Bananas is a 1971 American comedy film directed by Woody Allen and starring Allen, Louise Lasser, and Carlos Montalban. Written by Allen and Mickey Rose, the film is about a bumbling New Yorker who, after being dumped by his activist girlfriend, travels to a tiny Latin American nation and becomes involved in its latest revolution.[1] Parts of the plot are based on the book Don Quixote, U.S.A. by Richard P. Powell.[2]
The film opens with Howard Cosell's coverage of the assassination of the president of the fictional "banana republic" of San Marcos and a coup d'état that brings Gen. Emilio Molina Vargas to power.
Fielding Mellish is a neurotic blue-collar man who tries to impress social activist Nancy by connecting with the revolution in San Marcos. He visits the republic and attempts to show his concern for the native people. However, Vargas secretly orders his men, disguised as Vargas's opponents, to kill Mellish to make the rebels look bad so that the U.S. will send Vargas financial aid. Mellish evades Vargas's assassins but is shortly captured by the real rebels. Vargas declares Mellish dead regardless, leaving Mellish no choice but to join the rebels for two months. Mellish then clumsily learns how to be a revolutionary. When the revolution is successful, Esposito, the Castro-style leader, goes mad. The rebels decide to replace him with Mellish as their president.
While traveling back to the U.S. to obtain financial aid, Mellish (sporting a long fake beard) reunites with Nancy and is exposed. In court, Mellish tries to defend himself from a series of incriminating witnesses, including a reigning Miss America and a middle-aged African-American woman claiming to be J. Edgar Hoover in disguise. One of the witnesses does provide testimony favorable to Mellish, but the court clerk, when asked to read back this testimony, replies with an entirely different, wholly unfavorable rendition. Mellish is eventually sentenced to prison, but his sentence is suspended on the condition that he does not move into the judge's neighborhood. Nancy then agrees to marry him. The film ends with Howard Cosell's coverage of the between-the-covers consummation of their marriage, an event that was over much more quickly than Nancy had anticipated, with Mellish anticipating a rematch in the early spring.
According to an interview in the notes of the film's DVD release, Allen said that there is absolutely no blood in the film (even during executions) because he wanted to keep the light comedic tone of the film intact.
Allen and Lasser had been married from 1966 to 1970 and were divorced at the time the film was made.
The title is a pun, "bananas" being slang for "crazy", as well as being a reference to the phrase "banana republic" describing the film's setting. When Allen was asked why the film was called Bananas, his reply was, "Because there are no bananas in it." Some writers have made the connection between this and The Cocoanuts, the first film by the Marx Brothers, by whom Allen was heavily influenced at the time, and which featured no coconuts.[7]
Bananas was well received by critics; receiving an 83% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 35 reviews with an average rating of 7.5/10.[9]
Vincent Canby of The New York Times praised the film, saying: "Allen's view of the world is fraught with everything except pathos, and it's a view I happen to find very funny. Here is no little man surviving with a wan smile and a shrug, but a runty, wise-mouthed guy whose initial impulses toward cowardice seem really heroic in the crazy order of the way things are." He concluded: "Any movie that attempts to mix together love, Cuban revolution, the C.I.A., Jewish mothers, J. Edgar Hoover and a few other odds and ends (including a sequence in which someone orders 1,000 grilled cheese sandwiches) is bound to be a little weird—and most welcome."[10]Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three stars out of four and called the opening scene "one of the funniest bits of film," though he thought the romance "gets in the way" and "could have been omitted easily."[11]Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote: "Allen seems to have been unable to figure a suitable finish for the plot, which does not so much peak as stop. Still the best jokes have a glorious insanity about them. Given the diminishing ability to laugh like blazing idiots these days, Bananas is welcome even if Allen is not quite at the top of his form."[12] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote that the film was "in a word, hilarious," and "an immense improvement" over Take the Money and Run.[13] Richard Combs of The Monthly Film Bulletin thought that "the gags seem a little brighter than in Take the Money," but also found the scattershot humor "too undisciplined and disparate."[14]John Simon wrote of the film's plot: "None of it makes for sense or solidly developing humor, and much of it is in bad taste".[15]
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