Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Matho The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Scotty Burke It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

sol- Edmond Rostand's play 'Cyrano de Bergerac', about a man with an abnormally large nasal appendage, is re-imagined as a contemporary romantic comedy in this motion picture written by and starring Steve Martin. Transforming the source material into a comedy works better than one might expect thanks to the wit and charm that Martin brings to the role (even if he never outclasses José Ferrer). Martin also displays remarkable athletic agility at several points with the key dynamic being the confidence he is unable to feel around women despite otherwise being an absolutely perfect romantic prospect. At the best of times, the film is very funny too with Martin coming up with several impromptu insults for himself at one point, cheered on by a crowd, and a part where his attempts to help young Rick Rossovich woo Darryl Hannah's title character undone by the interfering police radio signals. The comedy varies in effectiveness though (Martin drinking from a wine glass is particularly unfunny) and it detracts somewhat from the drama. Martin never quite manages to communicate how heartbreaking it is for him to help Rossovich romance the woman he loves. Aside from being painted as intelligent (she is an astronomer), Hannah is never especially alluring either, nor does the interest she takes in the bumbling Rossovich ever really ring true. If one accepts these elements and runs it with though, there are many amusing moments to be had with Golden Globe nominated Steve Martin in very fine form, not to mention the fun ways that the story has been updated for modern times.

John austin Steve Martin does Cyrano as a hopeless romantic, intellectual and expert fighter in this breezy and (somewhat) mature romantic comedy. Steve Martin is the long nosed fire chief in a scenic mountain town who falls for the lovely Darryl Hannah, only to have her fall for a good looking but lowbrow fireman. Darryl Hannah is the love interest, and Rick Rossovich is the big dummy that she's initially infatuated with. There's a good supporting cast with Fred Willard and Shelley Duval. Nothing in Roxanne will have you doubled over with laughter, but it's smart and amusing throughout, and it never finds the need to aim low with its comedy. It's easy to watch, and there's some nice Canadian scenery. The movie was shot in British Columbia, and the town they create looks like someplace everybody would want to live. You get good results when you have the right people working good source material. Steve Martin is perfect in this movie even though his comedy is not quite as broad here as a lot of people are used to. It's a refreshing movie to watch today. Roxanne probably is a "minor" film, but it's much better than a lot of the reviews its received.

mark.waltz Steve Martin is Charlie, a fire chief in a small Washington State city where he is as legendary as Cyrano de Bergerac, the French hero whom he emulates in this sweet comedy that was a major crowd pleaser in its day and hopefully will one day be considered a classic. He is an easy-going fellow, well liked by the firemen under his command, yet he has one feature strangers will find hard to avoid staring at: his enormous schnoz. Yes, like Durante, W.C. and Streisand, Charlie is famous for his nose. He can even drink out of it, uses it as a stand for his little bird friends and can even peck obnoxious bullies in the eye with it if he gets too agitated by their harassment. When first seen, he takes on two golfers with his tennis racket, dancing around as them if he was Charlie Chaplin on roller skates.The gorgeous Darryl Hannah gets rid of her mermaid fins to play the beautiful new girl in town, a student of the stars who is not only a looker but personable and intelligent. The sweet but dumb Rick Rossovich is Chris, a brawny new fireman in Martin's brigade who falls head over heels for her but can't seem to get an intelligent word to come out of his mouth. This is where Martin comes in, as poetic as he is temperamental of his head's middle appendage, and in the process, he falls in love with her too, but his love is not based upon lust; It is based upon knowing exactly what to say to her to make her feel special, and in the process of communicating to her for Rossovich, he makes Hannah fall in love with the idea, if not the man, whom she had animal attraction to and pretty much nothing else.This movie is practically picture perfect, taking what in other hands would come off as idiotic humor and making it seem as graceful as the ballet. Martin makes this clear in the seemingly infantile opening as he takes on the two idiot golf players, turns it onto a bully in a bar (20 big nose jokes to put the man to shame) and eventually proves that it isn't the physical that matters but what's in the heart and what that heart will share with the heart it is meant to be aligned with. One of the best romantic comedies of the 1980's, this was Martin's most praised performance, and many critics yelped about him not getting an Oscar Nomination when he clearly deserved it. Yet, other earlier films from his resume seem to be more remembered today, and as entertaining as they are, they don't hold a candle to this.Who else emulated feminine beauty in the 1980's more than the gorgeous Darryl Hannah who made film history as a mermaid and allowed herself to become dowdy for "Steel Magnolias" simply to get the chance to play a real character. She is beautiful without being unapproachable, an earthly goddess one could look at and fall in love with in a sisterly way. Shelley Duvall takes on one of her least weirdo characters here, as far from Popeye's Olive Oyl as possible. She is the voice of wisdom here for both Martin and Hannah and the transition for her is a nice change of pace.I also want to praise the original music score by Bruce Smeaton, a mostly saxophone score back when that was the most popular instrument for movie themes. (Think also "Crimes of the Heart"). Yet, in spite of the many scores which focused mainly on the Sax, this one stands out, and will ring in your ears as so romantically appropriate for this film for which many bags of popcorn were crunched and munched on during 1987. Beautifully directed, written and filmed, "Roxanne" is a throwback to the old romantic comedies of the 30's and 40's which are seldom made today, and rarely as great.

