Love Is All There Is

The New York Times hailed this exuberantly as a romantic comedy back from the dead, but note that the tribute offered here in whatever degree to what the English call “yoof” was met with opprobrium by Boxoffice Magazine. “A fitfully pleasant diversion for undemanding senior citizens and the Lawrence Welk crowd”, said B.O.

Taylor & Bologna offer a major analysis of Romeo and Juliet along two significant lines. Snobbery accounts for the conflict (and the great thing about snobbery and reverse snobbery is the ignorance they reveal), then there is the “dying fall” of the Elizabethans, which is understood to make of the tomb scene rather more than a dirge. This, if any, is the one parody Shakespeare would have laughed at. It has the discrete bundle of perceptions Twain considered fundamental to any understanding of the plays, the one you won’t find in Yale or Pelican.

The style bears only superficial resemblances to John Cassavetes’ great and greatly overlooked Big Trouble, nevertheless Taylor & Bologna are the first to recognize it, if only as kindred spirits. The long, still take is eschewed for crowded cutting, but it’s the comic frame of mind that matters.

The many and varied jokes include just a soupçon of Cocteau’s Les Parents terribles, the Florentine caterer’s pronunciation of “catering hall” as “hole”, and the Sicilian caterer’s malapropisms, “indisposable” for “inconsolable”, among others.