Film

Night Shift (1982)

Director: Ron Howard

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

All credit to Howard, Winkler and co-writer Lowell Ganz for bucking their Happy Days TV formula to cast Winkler as a shy, sad sack Wall Street wizard who runs away from the pressures into a job as night attendant at the morgue. Very funny he is too, whether cosseting his pet rubber plant, fighting a running duel with a ferociously neighbourly dog, or trying to make love with a girlfriend whose neuroses make coitus interruptus a way of life. Even brighter is his odd couple pairing with Michael Keaton in the Fonz role as a manic ideas man who bounces in, takes one look round at the mortuary drawers - 'What's in here? Stiffs and stuff? Neat!' - and soon has the bewildered Winkler turning his sanctum into a cooperative sanctuary for harassed prostitutes. Thereabouts the script begins to lose momentum, opting for frantic farce rather than pointed satire. Likeable, though.

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