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Bugsy Malone (1976)
Director: Alan Parker
Movie review
From Time Out London
Watching it now, there’s something worryingly ‘wrong’ with Alan Parker’s ‘Bugsy Malone’. It’s not that this Prohibition-era musical, set principally in a Chicago speakeasy and peopled by young children who talk, act and sing like adults, has dated badly. It’s just difficult to pinpoint the film’s raison d’être, other than to sate the ambitions of a bunch of preening stage-school prima donnas, many of whom never graced the screen again. Paul Williams’ annoyingly hummable honky-tonk soundtrack punctuates proceedings, which graze the zenith of that seventies inclination towards sexualising teen performers (think ‘Minipops’ in America). Parker decks out his pre-pubescent cast (including a young Jodie Foster) in tight-fitting leotards and pencil moustaches, then ends the film with a creamy Splurge Gun massacre that probably would’ve made Freud blush. In hindsight, the novelty of subverting character and narrative to such a grand extent must have made Parker seem like the Spike Jonze of his day. Let’s be thankful it didn’t spawn a genre.Author: David Jenkins
Time Out London Issue 1894: December 6-13 2006
Cast & crew
Director: Alan Parker
Producer: Alan Marshall
Cast: Scott Baio, Jodie Foster, Florrie Dugger, John Cassisi, Martin Lev full cast
Genre(s): Children's
Duration: 93 mins
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