Frankie and Johnny (1991)

To me, this movie is perfection.

How sad is this?

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This film begins with a woman named "Frankie" (Michelle Pfeiffer) arriving on a bus to Altoona, Pennsylvania to be present as a godmother for her young niece. At that exact moment a man named "Johnny" (Al Pacino) is being released from prison there as well. Frankie then heads back to New York City on a bus to resume her job as a waitress in a small restaurant where--as luck would have it--Johnny ventures inside and applies for a job as a cook. Although Johnny becomes quite smitten with Frankie, she is hesitant to have anything to do with him even though she is just as lonely as he is. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film was rather slow at times but there was sufficient romance and a bit of humor here and there to keep things interesting. I especially liked the performance of Nathan Lane (as Frankie's good friend "Tim") who was responsible for almost all of the comedy. In any case, I found this to be an enjoyable movie for the most part and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.

He doesn't moan when he has sex...well, no. That's not exactly a prison thing. I mean, being in high school is sorta kinda like being in jail. You want to be free but you still live with mom and dad and...YOU DON'T WANT THEM TO KNOW.I figure that would go double if you grow up in a big city with small apartments and thin walls.You're not even going to doink too hard least they hear the bed.Nope, don't buy it. Even now that, almost pushing 40, I am so used to it, it has been so ingrained in me that even now when I am almost 40 I'll put my hand over her mouth if she starts making too much noise."Shut up or they'll hear." "Who?" "It really doesn't matter."My neighbors, my roommates, my siblings, my co-workers, the dog in the unit next door, it doesn't matter I would be so much happier if they are assumed I was a virgin.But then, I still live in a city and the walls are thing. i was still raised Irish-Catholic and working class. My parents never had money.My girlfriend, she comes from some money and she has no problem making noise. She was the product of an actual house with thick walls and no college roomies. The person that wrote that line is from money. Money enough to have grown up somewhere with actual walls and not paper separating units in a big city.Yeah....that's my review. It's a good enough movie, it is certainly an original love story, not something you see in MOST romantic comedies...The protagonists are BOTH poor. They BOTH work. Usually when I am dragged to see a movie like this, the guy is rich and can give the girl EVERYTHING she's ever wanted if they just fell in love and, oh, isn't that romantic?Nope...can't relate to that. I've never been rich and what passes for Romantic movies to me always seems like the "Republican and the Gold Digger" kinda movie. It is so romantic, he is so rich....Nope."Frankie and Johnny" is totally different. You get the sense that it is an actual love story, it's really about romance and not wealth and sex. You get the sense that the people really care about each other. This is a relationship based on emotion and not the fantasy of landing a rich man.You don't see many movies like this. It's refreshing....and Al Pacino, so, you know, you are kind of required to watch everything he's ever been in. I'm sure that's a law somewhere.

Al Pacino, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nathan Lane, Kate Nelligan and Hector Elizondo star in Garry Marshall's 1991 romance comedy-drama based on a play, "Frankie and Johnny in the Clair De Lune." This takes place in New York where we meet Johnny (Pacino), an ex-con who gets a job working as a short-order cook. We also meet waitress, Frankie (Pfeiffer) who is afraid of starting over because of her past, abusive marriage. Johnny also had a failed marriage, but when he meets Frankie, he instantly falls for her. She's reserved at first, but eventually tries to move on with him. Lane (The Birdcage) plays Frankie's neighbor friend, Tim, Nelligan (Dracula) plays waitress, Cora and Elizondo (Pretty Woman) plays boss, Nick. This is a pretty good romance flick that also references the love song. Pacino & Pfeiffer not only reunite 8 years after "Scarface," but are good in this and have great chemistry. I recommend this.

