1983 - THE SURVIVORS, redneck/right wing satire doesn't really work.

The director Michael Ritchie had a reasonably successful career in Hollywood, he could move between mainstream comedies but probably the genre he really excelled at was satire.  The problem with satire is that it's not a particularly popular theme in movies.  Ritchie's film The Survivors is kind of a case in point.

The Survivors is about a couple of New Yorkers who are essentially beaten down by the city and the system.  Walter Matthau owns a gas station and ends up losing it.  Robin Williams is an office worker who gets laid off by a parrot of all things.  Down on their luck, they happen to get mixed up with a robbery at a diner.  The robber is played by Jerry Reed star of many Burt Reynolds redneck comedies.   After identifying Jerry Reed to the police who eventually release him for reasons I can't remember. They go on the run from Reed who now wants to kill them. Fed up with being a victim Williams joins a survivalist group in Vermont where he embraces their philosophy of self reliance and shooting people.

 

The story is a lot for a film that wants to be a comedy and particularly a satire on this country's mania for guns and the right wing self reliance philosophy.  Some of the comedy works some of the time but for the most part it fumbles along while attempting to score some fairly obvious points about the silliness of the survivalist movement. There may be a place for taking pot shots at right wingers in a comedy, but this film ain't it. 

 

Part of the problem with the movie beside the uneven comedy in the script, is the performance of Robin Williams in this film.  It's been a while since I've watched Williams in anything and I have to say he's a lot more "Johnny One Note," than I remember.  He seems to be in only one gear the manic childlike character he created in Mork and Mindy.  After a while he gets very tiresome.  Walter Matthau the old comedy pro barely has to move a muscle to steal the scenes they appear in together.  Even Jerry Reed is funnier than Williams.  In the end the whole thing just kind of sinks into one of those Vermont snowbanks where the film is set.

The film was written by Michael J. Leeson, the running time is 102 minutes.