Big Business

Midler sweeps into scenes with divine force, and Tomlin plays off her co-star with a barrage of comic nuance. Tomlin is playing parts, Midler is plying shtick, and it's wonderful. [10 Jun 1988, p.D1]

Big Business, which, though it never quite delivers the boffo payoff, is a most cheerful, very breezy summer farce, played to the hilt by two splendidly comic performers.

You can convince yourself you're having a good time watching Big Business. The idea seems so funny you smile in anticipation of the jokes, but the laughter is strangely tinny. It's a harmless concoction, but so mechanical it vanishes from your head the instant it's over. It should have been so much more. [13 Jun 1988, p.74]

Some scenes in a Manhattan hotel have the amiable ring of old-fashioned farce to them, but most of the going is noisy and obvious. [10 Jun 1988, p.21]

This classic comedy of errors is over-structured by cousin-writers Dori Pierson and Marc Rubel and mechanically laid out by director Jim Abrahams.

Director Abrahams, working on his own for the first time, has some problems with pacing and with sustaining an essentially one-joke premise that never arrives at its big payoff.

Ultimately lost in it's own contrivances, Big Business still manages a few laughs thanks to it's big name leading lady.