Honeymoon in Vegas *** (1992, James Caan, Nicolas Cage, Sarah Jessica Parker) – Classic Movie Review 8,955

Viva the Flying Elvises, Viva Las Vegas, Viva the 1992 American romantic comedy film Honeymoon in Vegas.

Writer-director Andrew Bergman’s 1992 romance comedy thriller Honeymoon in Vegas stars Nicolas Cage as New York investigator Jack Singer, who promises his dying mom (Anne Bancroft in a cameo) that he will never marry and he becomes commitment phobic.

But, when his prolonged courtship of Betsy (Sarah Jessica Parker) turns sour, he says that he will finally tie the knot with her in Las Vegas. But there, gangster Tommy Korman (James Caan) sees her as the spitting image of his late wife and involves Cage in a poker game so that he can win her for the weekend, arranging for Jack to lose $65,000 in poker and make him forfeit his fiancée for the weekend to pay off the debt.

Plenty of plot and plenty of jokes are at the disposal of a handful of congenial players. Cage holds the centre firm with his bewildered good guy turn, Caan is light and easy, and. when the action moves to Hawaii, there are fun cameos from Pat Morita as Caan’s driver Mahi Mahi and Peter Boyle as a hippy, musical-loving eccentric, Chief Orman. Among the amusing ideas is a running gag about Elvis Presley impersonators.

There is also a jolly music score by David Newman, with lots of Presley songs on the soundtrack covered by famous country and pop and rock artists, including Billy Joel, Bryan Ferry, Dwight Yoakam, Willie Nelson and Bono.

It is a typical work from writer-director Bergman (The Freshman): not a great comedy but certainly a really good one – and that is rare enough.

Perhaps the highlight is when Jack joins a group about to depart for Las Vegas and discovers mid-flight that they are the Utah chapter of the Flying Elvises, a skydiving team of Elvis impersonators, involving him having to skydive from 3,000 feet to get to Betsy. This is inventive, funny stuff.

Also in the cast are Johnny Williams, John Capodice, Robert Costanzo, Burton Gilliam, Brent Hinkley, Seymour Cassel, Jerry Tarkanian, Keone Young, and Tony Shalhoub.

It premiered at Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on 25 August 1992 and was released on 28 August 1992. Opening at Number 1, it grossed $35.2 million at the US/ Canada box office, against a budget of $25 million. 

Andrew Bergman recalled: ‘It wasn’t based on anything. I wanted to do a boy-girl story, and in my perverse fashion, it turned out to be this.’

Bergman adapted his movie and wrote the book for the 2013 Broadway musical Honeymoon in Vegas, with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown.

He went on to direct It Could Happen To You (1994) with Nicolas Cage.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8,955

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