August 19, 2008
Low budget and cheesy.
Armand Assante,
Derek Gaspar,
Joe Piscopo,
John Brandon,
John Heard
...( see more
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When mob mule Lenny (Steven Bauer) goes missing with $5 million of boss Tony Thick's (Armand Assante) money, Tony sends Shady (Steve Baker) to Los Angeles to track down the cash. Once there, Shady run...( read more
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DVD Release Date: November 13, 2007
Stats: 8 reviews
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December 16, 2009Mystery DVD Club No 13: Dead Lenny
CJ Wheeler
The DVD's flavour is your basic vanilla with no extra features to speak of, although an interactive Spot the Plot game would not have gone amiss...The search for straight-to-video gold continues almost - but not quite - entirely in vain...
Published on Aug 27, 2009
Dead Lenny (2006) gives the impression of an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm gone wrong, only to have been purposely squirreled away on DVD. It confuses from the onset due to muddled direction and poor acting, beginning to make sense when it sinks in that the plot is so formulaic it is as though the cast are in some kind of time-loop, sentenced to perform the same farcical gangland nonsense in perpetuity.
It's a live-action Punch and Judy show with Mafioso character actors. Alas, by the end of the movie some aspects becomes endearing enough for it to be difficult to chide all of those involved.
With Dead Lenny, prolific straight-to-DVD writer-director and former Cats dancer Serge Rodnunsky has delivered a muddled race to find a hidden windfall. The opening credits establish that Lenny Long is bedridden in a coma somewhere, and the only people looking for him are more concerned about their welfare than his.
Lenny is portrayed by Steven Bauer, who was in Scarface but is probably deserving of greater respect for the odd episode of Nash Bridges, Relic Hunter and Walker, Texas Ranger. Lenny's wife, mistress, and brother are joined by his doctor in the search to find the unconscious mobster and his money before the other family does. This is a good start in theory, but practical concerns of structure and timing make the film drag and not easy to follow, and most of the actors do not help.
The most compelling presence is Shady (Steve Baker), an enforcer employed by stereotypical restaurant-dwelling mob capo Tony Thick (Armand Assante) to strong-arm and charm Thick's underling Lenny and his extended family into revealing the location of several million smackeroos that were entrusted to them.
The tagline is "Unfortunately Lenny's promised everyone the money", but Shady ends up stealing the screen instead of cash. Baker's subdued performance stands out in comparison with the other players to such a marked degree that it seems like a wandering thesp-shark happened by the set and decided to bait everyone into an impromptu acting contest. If Shady ever took off his sunglasses we'd definitely see him winking at the audience.
A duo of blondes played by Nicole Eggert (who was T.J. Hooker's daughter) and Whitney Able (All The Boys Love Mandy Lane) pout and bother the other characters with their problems like a pair of annoying schoolgirls. Able eventually lives up to her name and Baker's challenge though, and her character Eve, along with Shady, buoys up a Marie Celeste of discernible talent or narrative purpose.
Assante, for example, is barely intelligible, and former SNLer and Star Trek: The Next Generation guest star Joe Piscopo talks to himself and flails his arms around like he was added as a special effect Jar Jar-style during post-production.
It is hard to recommend Dead Lenny even for the legions of eager aficionados of Italian-American crime, be it wacky or otherwise. The DVD's flavour is your basic vanilla with no extra features to speak of, although an interactive Spot the Plot game would not have gone amiss.
Rodnunsky had a handful of capable actors to work with and the bare bones of a decent comedy, but, a lot like his main character, he failed to deliver. Even though some fun performances manage to catch attention, Dead Lenny is still a dead duck.
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