I saw this movie in the theater when this movie first came out and nearly fell off my seat in laughter as a teenager in the early 70's!
I had not seen it since until I rented the DVD version of this movie just the other day.
Looking back on it now, it does look very low budget and some of the jokes now seem more silly than funny. But most of the jokes that do work are still very funny!
This is an example of Woody Allen during his early infantile "silly" stage of his movie career. It would gradually change as his filmmaking style reached maturity with "Annie Hall" six years later.
But "Bananas" does have funny scenes and sequences that still stand out.
Woody plays the role of Fielding Mellish, a products tester who somehow becomes a pawn of a rebel organization in overthrowing a South American dictator.
The movie co-stars Woody's real-wife ex-wife Louise Lasser (long before her "Mary Hartman" TV show), Carlos Montalban (the brother of Ricardo), Howard Cosell, and even a then-unknown Sylvester Stallone appears uncredited as a subway mugger!
Has anyone else enjoyed it as I did? Posted by Jim Colyer (Member # 3754) on :
Woody Allen was funny in the 1970s. Bananas, Sleeper, Love And Death. These are some of the funniest movies ever made. Woody was the Graucho Marx of the 70s but better. His humor lay in his ability to laugh at himself. Check out my 100 movies: http://www.jimcolyer.com/papers/
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