Miss Right (La Donna Giusta)

Miss Right (1982) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Miss Right is a difficult movie to summarize. Reviews usually begin with a brief summary statement, like "The Forgotten Nightmare is a rare German Expressionist comedy ... " This movie is so poor that I'm not even sure how to summarize it, because I can't figure out why the filmmakers created it. I think they felt they were making sort of an Italian-style sex comedy, but the attempts at humor are so lame and the performances so unappealing that it's almost impossible to call it a comedy. The only real "tell" is that the performers act like they are in a comedy, delivering lines in the same tone of voice as Catskills comedians waiting for the drummer to deliver a rim shot. But the lines are all wrong. It's like they want to say, "Your mama is so fat that she didn't have children, she had suburbs," but it comes out "Your mama is so fat that she really should see a doctor."

Author/star William Tepper wrote this in 1982. As of the beginning of this year, this was his only leading role and his only screenplay. He played only two roles of any kind after this movie, and his last performing credit is in 1984. You might remember him. He's the guy who played Tom Hanks's doctor friend in Bachelor Party. That was his last role. There is a happy ending to his story, sort of. After being without a credit of any kind for two decades, he now has another screenplay credit in 2006, a Ray Romano movie called Grilled. While that comedy doesn't seem to be the next Duck Soup, it is rated a respectable 5.3 at IMDb, compared to 2.0 for the atrocious Miss Right. And that 2.0 seems a bit high to me. I rank it as the second-worst comedy I've ever seen, losing out only to an invincible champion, Adam Sandler's legendary Going Overboard, which is currently rated the third-worst film of all time at IMDb.

What's it about?

An American living in Rome as a UPI stringer has decided to change his life. He has recurring dreams and fantasies about a woman he can see quite clearly, but does not know. He senses that the dream-girl is Miss Right, and that his subconscious is warning him to start looking for his one true love instead of dallying with his many hot girlfriends. In order to accomplish this, he makes a dinner date with each of the hot girlfriends, in each case so he can break off the relationship, ultimately leaving him free to pursue his true love with a pure heart.

That's about it. He invites a bunch of women to his apartment, feeds them and dumps them. Since they all adore him for reasons unclear to the audience (hey, it's good to be the screenwriter), they react with varying degrees of despair. One half-heartedly tries to commit suicide. Another refuses to leave, and when he physically throws her out the door, she comes crashing back in through the window.

Astoundingly, his plan works. After he dumps the ballast from his life, he sees the living incarnation of his dream-girl in the streets. He strikes up a conversation and starts to romance her. There is the usual Italian-style twist. In the last scene we see him bringing her flowers at her art class, supposedly smitten with love, when he catches the eye of a beautiful art student. He is flirting with the student with his eyes as he gives his "true love" the flowers. The end.

I suppose I had the right idea in the first place. Maybe it is a German Expressionist comedy.

DVD INFO

The DVD is every bit as bad as the film itself. There are no features, and the film itself is obviously just a transfer of an old full screen, pan-n-scan, VHS print.

NUDITY REPORT

It does include a little bit of flesh from three famous women. Karen Black and Marie-France Pisier show their breasts. Margot Kidder shows a plumber's crack, and then exposes the side of her nipple in exactly one frame.

The Critics Vote ...

no major reviews online

The People Vote ...

IMDB summary. And that 2.0 might be a bit inflated because it includes a few bogus 10s. The top IMDb voters score it 1.6 - and that will now go down if I'm in that group.

The meaning of the IMDb score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics, or a C- from our system. Films rated below five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one and a half stars from the critics or a D on our scale. (Possibly even less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

Our own guideline:

A means the movie is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre.
B means the movie is not good enough to win you over if you hate the genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an open mind about this type of film. Any film rated B- or better is recommended for just about anyone. In order to rate at least a B-, a film should be both a critical and commercial success. Exceptions: (1) We will occasionally rate a film B- with good popular acceptance and bad reviews, if we believe the critics have severely underrated a film. (2) We may also assign a B- or better to a well-reviewed film which did not do well at the box office if we feel that the fault lay in the marketing of the film, and that the film might have been a hit if people had known about it. (Like, for example, The Waterdance.)
C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but will be considered excellent by people who enjoy this kind of movie. If this is your kind of movie, a C+ and an A are indistinguishable to you.
C means it is competent, but uninspired genre fare. People who like this kind of movie will think it satisfactory. Others probably will not.
C- indicates that it we found it to be a poor movie, but genre addicts find it watchable. Any film rated C- or better is recommended for fans of that type of film, but films with this rating should be approached with caution by mainstream audiences, who may find them incompetent or repulsive or both. If this is NOT your kind of movie, a C- and an E are indistinguishable to you.
D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. We don't score films below C- that often, because we like movies and we think that most of them have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know that, you should have serious reservations about any movie below C-. Films rated below C- generally have both bad reviews and poor popular acceptance.
E means that you'll hate it even if you love the genre.
F means that the film is not only unappealing across-the-board, but technically inept as well.

Based on this description, this film is an F in this particular DVD, which is a rip-off. The film would be an E if it were cleaned up and re-mastered.