There Are Probably More Respectful Ways to Remember Dabney Coleman Than By Re-Running This Piece on Hot to Trot But We're Doing So All The Same
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I feel bad for Virginia Madsen. As we have documented here, early in her career, Madsen did extraordinary work in over-achieving charmers like Electric Dreams, Modern Girls, Long Gone, and Fire with Fire, as well as David Lynch’s elephantine adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune.
How was this beautiful, charismatic, and talented young star on the rise rewarded? With the thankless female lead role in the 1988 pro-insider trading talking horse comedy Hot to Trot. Madsen is perhaps fortunate in having very little to do and precious little screen time in Hot to Trot. It allows her to float ethereally through the proceedings unscathed, an angelic presence in rancid detritus whose mere existence is offensive, as is its unfortunate obsession with horse sex and equine genitalia.
Madsen leveraged a solid half decade of scene-stealing, standout work into a role that required her to maintain a straight face while acting opposite a talking horse.
The future Oscar nominee gets through Hot to Trot just fine, but star Bobcat Goldthwait has pain in his eyes that betray just how miserable he was to be prostituting his singular talent in a movie that’s somehow worse than a Reaganite talking horse stock market comedy has any right to be.
Dabney Coleman’s cartoonish lech of a villain is introduced stepping into a rancid pile of horse feces. That’s a potent metaphor for his participation in the film. The dependable heavy really stepped into it this time with a uniquely terrible role that’s less a conventional part than a never-ending humiliation.
Nothing about Coleman’s career-worst performance makes a fraction of the impression his oversized buck teeth do. They never stop being a massive distraction. The film labors under the delusion that big old choppers equal guffaws when it’s actually a comedy killer.
The first indication that Hot to Trot will be a brutal endurance test comes from it opening with John Candy reading the dictionary definition of a horse. Webster’s defines “hack” as “any movie that begins with a definition.”
What follows are eighty minutes of Deleted Scenes that were all tragically left in the movie. If you were to trim the fat, there would be nothing left.
It’s crazy to think that a version of Hot to Trot exists that’s even worse than the theatrical cut, but Elliott Gould’s performance as a sassy talking horse who is also a white-collar criminal tested so poorly that it was scrapped completely and replaced by John Candy, who understandably disregarded the script and improvised extensively.
Maybe someday Warner Brothers will finally release the Gould cut under the title Hot to Trot: The Somehow Even Shittier Version.
Hot to Trot opens with Coleman’s evil stepfather and boss stepping in shit on his way to fuck his mistress in a stable. This is the film’s way of illustrating that while it may have been marketed as a funny talking animal comedy for children, it’s actually a dirty, smutty, failed attempt at comedy for no one.
Bobcat Goldthwait stars as Fred Chaney, a genial doofus who inherits a horse named Don and half of a stock brokerage firm after his father dies.
Fortunately for the twitchy young man, the horse in question not only talks but also helps him make money through insider trading and manipulating the market illegally and unethically.
This is a 1980s movie, however, so white-collar crime is only frowned upon if someone other than a goofball everyman is doing it. Fred is soon living the Reagan era high life, completely with a massive spread that would make Patrick Bateman blind with envy.
Hot to Trot really wants you to think long and hard about horse penises. Whether Don’s mother is asking her son to ask his new owner what it’s like to have sex facing your partner or Don is quipping that a sexually voracious woman who sets her sights on Fred “reminds me of “Catherine the Great!” Hot to Trot is unrelentingly smutty.
When the aforementioned woman of loose morals sees Don in Fred’s house, she assumes he is a statue before he sternly informs her that “It” is like that “even after a shower.” He repeats his words in case there’s anyone in the audience who doesn’t realize that he’s talking about his dong.
I remembered Hot to Trot being terrible. I did not remember all of the horse dick humor, casual racism, or gags referencing the dreaded glue factory. I also didn’t remember that just after talking about his balls, Don’s dad (voiced by Burgess Meredith) fucking dies and is reincarnated as a horsefly or the quick gag involving Don ordering a blow-up sex horse to satisfy his insatiable urges when a sentient being is not available.
Yes, Hot to Trot really goes all in on the horse sex jokes. I’m not sure that was the wisest direction for this material, to be honest, although director Michael Dinner does include lots of wacky sound effects, the kind you don’t hear much outside of Morning Zoo radio shows.
It amazes me that the studio executives of the 1980s looked at inveterate rebel and renegade comic genius Bobcat Goldthwait and thought his talents would best be used playing the straight man in a talking horse comedy about a man who utilizes horseplay of a whole different kind to realize his dreams of being a rich yuppie.
Goldthwait looks so lost and so miserable and so staggeringly out of place here, a punk in an absurd, soul and joy-killing corporate machine that didn’t even function right.
Hot to Trot just sort of sputters from one flailing nightmare of a scene to another, never gaining momentum, speed or purpose. In the third act, Hot to Trot becomes a half-assed sports movie with our heroes entering the exciting world of horse racing and implausibly triumphing despite a complete lack of experience and ability.
John Candy was just about the most likable performer in the world. You couldn’t help but love the guy, but not even Candy’s preternatural affability can make Don anything other than deeply annoying.
As for Madsen, she’s once again the best part of the film, an oasis of beauty and class in a vast desert of tired comedy and sputtering storytelling.
I thought Hot to Trot would be bad. I had no idea, however, that it would be this bad, and I’ve seen it before. It really does feel like one of the all-time stinkers, which is a combination of harsh criticism and praise.
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