Hi, Mom!

In some ways, Brian De Palma's first feature film sums up his entire career. It's been said that to see one DePalma film is to see them all, yet I would also point out that you need to see all of them in order to understand one, and I mean that as a compliment. This may be his zaniest and most self-conscious film to date, filled with improvisations galore, and it's easily his most openly funny film -- and it is funny. Robert De Niro gives the Clark Kent performance of his career, seeing as how this was made before he exploded in Mean Streets. It's wildly disjointed and something tells me that I wouldn't have liked it as much if it had been more straightforward. The centerpiece of the film is shot like a black and white documentary involving a group of bold white people who attend an audience participation play about what it's like to be black in America at the time. In it, they are painted black and the black actors are painted white and they then proceed to rob, insult, rape, and injure their "black" audience. It's a difficult sequence to watch for a number of reasons (one of which being the light-hearted nature of the film makes it seem out of place), but if nothing else, it's some of the boldest filmmaking even of the era. The first half of the film involving De Niro voyeuristically filming apartment dwellers across from his apartment in various sexual acts for a producer of porn films, is vintage De Palma. And the scenes in which he attempts to seduce Jennifer Salt are priceless. It's, for the most part, a joyful film that throws everything out onto the table, including the kitchen sink and leaves it's audience wondering, "what the hell did I just watch?!"