Review of Club Fed

Club Fed (1990)
So pathetic it was funny (and, hey, it's a comedy, too!)
16 June 2003
Some examples of the type of comedy in this movie: a camera has a sign on it saying 'Secret Surveillance Camera'. A gun with a silencer says 'Silencer' but, as it turns out, the silencer doesn't work. FBI agents wear Groucho glasses as disguises.

Howard Polk is an FBI agent assigned to undercover work in a prison more luxurious than most resorts, where only the richest criminals go, to be pampered like few people would be even on the outside. Girls in bikinis are everywhere, and the guards are dressed like Chippendale dancers. Classical musicians provide ambience (one clarinetist makes a brief detour into jazz). Polk's boss claims that a prisoner named Angelica is embezzling from the prison (in fact, the FBI boss has planted a warden whose job is to frame Angelica--who claims to have already been framed), and the boss wants Polk to find evidence of misconduct so the place can be shut down and the inmates can be sent to regular prisons. Also, a large, demented red-haired woman seems to want Angelica dead but doesn't have much luck.

Anyway, that's what passes for a plot. Some comic highlights: before and after scenes (funny for different reasons) when the clumsy and dense Angelica has sex with a man. A bizarre car chase that's too ridiculous to be anything but funny. The announcement (resembling a game show) of Angelica's sentence. A man in stripes wanting to leave his regular prison for this palatial one. An ethics class at the prison where everyone is dressed like Little Lord Fauntleroy.

Whether or not Judy Landers can act, in this movie she seems quite talented, and her character is very likeable. I was disappointed in Sherman Hemsley. Normally even he can bring quality to a production such as this, but I didn't care for his very sinful Reverend.

Some of the jokes worked, and others didn't (for me, anyway). And some jokes were just plain sick. But there was plenty here for me to enjoy.
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