The Man with One Red Shoe *

Well, unbelievably this was worse than Volunteers. I really did not think Tom Hanks could have been in something more inane than that, alas I was wrong. The Man with One Red Shoe is a very weak comedy based on the idea of a FBI chief who is trying to be ousted by a rival. The rival successfully implicated the chief in a cocaine scheme, and now the chief tries to set his rival on a wild-goose chase. The idea is to have the rival think there is some witness who is going to spill the beans at a Senate hearing and vindicate the chief while also implicating the rival. Ok, it's weak. Anyhow, they pick this 'witness' randomly from people coming out of the Wash DC airport, and they pick a violinist with the Wash DC symphony (that's Hanks). Various weak slap-stick comedic events ensue as the rival and his cronies try to figure out what the violinist knows. That's it. I don't suggest you see this, but Star Wars fans may find it amusing that one of the supporting actresses (Carrie Fisher) in this movie was Princess Leia in the original Star War movies. Here she wears a leopard skimpy bikni and tries to seduce the violinist (Hanks) into a 'Jane and Tarzan' sexual tryst (did I mention the screenplay is weak?). The only other actor I recognized was Dabney Coleman who plays Hanks father in 'You've Got Mail'. Coleman is a sucessfull B-grade actor, but I'm surprised that in his 40+ year career, he never broke out of B-grade movies and TV. As for Hanks in this movie, well, watching this performance, I am amazed that over the next 20 years he transformed himself into the top-grossing US actor. There is nothing in this movie to suggest the Oscar worthy performances in Gumps, Philidelphia or Castaway.