Image copyright © by Marcus Trahan

Don’t Drink the Water

(1994)

This movie is simply awful. I can’t fathom what prompted Woody Allen to do it, except that he must have felt like Stephen King did when he didn’t like Kubrick’s version of The Shining, so he remade it. It was originally a play and it was Woody’s first and it was very successful, running for 598 performances. Then a movie version was made starring Jackie Gleason, which I am not going to subject myself to. I guess Woody thought he could improve on that and, sight unseen, I am willing to believe that he did … which means the original version must have been a total disaster, because this one is near total. It might have been funny in the 1960s, but the world has moved on.