Pssst, want to check out Simon in our new look?
Information
- Year
- 1980
- Runtime
- 97 min.
- Director
- Marshall Brickman
- Genres
- Comedy, Sci-Fi
- Rating *
- 6.2
- Votes *
- 428
- Checks
- 43
- Favs
- 2
- Dislikes
- 0
- Favs/checks
- 4.7% (1:22)
- Favs/dislikes
- 2:0
Top comments
-
Siskoid
Simon is a very strange satirical comedy from the mind of one of Woody Allen's 1970s co-writers (indeed, it's hard no to think of Sleeper through some of it). I appreciate it for its very unusualness - scientists convince a man he is an alien to conduct a massive social experiment that then goes wrong, that's quite the precis - and Alan Arkin is generally strong as an angry neurotic, but on the whole, it's a satire without focus. At its best, it lampoons academic research projects, through both the think tank that, absent funding concerns, have become mad scientists one and all, and the eponymous character, a hack college professor desperate for grant money and legitimacy. But then it also wants to attack the vacuousness of television, the military, and a hundred smaller targets of human triviality. While it has some fun ideas and can be intellectually droll, it mostly falls flat from lack of focus... and from not enough Madeline Kahn! 5 years 1 month ago