rsoonsa This moral melodrama is a work that a viewer may well wish to like more than it deserves. Although effectively photographed and designed, its plot line is, nonetheless, remote and unduly extended. Actor Perry Lang, in his only stint as a feature film director, also writes the screenplay that wants for more development. It is foremost an actor's film, as is made clear in the majority of the work's scenes. The film's unlikely protagonist, Carmine DiCarlo (Anthony John Denison), alcoholic gigolo, has been bequeathed $40,000 by his newly expired lover Martha (Anne Francis), but the latter's son Harvey (Bruce McGill) contests the will, hoping to use the moneys to aid in the launching of a new casino complex to attract desert tourists ("Little Vegas"), with assistance from a former Las Vegas hood, played by Jerry Stiller. Further complicating Carmine's situation are his teenage son of whom he has been awarded custody, a romantic connection with Martha's daughter Lexi (a fine turn from Catherine O'Hara), and his gangster brother Frank (Michael Nouri) who tries to persuade Carmine to return with him to his erstwhile home in New Jersey. Through all of this, Carmine manages to exhibit a certain joie de vivre for which he can not be despised. The film had but few theatre showings prior to being relegated to cable television, and home video sales. The piece offers a wide range of genres, while not quite settling upon being a comedy or romance, let alone a crime based thriller. This, then, fails to create an essential element: suspense, as many viewers simply will not care about whatever may happen to any of the storyline's principals. Lang, who plays an important role, does not manage to imbue his freshman effort as director with life (energy).

ClassicIsBest Anyone looking for an action-driven narrative should look elsewhere; Perry Lang's comedy-drama provides its viewers with a character study firmly in the tradition of American independent movies.In fact, Little Vegas has all the hallmarks of an 'Indie Film' before that became a genre in itself. With its desert locations, sense of isolation and drifting, no-hope characters, it recalls Bogdanovich's 'Last Picture Show' (1971); the lightness of touch and quirkiness reaches forward to Mark Illsley's 'Happy, Texas' (1999), but the film that it most strongly resonates with is Scorsese's 'Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More' (1974), especially in Carmine's relationship with his precocious teenage son, Max. That does make it sound as though Little Vegas is a hodge-podge of other people's work - it certainly isn't. While is clearly indebted to its cinematic forebears, the interwoven relationships and strong central performances make it a credible slice of observational Americana in its own right.The film centres on Carmine: down on his luck and mourning his recently deceased and much older second wife, Martha, he is trying to get his life back on track. As his establishing direct address to camera establishes, he understands why a lot of people would think of him as a loser. An attempt to escape his Mob-connected brother Frank's garbage collection business has led Carmine to a dusty mobile home park in Nevada where he is, ostensibly, a seller of said mobile homes. Life, however, is something that Carmine can't get quite get to grips with. Added to that is the hostility from Martha's grown-up children: grasping businessman Harvey and estranged daughter Lexie.Rounding out the cast is trailer park owner Sam; Carmine's boss, his closest thing to a friend and a man with his own dubious past on the fringes of some shady business deals. It's over Sam's park that the plot threads begin to converge: Harvey has options on the park, which he wants to develop into an entertainment attraction - the Little Vegas of the title. Sam wants to stall him until the option runs out and enlists Carmine's help with the promise of payment of enough money to get him back on his feet. Carmine might be able to talk the talk of a tough guy but he isn't one and as events begin to spiral out of control he's soon out of his depth.As a comedy, this isn't a laugh-a-minute; the humour comes more from the fact that none of the characters are equipped to deal with the situations they have created - apart from the ruthless Frank. Lang seems to have taken the adage that comedy is just tragedy plus timing to heart and run with it; the pathos at the heart of the narrative is tempered by the cautious hope embodied in the burgeoning romance between Carmine and Lexie.Catherine O'Hara has rarely looked lovelier than as the former wild-child who has realised, too late, that her relationship with her mother can never be fixed and is looking to make some sense of her life. It is possibly Lexie's own troubled history that gives her a kinship with Carmine; their tentative romance is one of the two central relationships holding the film together, the other being between Carmine and Max. Various characters point out that it isn't always easy to tell who is the child and who is the parent and for the bulk of the narrative they seem more like a partnership than father and son. But it is the desire to offer Max more of life than mobsters that has led to Carmine to break away from his own past. The smart-mouthed Max is self-reliant and his attempts to take care of his father provide the relationship with some of its more awkwardly tender moments.It's the performances that truly drive the film: Michael Nouri's Frank is suitably oily and menacing; Jerry Stiller delivers a low-key performance as the gruff but vaguely desperate Sam; and O'Hara's Lexie is thoroughly believable as a resilient but essentially optimistic woman who is trying to get out of the habit of being her own worst enemy. But it is Denison's performance as the sweet-natured Carmine that stands out and he delivers a portrait of a man who is fully aware of his shortcomings but whose essential decency is his redemption. Handsome and able to adopt the tough-talking swagger of a wiseguy, Carmine is, in truth, more inclined to be gentle and a little uncertain of himself. When invited to a rendezvous at a mountain spring by Lexie he asks cautiously if he should make a move - skinny-dipping not necessarily meaning the same to her as it does to him.Despite the unpromising circumstances, Denison manages to invest his hapless hero with a surprising amount of dignity, something that he manages to retain even at the lowest points (his trailer being razed; disguising himself in one of his late wife's dresses in a bid to recover his impounded car). This quality comes to the fore in his final confrontation with Frank. On the surface, Frank is the success - wealthy, influential - but his power is derived through fear and bullying and it is Carmine who emerges as the stronger of the two. This aspect is mirrored in the relationship between Lexie and Harvey, where the supposed businessman is shown as the loser next to his drifter sister. The happiness based on the opinions of others as opposed to happiness derived from the sense of self becomes the final turning point in the final sequences.

Pepper Anne One of the biggest problems with this film is that the filmmakers couldn't decide what kind of a movie they wanted: light comedy/drama or light suspense. As a result, we are interrupted with constant genre switching and no real development of anything. You can watch the movie for so long, hoping that if you just endure it a little more, something will soon start to happen. And it does: the final credits roll. Despite a notable cast and the start of an interesting story of double-crossing conveniences, the movie becomes instantly forgettable.Anthony Denison plays Carmine, a guy who left behind a garbage collection business in Jersey he ran with his relentless, mob-connected brother (Michael Nourri). Since then, he moved to an isolated trailer park in middle-of-nowhere Nevada where he lives with his teen son, Max. A grieving widow due to the recent death of his wife, he tries to figure out his next move and hopes to just start over. That's no easy task for Carmine because it seems, he's found himself in the middle of warring factions who determine the fate of the trailer park and Carmine himself.His deceased wife's arrogant son, Harvey (Bruce McGill) wants to prevent Carmine from collecting an inheritance because he needs the cash to buy up the property which he wants to transform into a roadside attraction called 'Little Vegas.' In the meantime, park owner, Sam (Jerry Stiller) wants to keep Harvey from collecting anything, hoping that the option to get the whole park will expire and with it, save his own livelihood. And the only way this might be possible is to set up Harvey in a scam using Carmine's dangerous mob connection - his brother Frank.It may seem like an intriguing tale of deceit, but the whole thing is too unbelievable because of the light-weight execution. Especially where most of the movie is interspersed with the love story between Carmine and his wife's estranged daughter, Lexie (Catherine O'Hara). Whether the movie should've succumbed to straight drama or comedy, writer-director Perry Lang (who has a role as Catherine O'Hara's cop boyfriend) should've picked one and ran with it.