Writer-director Alan Parker's feature debut Bugsy Malone is a pastiche of American movies, a musical gangster comedy set in 1929, featuring prohibition, showgirls, and gang warfare, with references to everything from Some Like It Hot to The Godfather. Uniquely, though, all the parts are played by children, including an excellent if underused Jodie Foster as platinum-blonde singer Tallulah, Scott Baio in the title role and a nine-year-old Dexter Fletcher wielding a baseball bat. Cream-firing "spluge guns" sidestep any real violence and the movie climaxes cheerfully... with the biggest custard pie fight this side of Casino Royale (1967). Unfortunately for a musical, Paul Williams's score--part honky-tonk jazz homage, part 1970s Elton John-style pop--lets the side down with a lack of memorable tunes. Nevertheless, Parker's direction is spot on and the look of the film is superb, a fantasy movie-movie existing in the same parallel reality as The Cotton Club and Chicago. A rare British love letter to classic American cinema, Bugsy Malone remains a true original; in Parker's words "the work of a madman" and one of the strangest yet most stylish children's films ever made. --Gary S. Dalkin [show more]
We will publish your review of Bugsy Malone [1976] on DVD within a few days as long as it meets our guidelines.
None of your personal details will be passed on to any other third party.
Alan Parker kids gangster musical satire is among the best loved movies of the 1970s and features a great cast, catchy song and dance routines and hilarious slapstick comedy. New York, 1929: a war rages between two rival gangsters, Fat Sam and Dandy Dan. Dan is in possession of a new and deadly weapon, the dreaded gun’. As the custard pies fly, Bugsy Malone (Happy Days’ Scott Baio), an all-round nice guy, falls for Blousey Brown, a singer at Fat Sam speakeasy. His designs on her are disrupted by the seductive songstress Tallulah (double Academy Award-winner Jodie Foster) who wants Bugsy for herself.
Alan Parker's musical spoof of gangster films features an all-child cast with guns that fire cream. When gang warfare erupts between Fat Sam and Dandy Dan, hustler Bugsy Malone (Scott Baio), singer Tallulah (Jodie Foster) and newly arrived showgirl Blousey Brown (Florrie Dugger) find themselves caught up in the middle of it.
This site uses cookies.
More details in our privacy policy
