Bananas (1971)

Bananas (1971)

Close family and friends of mine know that I am obsessed with Woody Allen. I think Woody is the greatest writer and director of comedy and life of all time. His work will always trump over others in my book and will always be timeless. Anyways, some of my friends haven’t seen a lot of his early works, so we had a movie night were we watched the second movie he wrote, directed and starred in himself, Bananas.

Bananas is a very funny political satire on Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. Woody Allen plays Fielding Mellish (a consumer products tester) who becomes infatuated with Nancy (a political activist). He attends demonstrations and tries in other ways to convince her that he is worthy of her love, but Nancy wants someone with greater leadership potential. Fielding runs off to San Marcos where he joins the rebels and eventually becomes President of the country. He ends up doing all the work for the rebels because the leader, a man who looks and represents Fidel, says people just like him better. This actually happened with Che and Fidel. Then once they win independence, the leader takes over and wants Fielding to go to America to try and get support. Fidel did that with Che as well. While on a trip to the states, he meets Nancy again and she falls for him now that he is a political leader.

Nobody to famous is in this movie, as it is an early film, and at the time Woody didn’t have that big of a name yet. This was Sylvester Stallone’s first major picture. He didn’t have any lines in it though, but he was a subway thug who harasses people, and there is a funny silent film like chase scene in the subway between him and Woody. There were many funny characters in this movie, and it was entertaining for me to watch.

Some of my favorite parts were when the Leader of San Marcos (the guy who represents Castro) comes into power; makes a speech with a set of new rules. They were very funny. Things like “We will change our underpants every half hour, and we will wear them over our pants to make sure that we know you have changed them” or “everyone that is now under the age of 16, is now 16” I love Woody Allen’s silent film antics. You can tell he gets a lot of influence from the Marx brothers and early comedies done by Buster Keaton. The music in this was very fun, and seemed to fit every scene perfectly. I really liked the last scene of the movie, where Woody is on his honey moon night, and they make a sports news program with play by play steps of what was going on. It was very funny, and the interview of Fielding and Nancy was very funny.

Now some people might not like Woody Allen stuff. This is an early work of his, and so you really have to like Woody Allen’s antics to really appreciate this movie. As time went on, he got better and more experienced. With this, he knew what was funny, and what he wanted to see, so he shot it. Some people find his stuff boring and unfunny, and I feel it’s because they don’t really pay attention to what is going on. The humor is in facial expressions like in old silent films, and most of it is in-between the lines of his dialogue. You really have to pay attention to get the full experience. I recommended Woody Allen to anybody who wants to read a funny book or watch a funny movie.

This movie isn’t long; most of Allen’s films don’t go over 120 minutes. A fair warning to those who want to watch it, it is PG-13, but there is one begging scene were he is secretly trying to buy porn, and you seem some boob images. Its settle, but I feel that I should warn people of those things, because not everyone likes that stuff. No language really, and for the most part it is a clean film. This isn’t the best early Woody Allen film, but it’s a good one to see.