Finders Keepers (1984)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Great Film overall

Don't Believe the Hype

I saw this movie on HBO in 1985, taped it and watched it again and again over the years. It's a wonderful screwball comedy, and Michael O'Keefe is great as the con man character who's trying to pass himself off as a soldier taking his dead buddy's casket home for burial.I would have thought it would have found its way to DVD long before this, even if only because it was Jim Carrey's first real movie role. His part is small -- only a couple of scenes -- but it was easy to see he was going to be a big comic star.Other great actors in it were Beverly D'Angelo, Louis Gossett Jr, Ed Lauter and Brian Dennehy. And who could ever forget Dennehy's great line when he says the mother of the dead soldier is "prostate with grief?" It's also the only movie I can remember that used Don McLean's "American Pie" over the closing credits.Please, let's get this out on DVD.

Breathing was a problem too !You do need to pay attention as there are a few setups for gags later in the film and some parts may seem a little slow and confusing on the first viewing.But I highly recommend this if you like to watch the equivalent of National Lampoons Vacation, Christmas Vacation, Scrooged, The Ice Pirates, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World or any of the other wacky / screwball (and generally escalating out of control) comedies out there.It may not be one of yours but is definitely one of my favourites and I am still waiting for it on DVD.If you liked any of the films in the above list, give it a try if you see it listed.

I stumbled upon this wonderful comedy purely by chance, while zapping through some TV channels a friend of mine and me dropped into a weird chase, where some girls on rollers try to catch a man in a local marathon. We continued watching this movie and had a really good time, laughing and laughing.This is what comedies are all about. If it gets you laughing, it is good. If you can't stop laughing, then it's a keeper... 9/10

Richard Lester is an American-born director who was a quiet architect of a certain type of English screen comedy, working on early TV experiments with members of radio's "Goon Show" (Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan), then the first couple of Beatles movies, then some movie stuff which parallelled the surreal comedy of the TV Monty Python, inc "The Bed-Sitting Room" (from a play co-written by Milligan) and "How I Won The War". This is a nice little film which has some of the gagsmanship of his old stuff, and kind of a "What's Up Doc" type plotline, with money from a heist, plenty of screwball characters, and general old-fashioned movie farce confusion. Doesn't probably get the momentum it wants to, but it's low-key affable loopyness is pretty watchable. As the Maltin review suggests, in a pretty decent little comedy cast, the David Wayne turn as the antique, shambolic train conductor is the real highlight, with laughs pretty much every time he turns up. In Lester's career, it's not a "Hard Day's Night", "Three Musketeers", "Cuba", or even "Juggernaut", but it's different and enjoyable enough on its own terms for comedy movie addicts to take a look.