Roxanne (1987)
Retro Review #71: A good adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac that just misses getting it right on the nose.
Roxanne (1987)
+ Feature film, 1h 47m
+ Based on literature (play) Cyrano de Bergerac (1897)‼️🔙 by Edmond Rostand
+ ?/? works in Cyrano de Bergerac multiverse ⭐
A->
Grade: A-> (8.0) / HOF: 15
EQ 👍A | 📖A+ 👥A- 📽️A 🎼A
DW 😎8.6 | 🌚8 🌝10
POPCAP 💯n/a 🍿n/a 🧢n/a
L-R 💻⬆️1️⃣ 👀⬇️1️⃣ 🛐⬇️2️⃣
Steve Martin never fails to make me laugh—He’s just always hilarious. This is his fourth appearance of five on our current journey through my Dark Whimsy favorites. We met him first in The Muppet Movie with a hilarious cameo as the Insolent Waiter. He had the starring title role in The Man With Two Brains as Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr. Then he played Orin Scrivello, DDS, a sadistic dentist in Little Shop of Horrors, where he teamed with Bill Murray for the funniest scene of the movie.
Martin is again fantastic in Roxanne, a modernized-for-the-1980s version of the 19th century play, Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand. It’s a story of a man with very little self-esteem due to having very much nose. He falls in love with the beautiful Roxanne (Roxane in the original play), but instead of pursuing her himself, his lack of confidence leads him to help another suitor for her love, in whom Roxanne seems more interested.
Notwithstanding his solid performance throughout the film, in Roxanne Steve Martin again give us a superb scene that outshines the rest of the film. On a bar dare to come up with twenty insults better than “Big Nose”, he takes self-deprecation to the extreme, with a continuous litany of categorized insults. (He actually delivers twenty-five self-owns, but apparently the writers and the bar crowd couldn’t count.) It’s my second favorite comedic monologue scene of all time, after Dustin Hoffman’s amazing reveal in Tootsie.
I’ll have to take a few points off of this movie for the fact that besides the superb comedic performance of Steve Martin, most of the other attempts at comedy in the film fall flat, especially the antics of a group of incompetent volunteer firefighters. Fortunately, we get a lot of Steve Martin here, and over all the screenplay by Martin is a great modernized adaptation of the original play.
As for Dark Whimsy, one could argue that this film should have a lower reading in Dark than my scale gives it—the darkest moments of the film were mostly brief asides. But nighttime settings and the subtle (and sometimes not subtle) bullying of C.D. stealthily rack up an undercurrent of Dark that add up to a reading a bit higher than one might initially expect, considering that many of the scenes in the film have no Dark to be found at all.
The romance in the movie comes across as sweet and charming, as does Daryl Hannah in the title role of Roxanne. It’s her best performance that I can think of—can you think of a better one?
I absolutely loved this movie when I saw it in my twenties. I was single and lonely and a sucker for romance! I completely missed the lesson the movie could teach young singles that romance is less about how people feel about you, and more about how you inspire them to feel about themselves.
Now that I am much older, and perhaps slightly wiser. I was a bit disappointed on re-watching Roxanne. I now feel that the romance was cheapened quite a bit by the secular worldview of the movie. The objective of the romance was not “happily-ever-after”, but instead “let’s-have-sex-because-we-have-strong-feelings”. Regrets of having a cheap one-night stand based on false feelings are portrayed, and that’s a start in the right direction, but any idea of commitment was completely absent from the film. The original play invites no comparison, since the plot takes a different direction towards the ending, but I wish the romance in Roxanne implied a longer-lasting love than it does.
The very sexualized story and some fairly excessive adult language make it astounding that the film received a PG rating, especially since it was made after PG-13 had been available to the ratings board. A commenter on imdb claims that the MPAA originally gave the film an R, but it was appealed down to PG without any cuts. I think the PG-13 rating in the 1980s was used primarily for excessive violence, which might have explained skipping it on the downgrade. It certainly would have been PG-13 nowadays.
While the language in the film could be toned down with a filtering service such as VidAngel dot com, the sexuality is intertwined into the script and I can’t imagine how it could be made acceptable for your teen, but there’s no graphic nudity and modern TV sitcoms are worse (low bar, I realize), so I will leave the choice to your discretion, and not say this is an “adults only” film, but it was a very tough call for me. The film was sweet and charming overall, so perhaps that message wins out. As I said, in my twenties, I didn’t really view the film the same way I do now. What do you think?
There are just so very many movies like this one which are very good films, but could have been all-time greats except for adding excessive adult content and content that undermines a more positive message. It makes me sad. 😔 I recommend the film for adults who enjoy rom-coms or are fans of Steve Martin, but please consider it a lukewarm recommendation.
Onwards!
+ last viewed (3) 2025-06-05, HDX7, 2.39, 2M
+ first viewed 1987, ThX, 2.39, 2
+ 🍌🥰💘🥸
+ ❌0️⃣ Problematic for teens and sensitive adults. | PGa
+ 😡+1 😵💫+0 🤬-1^ 🤭-0 🫣-0
+ 👀⬇️1️⃣ ➖😍
+ ✝️ -1 ➕❤️ ➖♂️♀️
+ ✡️ -2 ➖🤬🫢🫢
+ 🗽 -0
Last updated 2025-06-07
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