Deuces Wild

When I lived in New York City, one of the local TV channels filled 90 minutes every evening with a film. It just so happened that they had a 90 minute slot to fill. Since they ran about 30 minutes of commercials during the presentation, their challenge was to pick films that could be cut to 60 minutes of actual running time while retaining coherency. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it did not. I suppose the nadir of that programming concept was the time they ran Brigadoon, and in order to cut it to 60 minutes, they trimmed the songs.

Watching "Deuces Wild", I felt I was back to those days again. The San Francisco Examiner summed up Deuces Wild perfectly:

"Imagine a really bad community theater production of West Side Story without the songs."

NUDITY REPORT

none

DVD info from Amazon.

Full-screen format and a widescreen 1.85:1 anamorphic version

Actually, the film isn't as bad as the critics said, but it is utterly unoriginal. As I watched it, I had the feeling I had seen it before, even though I realized I had not. You know how they made "That's Entertainment" by showing a bunch of clips from the great musicals? Well, this movie could be called "That's Gangs", because it's like an A&E show about the history of Hollywood gang movies.

You younger guys may like it if you haven't seen a bunch of these before. If you've seen 'em before, this is the same old, same old.

The Critics Vote

General consensus: two stars. Apollo 75/100, filmcritic.com 1.5/5

Rotten Tomatoes summary. 3% positive.

The People Vote ...

IMDB summary. IMDb voters score it 5.5/10, Apollo voters 71/100

with their dollars: budget $10 million, domestic gross $6 million, which was very poor for 1500 screens.

IMDb guideline: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence, about like three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, about like two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, about like two stars from the critics. Films under five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film, equivalent to about one and a half stars from the critics or less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

My own guideline: A means the movie is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not good enough to win you over if you hate the genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an open mind about this type of film. C means it will only appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover appeal. D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if you love the genre. F means that the film is not only unappealing across-the-board, but technically inept as well.

Based on this description, this film is a D if you have seen any 50's gang movies, because it is the same old same old. If you have never seen one, it would be a C-. Production values are OK, and it's typical of the genre, albeit old fashioned for a new movie.