starring Arnold Johnson
directed by Robert Downey, Sr.
85 minutes
Putney Swope, the only African American member of the board of directors of an advertising agency, gets elected chairman of the board. He changes a lot of things. Swope brings a lot of African Americans in to the agency and puts them into key roles. He changes the way the company does business and the sort of clients it chooses to represent.
This movie lacked the sort of form that I like to see in a movie. It flowed from one scene to another quite often without any sense of where it was in the journey or where it was going. It felt very experimental and possibly improvised. The main story was intermixed with ads produced by the ad agency.
The director dubbed his own voice over that of the character of Putney Swope. It was pretty apparent from the first scene that he was in. I found it to be kind of distracting. It felt wrong. I wonder in retrospect if the dubbing of the main character's voice could be seen as part of the director's message, whether intentional or not.
I knew a little bit about this movie going in. I don't know what I feel now. It was a strange experience. I laughed a few times but not very loudly or very frequently. I usually wondered about the things I was laughing at and why I was laughing. I might be able to appreciate this movie more if I watched it again but I'm not sure that I would like it anymore than I did this time around.
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