Whimsical Little Creature

Movie Review: Frankie & Johnny (1991)

Frankie and Johnny were lovers alright...

I know movie reviews aren't really the "hot" commodity they used to be, but honestly I'm just doing this to give myself the motivation to watch more movies, and I figure it also helps to engage with a movie outside of passively watching like I'm used to. Also I really don't like watching movies by myself, but I don't want that to stop me, and since all my friends are busy, I might as well suck it up.

Before Going In

So... I first heard of this movie asking ChatGPT what were some lesser-known urban-style films that I'd like based on what I knew I liked, and it spat this one out at me. Honestly, it's pretty good and I got some cool recommendations by asking, so don't poopoo it.

So two things. One: this was actually based on a play of the same name... Between that and The Whale, it made me aware of how the theater -> movie pipeline is a legit avenue one can take, and it's a reminder to start watching the stuff at my local community theater. Two: the leads, Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer, had already worked together on Scarface, a movie I totally watched, and that familiarity likely brought a lot for their roles here. Real cool.

I didn't know any of this at the time, I just heard that Al Pacino was playing a lovestruck fool kind of role and I was wondering how the hell he could possibly pull that off. His characters were normally wildcards who'd sooner stab you in the neck with a pencil than "talk about feelings," so what does him playing a romance lead even look like? More on that later...

Admittedly I know even less about Pfeiffer. All I know is that she did a PHENOMENAL job playing Catwoman in Tim Burton's Batman Returns and that she accomplished that amazing feat of mastering the whip for the role. I saw that raw footage of her whipping 4 mannequin heads off their bodies in ONE take, it's amazing. That aside, I don't know how she was when she was, like, not whipping mannequins like it's nothing, so I was excited.

Thoughts From the Other Side

Watching it, I was honestly... Super impressed? It's not this epic, sweeping narrative, but more grounded, more messy and awkward, but still super real.

Frankie (Pfeiffer) is a thirty-something waitress at a diner in the big city, having given up on any chance of love after an abusive marriage. And here comes Johnny (Pacino) fresh out of prison who happens to start working there as a new hire.

What really stuck with me at first WASN'T their performances, it was actually the scenery, how alive this world felt. Like, Frankie and Johnny don’t exist in some perfect little romance bubble. You’ve got Frankie’s neighbor, Tim (Nathan Lane), who steals every scene he’s in without even trying. You’ve got the other waitresses and the customers at the diner, all with their own quirks and personalities that feel real. Nobody feels like a throwaway background NPC, they’re just as flawed and messy as the leads. It’s like the filmmakers weren’t afraid to let the world feel… complicated.

Honestly, that’s what pulled me in even more than the romance itself. It reminded me that life doesn’t stop just because two people are falling for each other. There are still coworkers gossiping, neighbors nosing around, and funerals to go to, because that’s how life works. It's about Frankie and Johnny, sure, but it's also the messy, chaotic world around them. And that makes their connection feel so much more grounded and earned.

I didn't expect Pacino with a bandana being super focused on cooking mean scrambled eggs to crack me up so much, but it did. It reminded me a lot of Way of the Househusband which also features this grizzled guy with a troubled past hyperfixating on very mundane tasks, like, doing laundry. Gets me every time. (In Japan, you'd call that dissonance "gap moe." I never thought I'd be using anime lingo to describe Al Pacino but there's a first for everything.)

But here is where you'd be surprised. In the film, Johnny doesn't go to prison because he killed someone or anything, no... It was because of check fraud. Like even if you knew nothing about Al Pacino's roles, nobody's gonna look at him and think that the worst thing he did was some white-collar crime, and a minor one at that.

