisecracking about each other as if they were the Sonny and Cher of country music. They should live so long. James Sanford

The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews