Dreyfuss-athon

I'm watching bits and pieces of my third Richard Dreyfuss movie of the day: "Moon Over Parador," in which he plays a hack American actor forced to impersonate a rank (and dead) Latin American dictator, whom Dreyfuss also plays. (Dreyfuss's actor went to BC; and Raul Julia, as tall as two Richard Dreyfusses, plays the Harvard-educated mastermind of the scam. They have awesome comic energy together. Nobody growled like Raul Julia.)

Now he looks like Dick Cheney. But what I realized is that Dreyfuss is the movies' last great natural neurotic comedian. He puts all his exasperation into the most mediocre stuff. He has no shame, screaming and then throwing away his lines like he's cleaning out the attic. "Parador" is actually a lot smarter than mediocre. The director is Paul Mazursky, who pitches the whole movie as a broad political farce with some wonderful showbiz riffs. Between this and "Down and Out in Beverly Hills," Mazursky shows a rare respect for Hispanics as intelligent comedians. All the non-white actors in the movie are great, even Charo.

Earlier I saw "Stakeout" and "Kippendorf's Tribe," a terribly directed interesting idea, with Dreyfuss fearlessly impersonating somebody's idea of a savage. He's the Pavarotti of crap. He makes it sing.