Moon Over Parador (1988)
Retro Review #76: Have you ever wanted to be a dictator?
Moon Over Parador (1988)
+ Feature film, 1h 44m
+ Based on literature (short story) "Caviar for His Excellency" (1936)‼️🔙 ⭐ by Charles G. Booth
+ 3️⃣/3 works in Magnificent Fraud multiverse ⭐
A->
Grade: A-> (8.0) / HOF: 15
EQ 👍A | 📖A- 👥A 📽️A 🎼A
DW 😎9.2 | 🌚10 🌝9
POPCAP 💯n/a 🍿n/a 🧢n/a
L-R 💻⬇️2️⃣ 👀⬇️1️⃣ 🛐⬇️2️⃣
Most people don’t like this movie as much as I do. Most of you who haven’t seen it yet probably won’t either. So as much as I think that Moon Over Parador is an underrated film, I’m okay with that. It is what it is.
This movie is a modernized remake of the 1939 film, The Magnificent Fraud, with both films being based on the 1936 short story by Charles G. Booth, “Caviar for His Excellency”. Having experienced neither, any comparisons of the works will have to wait. 😉
At its beating heart, Moon Over Parador is a film about the love of acting and about how that can be an overriding passion in life for an actor. Although acting was never my greatest passion in life, it was a passion of mine once—enough so that when I stopped acting, I could not attend theatrical plays for around 15 years, because it hurt too much to be reminded of what I had lost.
So I kinda get it, and I definitely relate to the main character in the film. If you have never been an actor or actress, you won’t have that connection to the movie, but just maybe with your eyes open to that theme in the film, you will enjoy it a little better than you would have otherwise. (For an even better film about acting, one that almost everyone really enjoys, whether or not they’ve taken acting lessons, see Tootsie!)
In Moon Over Parador, Richard Dreyfuss plays Jack Noah, an actor who is just finishing up a film shoot in the fictional South American country Parador. (Which has a better ring to it than Ecuaguay!) The dictator of the country, President Alphonse Simms visits the filmsite and is amused by Noah’s impersonation of him.
Unfortunately for Noah, the President’s most powerful aide, Roberto Strausmann, also takes notice. And when the President drops dead of a heart attack, Strausmann forces Noah to take the role of his life, as he must take the dictator’s place so that the regime can continue in power.
Moon Over Parador is a solid comedy, if not full of non-stop laughs. Much of the comedy is from satire, both obvious and subtle, and most of the satire is of Hollywood and the acting profession. Many, perhaps most, critics who wrote about the film, after its initial release, disliked this choice in the script. They felt that a film like this should have included far more political satire than it actually did. While there was some, I agree that there wasn’t much.
In my opinion, this was a good choice. More politics in the film might have meant alienating half the audience. Back in the 1980s, as today, most film critics were left-leaning and wanted to see their views advocated everywhere. But unlike today, American audiences were less polarized. Viewers of Moon Over Parador could agree that authoritarian right-wing dictators are bad and Communist left-wing guerilla terrorists are bad too. So that’s what the script condemned, while advocating a generic dosage of populist democracy, sprinkled with a tiny bit of quasi-socialist populist class envy.
So even though the film can be described as political satire, the generic populism infused by the creators does indeed water that down. If you want a film that skewers politics, a kind of film loved by many critics, this just isn’t it.
A better description of the film, that allows the viewer to perceive it in a different light, is to see it as a romantic comedy in an exotic setting. While there are a few romcoms that are more romantic and a few others that are funnier, Moon Over Parador actually is quite good at both romcom requirements. Sônia Braga represents the populist roots of the country, playing Madonna Mendez, the dictator’s mistress and a potential problem for Jack Noah. The hot-blooded Latin romance may be a bit stereotypical, but it works here, set in picturesque locations filmed in Brazil. And the conflict between Jack’s growing interest in Madonna and his true passion for acting give the writers dramatic and comedic opportunities that they use well.
Moon Over Parador received a PG-13 rating, going up right to the line of an R-rating. It’s probably not a good choice for teen viewing, including heavy smoking, adult language up to a couple of F-bombs, and a good bit of innuendo and near-but-not-quite nudity. (There’s also heavy drinking, but it is portrayed as a bad choice.) The truth is that the subject matter of this film won’t interest most teens, so the easier parental choice would be to just steer them away from it. As always, I recommend VidAngel dot com to filter out any content you don’t want.
You might have noticed something in common between Moon Over Parador and a couple of older films that were among the first we visited on this tour of my Dark Whimsy favorites. That’s right, both The Mouse That Roared and The Great Race were set at least partially in fictional countries.
In both of these older films, the head of state of the fictional country is portrayed by the same actor who plays another more significant role in the film. You can be forgiven for thinking the same thing happens here—I always believed that actor Richard Dreyfuss played both the part of Jack Noah and the part of the dictator he replaces. Nope. I discovered only this week in my pre-review preparation that dictator Alphonse Simms is portrayed by Richard’s older brother, Lorin Dreyfuss!
I’m not going to tell all of you to rush out and see Moon Over Parador. Like I said, odds are good that you won’t like it as much as I do. But if you think you would enjoy a good romcom about acting, with a sprinkling of Dark Whimsy, and you’ve already had your fill of Tootsie, then Moon Over Parador is a good second choice. 😉
Onwards!
+ last viewed (3) 2025-07-01, HDX7, 1.85v, 2D
+ first viewed 1988, ThX, 1.85, 2
+ 🥰💘🥸😛🤩🎬
+ ❌0️⃣ Problematic for teens and sensitive adults. | PG-13
+ 😡+0 😵💫-1^ 🤬-1^ 🤭-0 🫣-0
+ 👀⬇️1️⃣ ➖😍
+ ✝️ -1 ➕🥴 ➖👙🚬
+ ✡️ -1 ➖🤬🫢
+ 🗽 -1 ➕📜 ➖💲⬛
Last updated 2025-07-02
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