Some movies, alas, are born obscure, while some achieve obscurity and others have obscurity thrust upon them. So say the Sages of Hellas or perhaps Gilbert Gottfried; to be honest I don't remember. But in any case, the latter seems to describe So Fine, a hilarious but unjustly underappreciated 1981 comedy written and directed by Andrew Bergman, auteur of the original The In-Laws and much much else.

Why do I love this picture? Let me count the ways.

But first -- Steve's Movie Reviews©!!!

Public Enemies -- Pretty much of a mess, although Johnny Depp is mesmeric as always and the concluding twenty minute sequence of the Feds closing in on Dillinger and company is quite brilliant. The scene where Depp/Dillinger strolls into the FBI office and swans around unnoticed, however, is the biggest I Don't Think So! moment since Sylvester Stallone performed surgery on himself in Rambo III.

The Hangover -- Consistently droll male-bonding farce with nary a loose end in sight. Also: Who knew Mike Tyson was funny?

But we were talking of So Fine.

The plot:

Mild mannered English prof Bobby Fine (Ryan O'Neal), son of rag trade maven Jack Fine (Jack Warden) is trying to get tenure at a stuffy Ivy League school (department head: A hilarious Fred Gwynne). After chauffeuring a visiting poet modelled after Robert Graves, Bobby learns that dad's shmatte business is going bankrupt; the elder Fine, in desperation, has resorted to sleeping with buyers and stalking ladies of a certain age in the women's department at Bloomingdales. Worse, Jack has borrowed money from a Mafia boss/loan shark, the gigantic Mr. Eddie (Richard Kiel, Jaws from the James Bond films) and with the note come due, Eddie insists that Bobby leave school and go into the family business. A world class fish out of water, Bobby tries to fit in on Seventh Avenue until he finds himself having an affair with Mr. Eddie's sex-starved Italian opera singing wife Lira (Lina Wertmüller muse Mariangela Melato) who introduces herself in a disco scene with the immortal line "I f**k around." Then one evening, escaping from Lira's boudoir upon Mr. Eddie's unexpected return, Bobby accidentally creates an outrageous new fashion trend -- see-through plastic assless jeans -- which takes the fashion world by storm and saves the company. With Fine Fashions back on track, Bobby tries to return his more genteel college milieu, but an obsessive Lira and a jealous Mr. Eddie keep threatening to pull him back in, until the whole thing resolves during a performance of Verdi's Otello in which life begins to resemble art.

As you've probably guessed from the above, Bergman's going after an ambitious number of targets here; he manages to satirically skewer subjects as varied as the designer jeans trend of the late 70s, the pretensions of academia (you haven't lived until you've heard Gwynne waxing nostalgic about his doctoral thesis "Masque and Anti-Masque: Images of Heat and Lighting in Shakespeare's The Tempest), Reagan era wretched excess and consumerism, the commodification of the derriere, and the conventions of old-fashioned bedroom farce. Bergman pulls it all off quite beyond deftly, however (apparently he knew the stuff about the rag trade and academia first hand) and I should add that he stages a fake commercial, starring the astoundingly erotic Anita Morris as the girl in the clear plastic jeans, that once seen will be etched onto your cerebellum for eternity. I should also add that Warden, as the gloriously vulgarian patriarch, should have won an Oscar for his delivery of the line " Hi, I'm Jack Fine and this is my suicidal son, Bobby" alone.

Here's an all-too brief scene to give you a taste.

Bottom line: This is one of those films that got away that really shouldn't have. You can order a DVD (transferred from the 80s laserdisc version) of questionable legality here; you can -- and definitely should, trust me -- order a more legit VHS version here.

Incidentally, before Bergman became a filmmaker, he wrote two absolutely brilliant period detective novels featuring a bald middle-aged Jewish shamus from Sunnyside, Queens -- The Big Kiss Off of 1944 and Hollywood and Levine. They're smashing reads, peopled with real life characters including Thomas Dewey, Richard Nixon and Humphrey Bogart, and they're as close to vintage Raymond Chandler as anything you'll ever find; they're both still available and you can order them from Amazon here. You're welcome.