Comedy

Jack Walsh (Robert De Niro) is a tough ex-cop turned bounty hunter. Jonathan "The Duke" Mardukas (Charles Grodin) is a sensitive accountant who embezzled $15 million from the Mob, gave it to charity and then jumped bail. Jack's in for a cool $100,000 if he can deliver The Duke from New York to L.A. on time. And alive. Sounds like just another Midnight Run (a piece of cake in bounty hunter slang), but it turns into a cross-country chase. The FBI is after The Duke to testify-the Mob is after him for revenge-and Walsh is after him to just shut up.

Dudley Moore stars as Rob, a TV reporter married to a dedicated career woman. As a result, they rarely spend time together and he falls for a cellist. When she becomes pregnant, Rob decides to marry her—but when he decides to tell his wife, she tells him she’s pregnant. He secretly marries the cellist and has a busy time taking care of both wives and keeping them from discovering the truth. Stars Dudley Moore (Arthur), Amy Irving (TV's "Alias"), Ann Reinking (All That Jazz) and Richard Mulligan (TV's "Soap").

Chevy Chase and Darryl Hannah star in, and John (Halloween) Carpenter directs a lighthearted adventure: a Wall Street analyst becomes invisible after a lab accident, leading to complications both comic and romantic. Chevy Chase plays a investment banker who gets exposed to fusion energy and becomes invisable. Daryl Hannah plays a TV/film maker who discovers what happened to him, and falls in love with him (the romance is actually honest, and not cliched). There are some good ILM effects work and the ending is not a tragic one - it's a comedy with a bit of heart.

Randy Newman's opening song, "A Fool in Love," perfectly sets up the movie that follows. The lyrics begin, "Show me a man who is gentle and kind, and I'll show you a loser," before praising the man who takes what he wants. Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) is the fool in love in Meet the Parents. Just as he's about to propose to his girlfriend Pam (Teri Polo), he learns that her sister's fiancÈ asked their father, Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro), for permission to marry. Now he feels the need to do the same thing.

Marking a welcome return to the breezy style of Thelma & Louise, Ridley Scott's Matchstick Men reminds us that the director of Gladiator is equally adept with quirky comedies and offbeat characters.

Bill Cosby, Raquel Welch and Harvey Keitel head an all-star cast in this wildly inventive comedy about an offbeat ambulance service that's funny enough to cause it's own medical emergency. In a scheme to beat out competing ambulance services, an ace driver (Cosby), an office secretary paramedic (Welch) and a suspended cop (Keitel) resort to some outrageous behavior to help people in distress. They're one crazy crew whose condition is even more critical than their clients!

Now here's a switcheroo: In a movie about a mild-mannered police photographer who is befriended by a swaggering gangster, Bill Murray plays the gangster and Robert De Niro plays the photographer. Directed by John McNaughton from a script by Richard Price, this comedy-drama has its moments but never quite lifts off. De Niro plays a shy type nicknamed Mad Dog who accidentally saves Murray's life. In gratitude, Murray "gives" him a girl, Glory (Uma Thurman), who is supposed to satisfy his needs and make him feel good. Instead, the photographer falls in love with her.

Adapted from a popular French comedy-thriller, The Man with One Red Shoe follows a concert violinist (Tom Hanks) used as a patsy in a conflict between two rival factions of the CIA. Singled out at the airport solely because he's wearing mismatched shoes, Hanks is henceforth believed to be a mole with important information; a rogue crew of agents follows him, searches his apartment, and even seduces him in order to find out what he knows. At the same time, loyal agents--who also believe he's a mole--follow and protect him from predation by the rogues.

Wallace Ritchie, an American vacationer in London, doesn't know that the bullets are real and the truth serum true. He thinks the intrigue erupting around him is part of an audience-participation theater event. Yet the world's fate depends on this gullible goofus who can't even spell CIA. Bill Murray is Ritchie, the naive spy who comes in very bold in The Man Who Knew Too Little. He can't believe how believable the make-believe is.

A perfume magnate (Barbra Streisand), with plenty of chutzpah, falls victim to an embezzling employee who takes her for everything she owns. Well, almost everything.... There is one $60,000 investment that still belongs to her -- a washed up prizefighter (Ryan O'Neal) with a sore paw, whose talents had been purchased as a tax write-off. Seeing him as her only chance to recoup some of her former wealth, she decides to manage the mild-mannered boxer's career herself. Can she stimulate a return to championship form?