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    Nostalgia Central
    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»1980s Movies»Movies 1989
    Movies 1989 Movies F 2 Mins Read

    Fabulous Baker Boys, The (1989)

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    Frank and Jack Baker (real-life brothers Beau and Jeff Bridges) are a cocktail lounge piano duo who content themselves playing to empty bars night after night.

    But when they employ professional escort turned sultry torch singer Susie Diamond (Michelle Pfeiffer) in an effort to revitalise their act, her arrival brings long-suppressed tensions to the surface.

    From her first entrance, Pfeiffer charges things up.  Susie has come to audition for the Baker boys, who think a girl singer might add glitz and bookings to their limp fifteen-year-old act. The boys have already heard 37 hilariously off-key canaries (Jennifer Tilly crucifying The Candy Man is the funniest) before Susie shows up.

    She’s late, her heel is broken, and she’s got gum stuck to her lip. Yet Susie cons the boys into listening to her warble More Than You Know.

    Pfeiffer does her own vocalising – she’s good enough to keep you attentive (if not eager to buy the soundtrack), but Jack thinks that Susie’s sweet voice and sumptuous body add up to a hot combo. He’s right.

    At first, Susie, with her French cigarettes, world-weary manner and four-letter vocabulary, seems all brash surface. But Pfeiffer lets us see the scared kid inside.

    When Jack, a jazz talent who hates himself for wasting his life noodling out elevator music for drunks, starts responding to the emotion Susie puts into her songs, she bristles. Susie recognises herself in Jack: They’re both losers who’ve sold themselves on the cheap.

    But her attraction to Jack is real. On one of their better gigs, at a resort hotel, she lets it show. Draping herself over Jack’s piano in a slinky red dress,

    Susie sings a torchy version of Makin’ Whoopee that brings down the house and her defences.

    Sweetly directed by screenwriter Steve Kloves in his directing debut, the film smoothly zeroes in on many universal truths along its delightful way, with the fabulous Bridges boys’ faultless timing and expert underplaying allowing Pfeiffer to shine radiantly.

    You won’t forget her sizzling rendition of Makin’ Whoopee in a hurry, either.

    Jack Baker
    Jeff Bridges
    Susie Diamond
    Michelle Pfeiffer
    Frank Baker
    Beau Bridges
    Nina
    Ellie Raab
    Monica Moran
    Jennifer Tilly
    Lloyd
    Xander Berkeley
    Charlie
    Dakin Matthews
    Vince Nancy
    Gregory Itzin
    Donna Baker
    Wendy Girard
    Ray
    Ken Lerner
    Henry
    Albert Hall
    Earl
    Bradford English
    Theo
    Todd Jeffries
    Dr Finnegan
    Stuart Nisbet
    Eddie
    Drake
    Jenny
    Jensen Daggett
    Becky
    Nadia Deleye

    Director
    Steve Kloves

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