Movies
Night Shift
Hard-working but not very creative comedy about a prostitution ring operating out of the City Morgue. Ron Howard's direction, in only his second feature, starts out with a surge of unchanneled energy, but soon levels off, and later on summons up only an occasional flutter. Similarly, newcomer Michael Keaton lets fly with his entire hyperkinetic repertoire in his very first scene, and he seems rather depleted thereafter. (Henry Winkler, the nominal star, paces himself more carefully as an anxiety-ridden, earmuff-wearing introvert, and never makes nearly as smashing an impression.) The morgue locale isn't really brought into play (it could almost as well have been the Post Office or the Dog Pound), and the more unsavory possibilities (necrophilia, for instance, leaps to mind) are scrupulously avoided -- not, evidently, out of tact, but out of timidity. 1982.
Reader Rating:
MPAA Rating: R