If you take works for what they are, you will be rarely disappointed. This light comedy is not different. Take it as it is and you might enjoy it. Although I could watch it as it came when I bought it, I asked a friend to add Spanish subtitles and waited for a while (it took him longer than usual because he did it on his spare time at a TV station where he does precisely that), because I wanted to understand and fully enjoy it. Fortunately I did. It is amusing, at times a bit on the gross side, but I suppose that was intended (no wonder with the plot and characters involved). In brief the story deals with a California young man whose Jewish grandpa dies in Las Vegas, when he is about to win a large sum of money. The guy has to fly there and bring the body home in record time for a proper funeral, but his best friend messes everything up when he tries to help. The plot involves wives, twins, a hotel manager, a convict, a a football hero, an ex-cheerleader, a kid, a café owner with a gun, a security guard, and many more characters. Ross Benjamin leads the cast as Stephen Ragusa, the grandson's best friend. He is a funny performer, who rounds up his character with his weird looks (in a sort of "Now I'm handsome, now I'm not" way). Samuel Gould acts as his complement, keeping Stephen's crazy ideas in perspective. And then there are these great performers who also contribute to the general zaniness: Charles Dennis (also writer and director), Charlene Blaine, Edward Asner, Mitzi McCall, Salli Saffioti, Rachelle Carson, Ian Abercrombie, Richard Horvitz and Kim Delgado, plus my all-time favorite Paula Prentiss in a funny brief scene. On the negative side, sometimes director Dennis allows sentimentality to intrude both aurally (with a sad piano – from a score by Larry Brown that most of the time is excellent) and visually (with silly flashbacks of old grandpa when he was alive), but it soon recovers. In a couple of scenes, Ross Benjamin seems to slow the action the way he delivers his lines, as when he tries to convince Erica (Blaine) to take him from L.A. to Las Vegas, along with his best friend Freddy (Gould), but in the end the scenes work effectively. I believe this motion picture was done with no other pretension than making a comedy that would make the viewer have a good time. I don't know the rest, but I did, and recommend it.
