Roxanne (1987)

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Steve Martin, Daryl Hannah, Rick Rossovich and Shelly Duvall star in this 1987 comedy based on the play, "Cyrano de Bergarac." Martin (The Jerk) plays Charlie, a fire chief with a unique nose which becomes handy for his profession. Hannah (Splash) plays the title character who is an astronomer he falls for. Rossovich (Top Gun) plays firefighter, Chris who joins Charlie's team and who also falls for Roxanne. He seeks Charlie's help in wooing her and Charlie begins writing romantic poetry which swipes her off her feet. She eventually learns that Charlie is her poet and Duvall (The Shining) plays Dixie, his friend. I grew up watching this and always enjoyed it, Martin is great as usual, he and Hannah have good chemistry and I like Bruce Smeaton's score. I recommend this good 80's romantic comedy.

"Roxanne" actually tells the story of the French Renaissance-hero Cyrano De Bergerac, but brilliantly turned into a modern romantic comedy. Steve Martin stars as C.D. Bales, the head of a small village fire department. He has quite a big handicap, or should I say: nosicap? His nose is bigger than most men's... uhm, finger. But don't feel sorry for C.D.! In the first five minutes you learn that he is charming, witty, that he can take good care of himself and that he is by no means a victim of circumstances. However, C.D. is not always sure of himself. Especially when he meets beautiful Roxanne, played by Daryl Hannah. What will win Roxanne's heart: Good looks (which C.D. isn't really blessed with) or sweet and sensual poetry? Australian director, Fred Schepisi, brings Martin's adaptation of De Bergerac together in an entertaining modern romantic comedy that even today, despite the dated soundtrack, continues to be funny.Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

Steve Martin does Cyrano as a hopeless romantic, intellectual and expert fighter in this breezy and (somewhat) mature romantic comedy. Steve Martin is the long nosed fire chief in a scenic mountain town who falls for the lovely Darryl Hannah, only to have her fall for a good looking but lowbrow fireman. Darryl Hannah is the love interest, and Rick Rossovich is the big dummy that she's initially infatuated with. There's a good supporting cast with Fred Willard and Shelley Duval. Nothing in Roxanne will have you doubled over with laughter, but it's smart and amusing throughout, and it never finds the need to aim low with its comedy. It's easy to watch, and there's some nice Canadian scenery. The movie was shot in British Columbia, and the town they create looks like someplace everybody would want to live. You get good results when you have the right people working good source material. Steve Martin is perfect in this movie even though his comedy is not quite as broad here as a lot of people are used to. It's a refreshing movie to watch today. Roxanne probably is a "minor" film, but it's much better than a lot of the reviews its received.

Edmond Rostand's 1897 verse play "Cyrano de Bergerac" is often described as a tragi-comedy because, although it contains many comic elements, it ends tragically. Steve Martin, however, clearly thought that the basic story would work equally well as a pure comedy, and relocated it to a contemporary setting in small-town America. Martin himself plays the Cyrano figure, Charlie "CD" Bales, the local fire chief. Like Rostand's character, he is witty, acrobatic, charming and intelligent but has a very large nose. Rostand's Roxane becomes a pretty young female astronomer named Roxanne (the etymologically incorrect but more normal spelling in English). The third member of the triangle, Christian, becomes Chris, a handsome but dim-witted and inarticulate member of Charlie's team. The love-triangle plot is essentially the same as Rostand's. Charlie is in love with Roxanne, but feels unable to pursue her because he is very self-conscious about his nose. Roxanne falls for Chris, not only because of his looks but also because she believes him to be romantic and intelligent, not realising that the love letters which he used to win her heart were actually written for him by Charlie.The term "romantic comedy" is often used to mean any boy-meets-girl love story with a happy ending, regardless of whether or not it is particularly humorous. "Roxanne" meets the standard Hollywood rom-com formula; it is a boy-meets-girl love story which ends happily after the obstacles to their love (Charlie's self-consciousness about his looks, Roxanne's infatuation with Chris) have been overcome. This, however, is a romantic comedy where the comedy is at least as important as the romance, and it is often brilliantly funny. The two scenes which stood out for me were the "Twenty Nose Insults" speech, where Charlie uses his wit and skill with words to put down a lout who has insulted him in a bar, and the scene where the hopelessly clumsy and oafish Chris tries to woo Roxanne using Charlie's words, relayed to him via a radio link. At his worst Steve Martin can be a rather annoying actor, but at his best he is a comic genius with a verbal dexterity reminiscent of the great Robin Williams, and he is certainly at his best here. Daryl Hannah still appears to be working in the cinema and television, but she is not the big name she once was, and few of her films from this century, apart from the two "Kill Bill" episodes, have attracted much attention. In her twenties and thirties, however, she was regarded as a rising star, even though with her lanky, boyish figure and long face she did not really have the classical looks of a Hollywood goddess. (I don't think having a boy's name really helped her either; I often wondered why she didn't simply reverse the order of her names to become the more obviously feminine Hannah Daryl). As with Martin the standard of her acting was variable, but here, as she had done in "Splash" three years earlier, she makes a sweet, charming and unaffected romantic comedy heroine, playing a woman who is not only attractive but also educated and intelligent without resorting to that old "bespectacled bluestocking" cliché. Mention should also be made of Rick Rossovich who gives a good comic performance as Chris. In the eighties he was seen as another promising newcomer but quickly dropped off the radar; the last role I saw him in was a bit part in that dire superhero spoof "Black Scorpion II", made less than a decade after this film. Shelley Duvall is also good as Roxanne's friend Dixie. Fred Schepisi is clearly a versatile director who can work in various film genres. I originally associated him with true-life crime dramas like "The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith" and "A Cry in the Dark", both set in his native Australia, but he has also turned his hand to comedy. "IQ" (another American rom-com) and "Fierce Creatures" (a British sort-of- sequel to "A Fish Called Wanda") are other examples, but "Roxanne" is probably his best. It is shot against some striking scenery- the town is supposed to be somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, although the film was actually shot across the Canadian border in British Columbia- and features a masterly comic performance from Martin with good contributions from the rest of the cast. This is one of the funniest, and best, romantic comedies of the eighties. 8/10