Heavenly Blue

For some random reason, we decided to watch another classic SNL pairing: Steve Martin and Rick Moranis: My Blue Heaven (1990). OK, SNL and SCTV.

This movie is sort of the sequel to Goodfellas (I guess, never seen it). When Nick Pileggi was writing Goodfellas, he spent a lot of time on the phone with Henry Hill. Pileggi's wife, Norah Ephron, got pretty fed up listening to Hill's bullshit, and wrote My Blue Heaven about his time in witness protection.

Basically, FBI desk jockey Rick Moranis relocates Steve Martin in Squaresville, CA outside of San Diego. Martin is a New Yawk mobster with a moussed haircut and some flashy suits. He has to lay low until he can testify in a murder trial. He soon discovers how many other mobsters are in protection in this town (including William Hickey as a pet shop owner). He also meets and makes an enemy of the cute but strait-laced Assistant DA in town, Joan Cusack. She's not his type, but he thinks he can set her up with Moranis.

So while Martin and friends start a low-key crime wave, he also tries to get Moranis to loosen up. When they go to New York for the trial, he hits the clubs with Moranis and teaches him to do the merengue. This is the reason we wanted to see this - to see Steve Martin effortlessly, and Moranis a little more clumsily, do this dramatic Latin dance.

Later, when Moranis takes Cusack to a party, he shows the lessons he's learned by slipping the band leader a tip and dancing the merengue with Joan. Since she's a head taller than him, it looks funny, until he takes off. It's one of my favorite dance scenes, and I have watched a lot of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. 

It ends happily for everyone, even Moranis' partner Bill Irwin. If you don't know Irwin, he's an incredible physical comedian. One of his gags is to try not to dance. First his shoulders twitch, then his feet move, and soon he's doing a wild rubber-legged routine, while trying to keep a straight face and tamp down the joy. 

One thing this movie reminded me is that Norah Ephron is a great screenwriter. In the hands of this cast, and director Herbert Ross, it can't miss.