Travolta/Cage #21 - Get Shorty/Trapped in Paradise

This week on the podcast, we trawl through the rare pro-Travolta pairing with film critic Lisa Rosman (RogerEbert.com, Vulture), as Barry Sonnenfeld’s charming Elmore Leonard adaptation Get Shorty goes up against the execrable, ear-splitting Christmas comedy Trapped in Paradise!

In the mid-’90s, John Travolta was flying high off the success of Pulp Fiction, which set up up nicely for his cool-as-ice take on “Chili” Palmer, a suave, personable loan shark who flies out to LA and gets the chance to dip his toe in the movie business. The movie around him’s great, too, a slick little hangout movie with wit to spare and some great supporting turns in Gene Hackman’s bumbling movie exec, Rene Russo as the ambitous B-movie starlet, and Danny DeVito as the world’s smallest biggest movie star.

Too bad, then, that we also have to watch Trapped in Paradise, which is like if a Frank Capra film got mixed up with a rejected Saturday Night Live sketch. Cage plays one third of the crime-happy Firpo brothers (alongside a lost Jon Lovitz and a screechingly irritating Dana Carvey, putting on a high-pitched squeal that’s apparently supposed to be a take on Mickey Rourke?), who rob a bank in a small Pennsylvania town on Christmas Eve before learning the error of their ways. (Kinda.) It’s slow, grating, and plays to everyone’s worst instincts, including Cage’s.

Still, listen to us suffer the best and worst of our subjects, and see if we can make it through the other side!

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