Year of Eastwood #21

Pink Cadillac (1989)

Starring: Eastwood, Bernadette Peters
Directed by Buddy Van Horn

Can Clint do comedy? This question seems to have mixed results. Clint had success with Hey Lookout for That Monkey but critics didn’t appreciate his down-home style of humor. The rest of Clint’s attempts at comedy follow the same guidelines … a lot of stereotypes, a few fart jokes, and Clint playing off his image as a tough, bad ass.

Action stars have a hard time making that transition to comedies, but dagnabbit if they don’t keep trying. Stallone had Stop! or my mom will do something. Arnold tried it with that one where he got pregnant. Harrison Ford did something where he was trapped on an island with a lesbian. Bruce Willis kinda flipped it by being funny on Moonlighting before the Die Hard, um, quadrology (?) - although I’m having trouble thinking of any funny movies he’s made since then.

Pink Cadillac tries to mix it up with a little bit of comedy thrown into the blender with some action. Nothing really funny to speak of in this movie, although to Clint’s credit - he is the funniest thing in this clunker. Clint is a “skip tracer” or a modern day bounty hunter. He gets to break out a few wacky characters as he fools these chumps on the run. But when his next job is to track down the bubbly Bernadette, he gets more than he bargained for … or at least I’m sure that’s what the trailer promised.

Bernadette has a lot of hair. Rumor has it that it even had its own agent. Bernadette sure is cute, but despite her place in my heart for The Jerk, she just isn’t that interesting as an actress. The movie just plods along and both actors don’t really seem that invested in making this a good movie.

Clint and Permadette ride around in the pink Cadillac running from her husband’s gang of racist baddies. Then Permadette and Clint ride around in the pink Cadillac chasing after the bad guys. Somewhere in there's some stuff about a baby that nobody seems too concerned about. A person might wonder how she got involved with a guy that hangs around a bunch of white extremists ... she says she thought she was getting James Dean but all she got was amphetamines. That's the jokes, people.

Nothing screams comedy like a bunch of white supremacists. These guys really play it out like their doing freakin' Shakespeare - digging down deep for their craft. What do you suppose those casting calls are like for roles like these? Were they really hoping to get their big break by playing a racist in Pink Cadillac? Is that a role you spend much time researching? Do you encourage family members to click on your link on imdb.com?

Looking back at Clint’s acting career, the 80’s were a pretty rough time for this superstar. It started out with Any Which Way You Can and he wrapped up the decade with this flop which ranks as one of Clint’s least successful films at the box office. One can only imagine that Clint’s career would have continued it’s downward slide if he didn’t have Unforgiven in his back pocket. But hey, Clint did get to put on a gold lamet jacket and a swanky fake mustache for this movie.