Delirious is a romantic comedy film starring John Candy, Mariel Hemingway, Emma Samms and Raymond Burr. It was released in 1991, but it did not achieve commercial success at the box offices. Some speculate that John Candy was better suited to pure comedy roles rather than ones within the realm of the romantic comedy genre.[citation needed]
Despite these issues with the film, it has a cult following as a sleeper comedy classic, largely due to Candy's presence.[citation needed]
Plot
The film opens in a lush 1970s soap opera, complete with all the characters you'd expect to find, in a small upstate New York town of immense wealth (Ashford Falls) and ludicrous backstabbing... which breaks and we see that it is of course an acting set.
John Candy plays Jack Gable, a nearly out-of-work soap opera writer, whose product, like him, is now dated. His situation is only worsened by his despicable work associates who would sooner show him the door than work with him. Behind his back, they commission Arnie Federman, another writer, to re-write Jack's script. Thus is set one of the themes for the movie, Jack versus Arnie, who write completely opposing scripts. Jack's associates want to write Laura out of the script due to the high cost of keeping her on the cast. They attempt to create a new, less costly character, Janet DuBois, to replace Rachel. Meanwhile, Jack has a one-sided infatuation with Laura (Samms), who humors and uses Jack, but has no romantic interest in him. A fight with her boyfriend, however, leads Laura to call Jack and ask to accompany him on a weekend trip to Vermont. Jack melts to the suggestion and as he loads Laura's luggage in the trunk of his Oldsmobile sedan, Laura makes up with her boyfriend and, as they kiss passionately on the sidwalk, the trunk lid suddenly pops open and strikes Gable on the chin, knocking him unconscious. When he comes back to, we see him proceeding on his trip, only to be involved in a car accident.
Upon waking from the crash, Gable finds himself in Ashford Falls Community Hospital, the same hospital in which his soap opera takes place. Thinking himself the victim of a prank by the actors, Gable goes to the window to confirm his suspicions, only to find the view beyond the glass is entirely of his own creation. Incredulous, Gable checks out of the hospital and makes his way to a motel, where he looks into getting his car repaired. When a conversation with the local auto mechanic (one of the characters from his show) goes nowhere, he types in his typewriter that the mechanic calls him and tells him his radiator is fixed, only to have the words magically disappear from the page. A few seconds later, the phone rings and suddenly his car is fixed. At this point he begins to explore the town, and in doing so he discovers the truth. He is living within his own soap opera, a world in which he and his typewriter can control events. However, so can Arnie Federman in the "real world," which causes events to roll back and forth as Gable and Federman re-write events back and forth, creating paradox after paradox.
Gable seizes on his newfound power to selfishly pursue the selfish Rachel Hedison (played by Samms). Despite his inventive writing skills, she manages to ignore him, yet his futile efforts are redeemed by the attentions of the unselfish Janet Dubois (Hemingway). Other events ensue, in which Gable experiences the height of the high life, the lowest of the low, the full gamut of experiences, including a wild party which he wrote. The film ends with Jack getting together with the woman who played Janet, and getting the show done how he wanted.
Trivia
In the fantasy of Jack's soap opera, Robert Wagner plays himself, as the actor written by Arnie Federman to play as the "real" Jack Gates, the "Wolf of Wall Street," a ruthless tycoon who wishes to buy a miracle weight loss pill from Janet, developed by her mad-scientist father. However, Jack writes himself as the Gates character, prompting Candy's giddyness upon seeing Wagner for the first time, "Robert Wagner! What are you doing on daytime TV?". The back-and-forth playing of Gates by both Gable and Wagner results in a comical identity swap of the "Wolf of Wall Street" character.
Wagner is not mentioned in any of the credits either at the beginning or end of the film.
External links
