Life Stinks (1991)

It has its laughs, but it’s a more thoughtful film, more softhearted toward its characters. It’s warm and poignant.

The movie takes a while to hit its stride, and its conclusion is fairly slapdash, but somewhere in between are some of the funniest bits of low slapstick Brooks has ever come up with, and an overall uncloying sweetness helps to save much of the rest.

But if Brooks doesn't get the sting of reality he's looking for in Life Stinks, he does succeed with the film's fantasy elements-most memorably, a dance sequence set to Cole Porter's Easy to Love and performed by Warren and Brooks in a colorful used-clothing warehouse.

It's a risky movie, and an uneven one. But the impulses behind it are darker and stronger than in most of his previous comedies. Good or bad--and Life Stinks definitely has a weak, undeveloped side--I liked it.

The grim, black humour of yore sporadically breaks through the glossy sheen, providing moments of vintage vitriol.