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ALL THE QUEEN’S MEN
This effort from Stefan Ruzowitzky (The Inheritors) doesn’t get much more clever or amusing than the title. It’s 1944, and a bumbling quartet of Allied spies have parachuted into Berlin so they can disguise themselves as female workers and infiltrate the factory making the German Enigma code machine. The line-up: an OSS loose cannon (Matt LeBlanc), a starchy, pencil-pushing British non-com (James Cosmo), a wispy Oxbridgian polymath (David Birkin, the only looker in the bunch), and a self-described bisexual lesbian in a man’s body currently doing Dietrich in a cabaret (Eddie Izzard). The result: a subpar sit-com mixing Hogan’s Heroes with Bosom Buddies that boasts rim shots like "It’s a nightmare! The whole country is swarming with Germans!" Apart from the stolid LeBlanc, the performers do rise above stereotype, with Cosmo touchingly maternal, Birkin a wide-eyed ingénue, and Izzard far more convincing as Dietrich than he was as Charlie Chaplin in The Cat’s Meow. And even LeBlanc has his moment in fulfilling Udo Kier, who plays a German general with a yen for a woman who can crush his head between her thighs. Ruzowitzky, however, should forget about following in the footsteps of fellow German Billy Wilder. (105 minutes)
BY PETER KEOUGH
Issue Date: October 24 - October 31, 2002
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