This is a pretty amusing movie, if you are into the whole Airplane! kind of send-up but with a little less over-the-top antics. Using the early NY mobster scene as a premise, the take is pretty downright silly. Some decent visual gags, and many verbal ones as well. And it created a whole new swearing vernacular before stupid phone auto-corrects became a thing. And if you don’t believe me, I will fight you, ya fargin corksucker!
Young Johnny starts off as older Johnny, tellin his story while upkeepin a local pet store. After nabbin a young punk tryin to steal a puppy (because that’s what punks did back then), he goes on to regale the young lad on the ups and downs of a life of crime. Those early mobsters had a tough life, I tell you. Even with 180 hats. That’s rough livin, even then! Johnny’s tale is both enlightening and cautionary, in a pretty comedic kind of way.
I dunno, I think this kinda rode the last of the coat tails of the original parody wave that Airplane started in 1980, with a lot of visual jokes but also relying a lot on genre-specific takes for dialogue comedy. And some good ones here and there, definitely a lot of quotable moments throughout. To Johnny Dangerously, “Did you know your last name is an adverb?” Maybe it was a little too smart for its dumb good? Michael Keaton plays a great criminal with a good heart crime boss, pitted against his law-abiding brother in a more comedic send-up than John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow. A lot of great actors involved, it’s a well done period piece with ludicrous nuns, ducks and bunnies.