And I get it, they needed a crime that wasn't morally objectionable to allow the story to wrap itself into a neat little bow easier, but if I had to make a suggestion, to do both something that would justify casting someone so world-weary while still allowing some wiggle room for redemption: make his time in prison be for putting someone into a coma or something. Have a scene where he visits that person in a hospital room and show him seriously regretting what he did and wanting to make things right. I think that would thematically fit way better, why he's so motivated to go clean without taking away from how serious something like that would be. And then at the end of the movie, the comatose guy would wake up and it would be symbolic of Johnny successfully turning his life for the better. It would also be a neat parallel, where because of this incident, both the victim AND Johnny end up losing years of their lives.

(Oh yeah and I looked it up, if the comatose guy were to die, Johnny would be back in the slammer for murder. So yes, comatose guy WILL wake up in the end. A bit convenient? Yes, but this isn't prestige cinema or anything, we all need a bit of tropes in our lives once in a while.)

But anyway, the check stuff is one of the only things that wasn't super well thought-out, so I'm not flipping tables or anything over it. There's still the aesthetic of a "hard" guy making things right, so I can selectively forget about it lmao.

The other thing that was kinda meh was shoehorning references to the song when it wasn't needed. It felt like at every possible opportunity, the characters had to go "Omg it's like the song, Frankie and Johnny. Your names are like the song!!" It was used as this big moment in the movie's climax near the end and I couldn't take it very seriously.

I think part of why it bugged me so much is because I grew up during the flood of reference humor that pervaded the 2000s-2010s, where references were used as a cheap way to seem funny or more deep/self-aware. Coming out of it, anything reminiscent of that puts me off, even if it wasn't the movie's intention. The intention, I'm led to believe, is that it's supposed to raise the stakes by reminding you of the plot for the song (and I know it now because they mentioned it multiple times). The original Frankie and Johnny ends in tragedy, and the references are meant to make you wonder if our Frankie and Johnny are also doomed. I don't believe it stuck the landing personally, but I can also brush it aside. There are much worse things that a movie can be guilty of.

Okay, so whether Pacino pulled this off or not: by some miracle, he did, and I'd say the reason why was because of how he put his all into it, no different from how he was with anything else. No matter how ridiculous or embarrassing (you'll know what scene I'm thinking of if you've watched it), he doesn't phone it in, and that has earned my absolute respect.

And then there’s Pfeiffer: she made her role seem effortless. With Pacino, you can feel how hard he’s working (and maybe even leaning a bit on his reputation), but Pfeiffer didn't need to. She brings this quiet, grounded authenticity that feels completely lived-in. To bridge that gap between them and still hold her own? That’s an accomplishment in itself. Just like how easily she made whip tricks look, she seemed very at-home in this role and it shows, or I should say, it doesn't show!

Now their romance... Honestly that was probably one of the less interesting things about the movie for me, but I WILL say about it is that the movie veers dangerously close to the trope of "guy pursues girl until girl changes her mind because she doesn't know what she wants," but I don't quite think it fits. It’s not that Johnny is trying to mold Frankie because he wants her, it’s more him knowing what it’s like to build walls around yourself to survive, to be in your own personal hell because of your past. Seeing Frankie stuck in that same pit clearly pains him, and he wants to help pull her out of it. And yes, he does want to change her, yes he does want her to get with him, but it's not about control or manipulation. It's more like he wants to help her see the possibility of something better, to believe in herself and in life again.

Johnny’s not exactly great at it, though. His approach is messy, clumsy, and occasionally overbearing, but it’s also earnest. You can tell his heart is in the right place, even if he doesn’t always get it right. I don't know if it was Pacino's performance or the writing that did it, but it was pulled off, at least for me, and I have a low tolerance for that bs generally.

I wish there were more romances that didn't take place in people's teens and twenties... And I'm saying this as a now twenty-something. It's boring as hell, I want gritty, I want troubled, I want healing, and this has that. It was all very sweet.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I honestly didn't expect to have much to talk about, but it just kind of flooded out. It really is a sweet movie, and if you like Way of the Househusband or similar blends of crime and everyday living, I think it'd be worth your while.

Final Rating

#longform #media-discussion