Opportunity Knocks (1990)
Review by HTQ4
Film:
DVD:

Written by Mitchel Katlin and Nat Bernstein
Directed by Donald Petrie
Starring Dana Carvey, Robert Loggia, Todd Graff, Julia Campbell, and Milo O'Shea

Features:

• Deleted Scenes
  
• Trailer
  

My Advice: Don't even think about renting it...

Eddie (Carvey) is con artist and he's a good one. He and his sidekick Lou (Graff) break into a house to try to score a lot of money--you see, they have to pay off the man who will break Eddie's legs if he doesn't. When Milt (Loggia) catches Eddie in the act of robbing his home, Eddie has to think fast in order to keep himself out of jail. So Eddie impersonates the man who is supposed to be house-sitting Milt's home and before he knows what is happening, he finds himself the vice-president of Milt's company and hitting on his daughter (Campbell). This seems like the perfect con except for one thing...love.

It's just a shame that Dana Carvey hasn't chosen better films in his career. This movie had potential but it ultimately couldn't live up to it. The first problem is that it follows a formula for late-80s/early-90s greed movies. It's obvious the idea for this entre thing was to allow Carvey a chance to show off his chameleon-like characterizations, but the movie just wasn't able to allow that to happen and be funny at the same time. As a result, Carvey comes off looking terribly lame when we all know he's better than what this flick allows him to be. Worse, it just takes too long to get to the point of the story, which seems to be that there is no difference between the cons that he pulls and corporate greed at the highest level of the business world. Whatever...

Anyway, the DVD is just a waste of space. The back of the DVD lists two special features, and neither one of them are really worth the plastic the DVD is made of. First of all, there are 400,000 deleted scenes on the disc. Honestly, it feels like the total amount of time of all of the deleted scenes put together is the same length as the movie. I don't know whether this is the sign of a director who wasn't really sure of what kind of movie he was shooting or the fact that the editor didn't know he was doing. Or, it might have been some combination of both.

Other than that, all you get is the teaser trailer for the movie. That's it, there is no commentary track of any kind, which is probably a bit of a relief. It would have been too much to hear the director try to justify himself, and it's not all that surprising that Carvey didn't want to get back in touch to do any kind of interviews at all, either. Actually, to be honest, Universal didn't want to spend the coin in the first place.

So, if you are looking for a good early 90s movie, pick just about any one other than this. Even fans of Carvey should think twice before renting.