Repossessed

Americans don’t have much to laugh about these days, so they are rather inclined to watch very talented actors week after week for a decade or so pretend to be fey, cultured persons who have hobbled their sire. “They’re fey, they broke their father’s balls, it’s funny!” One hears America ringing with this sort of laughter.

That is why everyone overlooked Repossessed, they were in no mood to laugh. There’s nothing funny about going to the movies and seeing a blaring announcement for a sound system that has replaced the miraculous acuity of former times with an instrument of mere dullness, and at any rate always turned up so loud as to render its advertised betterment entirely indistinguishable. Nothing at all funny about this, but Repossessed makes fun of it.

Prostitutes line up at Our Lady of the Evening, parishioners are seated by a hostess, the collection plate gives change, and the altar has a built-in dishwasher for the chalice.

The hospital portico has one of those giant figures standing on it, usually advertising tire repair, but this time it’s a doctor.

Ernest & Fanny run a TV network, it’s their televangelism that drives a demon back inside you-know-who (the network’s offerings are entirely makeovers, “The New” Gentle Ben, “The New” Bridget Loves Bernie, etc.). She’s put on Exorcism Tonight, and the great battle ensues.

This is a very self-assured comedy, a satire in the Airplane! manner and in some ways an improvement (hard not to like the easy way the levitating and jostling bed lands one of its posts on a priest’s foot, just like that).