Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: VHS Tape EAN: 9786301648844 Format: Color, NTSC ISBN: 6301648846 Label: Warner Home Video Manufacturer: Warner Home Video Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: Warner Home Video Release Date: April 20, 1994 Running Time: 107 minutes Studio: Warner Home Video Sales Rank: 9798
Amazon.com essential video: Part coming-of-age chronicle, part road movie, Carny is memorable for Jodie Foster's sexy, intelligent heroine and the pivotal influence of costar, cowriter, and producer Robbie Robertson. As principal songwriter and guitarist in The Band, Robertson had already been accorded the stature of rock auteur by some critics; when director Martin Scorsese captured the musician's laconic sex appeal and deep, mesmerizing speaking voice on celluloid for The Last Waltz, the seed was planted for the Canadian rocker to graduate from documentary to dramatic feature.
The lurid, colorful carnival milieu also dovetails with Robertson's Band legacy as songwriter, and his penchant for crafting picaresque story lines with a vivid sense of place. Robertson is Patch, a carny veteran whose de facto partner is the leering, cruel Frankie (Gary Busey), an abusive clown, and the film lingers on the tawdry and menacing world behind the carny's garish public spaces. When the young, self-confident Donna (Foster) shows up and joins the troupe, the bonds between Patch and Frankie are strained. Donna's walk on the wild side brings her in intimate, sometimes dangerous proximity to the freaks and lowlifes that populate this world, which the writers and director Robert Kaylor savor for its atmosphere of outsider surrealism.
Foster acquits herself wonderfully, making this a revealing step between the prematurely hardened nymphet of Taxi Driver and the actress's first truly adult roles, soon to follow. Busey and Robertson fare less well, their work long on mannerism but ultimately cryptic to a fault. Like the movie itself, they transmit a cynicism that seems hollow without more real insight into how they came to inhabit this netherworld, and why they can't escape it. --Sam Sutherland
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Carny, a ride to remember
Gary Busey and Robbie Robertson hit the nail square on the head in their performance of Carny. Toss in Jodie Foster and you have a real tilt-a-whirl of a ride through the scenes in this movie. I rated ... Read More
Rating: - Something Wicked This Way Comes
and it is Carny...The nudity and profanity were bad. The people representing the South really put her down and was not fair or accurate. To see our beloved Battle Flag on some low life's truck made matters ... Read More
Rating: - A world that is gone forever.....I think
I was born the same year as Jodie Foster. I remember seeing her in various commercials, TV shows and movies as I was growing up. She was the unofficial poster child for single parent families and independent, ... Read More
Rating: - Atmospheric trip through the fair.
This is a highly atmospheric trip through Carnival life. I wish that the relationship between Frankie and Patch had been fleshed out more to show how they entered their peculiar double-act, but a fascinating double ... Read More
Rating: - a delightfully quirky trip off the beaten path
As of July 2006, Carny is not yet available on DVD, but get it when it appears. Foster, Robertson and Busey are fascinating in this little-known gem. And the music includes some incredible stuff. (Some numbers have ... Read More
- A world that is gone forever.....I think