Twenty years on – and "Frankie and Johnny" has arguably improved with age. This is because it deals with the rawest human emotions and vulnerabilities and shows that when life is tough the need for community is greatest. Even if, maybe especially if, the members of that community are as dysfunctional and scarred as we are. For many of the characters in this movie life has been very tough indeed. The restaurant where Johnny gets a job, and where Frankie works, is at the centre of the lives of many of its regulars. It does not have "Community Centre" on a sign above the door – but this is, in effect, what it is. The tolerant proprietor, Nick, sympathetically portrayed by Hector Elizondo, has built that community and he is as protective of his customers as he is of his staff. Nick is a Greek-American and it is subtly suggested that the customers and employees at his little restaurant are a sort of extended Greek family - although in fact they are as ethnically diverse as New York can be."Frankie and Johnny" is above all about loneliness. Frankie has a real family – we see them at the beginning at a christening – but it is clear that they have their own lives and that Frankie, partly out of choice, is not really part of that world. As the film develops we start to realise that Frankie's introspection and the barriers she erects around herself are attributable to a couple of failed relationships in the past. In one her partner left her for her best friend and in the other she was physically abused to the extent that she cannot have children. Johnny is equally damaged. We see him released from prison but it is not until quite late in the film that it is revealed that his crime, whilst serious, was a one-off fraud and that he is no serial offender. In prison he learnt to cook and that is now more than just a job to him – it has become a passion. Johnny was married but his wife left him and took their two children into a new relationship. There is a brief poignant vignette when Johnny watches his children with their mother and new "father" in an American dream suburban family scene – complete with white picket fence. He leaves without revealing his presence.From early in the movie it is clear that Frankie and Johnny are made for each other. Despite the wounds they carry (actual physical wounds to her head in Frankie's case) they are good caring people – albeit that like Nick they do this without wearing a "Social Worker" badge. Frankie has a moving relationship with a Gay neighbour, Tim (Nathan Lane) that manages to avoid being patronising or clichéd. Similarly her bonding with her fellow workers is natural and important to them all – not least Cora the archetypal strong, no-nonsense New York woman who, deep down, is as lonely as she is. Like all the characters Cora is deeper than, and different to, her veneer. When a woman heavily pregnant with twins comes to the restaurant she touches her belly and says "People think I'm a tough b*tch, but it ain't true. Sh*t like this chokes me up." That Frankie and Johnny will eventually end up happily together seems obvious form the start, but that doesn't always happen in the movies does it? Along the way they battle, largely out of fear on Frankie's side. Johnny ardour is declared early on and we don't doubt that it is genuine. Frankie is more circumspect – unsurprisingly given the extent that she has been damaged by her last relationships. So whilst the romance is strong a happy ending is not certain and when it happens we are grateful because it is uplifting to think that even if the barriers are high they can sometimes be removed in the interests of true love.The casting of Frankie and Johnny is very good and all the minor characters, however crazy they may be are utterly credible because they are so well played. As for the leads both Pacino and Pfeiffer give sensitive and credible performances although both of them are so devastatingly good looking that they do seem a bit out of place amongst the ordinary New Yorkers who are very "West Side" in appearance rather than Upper East. Not many of them shop on Fifth Avenue whereas Frankie and Johnny do look a bit like people who habitually do this, except on dress-down day. Nevertheless although they are younger and lovelier than the characters in the original stage play ("Frankie and Johnny in the Clair De Lune") this works fine and doesn't detract from the heart and the humanity of the story.A year or so after Frankie and Johnny was released the long running TV series Friends premiered. One of the central characters in Friends was, of course, Rachel Green (Jennifer Aniston) who was initially a waitress in a Coffee House with a history of complex and damaging relationships behind her. Rachel Green is not Frankie – but there is a strong parallel not least because it is "friends" in both cases who provide the support when it's needed. Frankie says at one point "I'm afraid. I'm afraid to be alone, I'm afraid not to be alone. I'm afraid of what I am, what I'm not, what I might become, what I might never become. I don't want to stay at my job for the rest of my life but I'm afraid to leave. And I'm just tired, you know, I'm just so tired of being afraid". The message of Frankie and Johnny is that friends can reduce that fear. Love can take it away.