James Hitchcock Edmond Rostand's 1897 verse play "Cyrano de Bergerac" is often described as a tragi-comedy because, although it contains many comic elements, it ends tragically. Steve Martin, however, clearly thought that the basic story would work equally well as a pure comedy, and relocated it to a contemporary setting in small-town America. Martin himself plays the Cyrano figure, Charlie "CD" Bales, the local fire chief. Like Rostand's character, he is witty, acrobatic, charming and intelligent but has a very large nose. Rostand's Roxane becomes a pretty young female astronomer named Roxanne (the etymologically incorrect but more normal spelling in English). The third member of the triangle, Christian, becomes Chris, a handsome but dim-witted and inarticulate member of Charlie's team. The love-triangle plot is essentially the same as Rostand's. Charlie is in love with Roxanne, but feels unable to pursue her because he is very self-conscious about his nose. Roxanne falls for Chris, not only because of his looks but also because she believes him to be romantic and intelligent, not realising that the love letters which he used to win her heart were actually written for him by Charlie.The term "romantic comedy" is often used to mean any boy-meets-girl love story with a happy ending, regardless of whether or not it is particularly humorous. "Roxanne" meets the standard Hollywood rom-com formula; it is a boy-meets-girl love story which ends happily after the obstacles to their love (Charlie's self-consciousness about his looks, Roxanne's infatuation with Chris) have been overcome. This, however, is a romantic comedy where the comedy is at least as important as the romance, and it is often brilliantly funny. The two scenes which stood out for me were the "Twenty Nose Insults" speech, where Charlie uses his wit and skill with words to put down a lout who has insulted him in a bar, and the scene where the hopelessly clumsy and oafish Chris tries to woo Roxanne using Charlie's words, relayed to him via a radio link. At his worst Steve Martin can be a rather annoying actor, but at his best he is a comic genius with a verbal dexterity reminiscent of the great Robin Williams, and he is certainly at his best here. Daryl Hannah still appears to be working in the cinema and television, but she is not the big name she once was, and few of her films from this century, apart from the two "Kill Bill" episodes, have attracted much attention. In her twenties and thirties, however, she was regarded as a rising star, even though with her lanky, boyish figure and long face she did not really have the classical looks of a Hollywood goddess. (I don't think having a boy's name really helped her either; I often wondered why she didn't simply reverse the order of her names to become the more obviously feminine Hannah Daryl). As with Martin the standard of her acting was variable, but here, as she had done in "Splash" three years earlier, she makes a sweet, charming and unaffected romantic comedy heroine, playing a woman who is not only attractive but also educated and intelligent without resorting to that old "bespectacled bluestocking" cliché. Mention should also be made of Rick Rossovich who gives a good comic performance as Chris. In the eighties he was seen as another promising newcomer but quickly dropped off the radar; the last role I saw him in was a bit part in that dire superhero spoof "Black Scorpion II", made less than a decade after this film. Shelley Duvall is also good as Roxanne's friend Dixie. Fred Schepisi is clearly a versatile director who can work in various film genres. I originally associated him with true-life crime dramas like "The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith" and "A Cry in the Dark", both set in his native Australia, but he has also turned his hand to comedy. "IQ" (another American rom-com) and "Fierce Creatures" (a British sort-of- sequel to "A Fish Called Wanda") are other examples, but "Roxanne" is probably his best. It is shot against some striking scenery- the town is supposed to be somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, although the film was actually shot across the Canadian border in British Columbia- and features a masterly comic performance from Martin with good contributions from the rest of the cast. This is one of the funniest, and best, romantic comedies of the eighties. 8/10