The Pickle

by Stephen Farber

Two decades ago, Paul Mazursky's Alex in Wonderland was a meandering autobiographical opus about a filmmaker who was coming off a successful picture (Mazursky had just made Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice) and was confused about what to do next. Mazursky seemed just as bewildered as his protagonist; adorned with Felliniesque fantasy sequences, the movie lurched from one pointless interlude to another. Now, with The Pickle, Mazursky has once again aped 8 1/2 and lost his way. This time the hero, Harry Stone, has been chastened by a few flops and is frantically trying to reestablish his commercial viability with a youth-oriented sci-fi adventure about a flying pickle that lands on a distant planet. Mazursky himself is in desperate need of a commercial hit after Moon Over Parador, Enemies, A Love Story (which was at least a succes d'estime), and Scenes From a Mall, but The Pickle won't break his losing streak.

The movie's first problem is that Mazursky is much too adoring of his alter ego (played by Danny Aiello, who even looks a bit like Mazursky). A bevy of women are lusting after the paunchy Harry; he has a 22-year-old French girlfriend, and female fans are throwing themselves at him and tearing at his clothes. Even granting that movie directors have power that can win them sexual favors, Harry's supreme desirability seems like pure wish fulfillment on Mazursky's part. That isn't the only soft-headed touch. We are told that Harry neglected his family while he pursued his artistic muse, but he seems so solicitous when he's around his mother, ex-wives, children and grandchildren that he still comes off as a paragon. There's not nearly enough of an edge in the portrait of this obsessed auteur.

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The same woozy tone extends to Mazursky's depiction of the New Hollywood. Compared with The Player, The Pickle is stale and imprecise. Characters like the devoted agent, the officious publicist, the nervous distribution executive and the mindless fans are stock figures whom we've seen in many other Hollywood satires; they haven't been updated with any astuteness. One promising character is the gay studio executive played by Barry Miller; the characterization is politically incorrect, which would be less of a problem if only the details were sharper and more closely related to some of the real-life power brokers on whom this dithering idiot was probably modeled.

The film-within-the-film is not a whit more witty. One can appreciate that Mazursky wanted to make his sci-fi parody mind-bogglingly stupid, but this tale of farm kids and dour extraterrestrials has so little in common with the turkeys that the studios are actually producing these days that the joke falls flat. There's nothing offensive about The Pickle; it's merely limp and lifeless.

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