![]() It's a long way from her goody-two-shoes role on "Designing Women," and there are times when she looks like Madonna's older sister, the one who could probably act. Much better is Annie Potts as the scheming sexpot wife willing to switch allegiance at the drop of a new checking account. ![]() The laughs are few and far between, even with Candy resorting to occasional disguises, and the humor has a depressing sense of de'ja` ha-ha. He remains a jovial character actor, but asking him to carry any film on those broad shoulders is a bit too much. "Who's Harry Crumb?" might have worked as a 20-minute skit, but the script (by Robert Conte and Peter Martin Wortmann) and the direction (by another SCTV alumnus, Paul Flaherty) are both sadly undernourished, which is certainly not the case with Candy. When the California Draisen concocts a scheme that involves kidnaping his biggest client's daughter to get $10 million so he can run off with that same client's money-hungry wife, he calls in Crumb, assuming that his incompetence will reinforce rather than hinder the plan. Harry Crumb, the last in a large line of detectives, has been exiled from the family agency for a decade while the smarmy Eliot Draisen (the smarmy Jeffrey Jones) runs the business in Los Angeles. Oblivious to his own ineptitude, Candy/Crumb resorts to slight gags and punchless lines to solve every mystery except the obvious one: Why can't anyone from the SCTV comedy troupe make the transition to the big screen? Candy is Crumb, a bumbling detective who makes Henri Clouseau look like Sherlock Holmes. Who could resist the temptation to call "Who's Harry Crumb?" a crummy movie? Certainly no one who's been unfortunate enough to see this lumbering vehicle for portly comedian John Candy. Still, you’re left glad that Candy, a sweet-natured clown who never loses his innate dignity, bows off leaving open the clear possibility of further adventures for Harry Crumb.‘Who’s Harry Crumb?’ (PG-13) By Richard Harrington When so much that passes for comedy these days is the humor of unrelieved crassness and elaborate mayhem-costing fortunes in special effects and involving legions of stunt people-it’s easy to oversell a light and modest laugh-out-loud entertainment like “Who’s Harry Crumb?” (rated PG-13 for mild raunchiness). Director Paul Flaherty brings to the film consistent good judgment and deftness. The film’s free-wheeling nonsense is nicely anchored in the mutually sustaining friendship that develops between Crumb and Nikki. Most important is the kidnaped woman’s teen-age sister Nikki (Shawnee Smith, a real winner), who teams up with Crumb and in doing so emerges from the shadow of her adored glamorous sibling. ![]() There’s the heiress’ enigmatic father (Barry Corbin) her outrageously sluttish and greedy stepmother (Annie Potts, a sexy comic delight) Potts’ rugged but thickheaded tennis-pro lover (Tim Thomerson) the laziest, most insolent butler you ever saw (Wesley Mann), and Crumb’s special nemesis, a super uptight cop (Valri Bromfield). Writers Robert Conte and Peter Martin Wortmann have come up with a gallery of deliciously skewered private-eye stereotypes. ![]() The egg is the special treasure of the smarmy head of Crumb & Crumb (Jeffrey Jones), who has his own reasons for summoning Harry, feckless grandson of the detective agency’s founder, to Los Angeles to help out in a kidnaping case in which a beautiful heiress (Renee Coleman) is being held for a $10-million ransom. You can be sure that a 90 million-year-old fossilized pterodactyl egg is in grave danger in his presence. In short, imagine Oliver Hardy playing Philip Marlowe. Don’t ask how he manages to end up on top of a ceiling fan. Seeing himself as a master of disguise, he dares to don jockey silks. ![]() Doors swing back to smack him in the nose, paper shredders make quick work of his ties, and supposedly stationary exercise bikes have a way of running out of control when he places his considerable bulk upon them. He’s in constant battle with objects inanimate and otherwise. In this pleasantly silly private-eye spoof, Crumb is a grand poseur, shamelessly self-important, slow on the uptake yet good of heart and not the complete fool he so often seems. “Who’s Harry Crumb?” (citywide)-he’s John Candy as the klutziest detective since Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau. ![]()
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