One of those movies that’s sort of a trifle, but that works completely on that level. Plus, after you’ve seen Diner umptillion times, it’s gratifying to see the tertiary characters popping up again (aw, Bagel) and the same themes coming up again and again. Levinson is seriously obsessed with the non-realism of Bonanza, which starts out funny, gets annoying, and then passes through and back around to funny again. Plus, Seymour Cassel! John Mahoney with a ducktail! Barbara Hershey talking like a normal person! A couple quibbles: 1) The Baltimore accents are all flawless, except for Dreyfuss’s. The hell? You can lock that accent up after ten minutes with a dialogue coach. 2) Bruno Kirby, you are no Steve Guttenberg. (If your head blew up after reading that last sentence, you haven’t seen Diner recently. Go rent it.)

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