Movies Made Here: The Impostors (1998)

“Seems,” madam? Nay, it is. I know not “seems.” So goes the famous Hamlet quote on seeming vs. being we hear coming from the stage 20 minutes into this madcap romp. The Impostors is chock full of characters pretending to be other than what they are; it’s a movie for actors by actors about actors – which might be too much acting for most.

Directed by actor Stanley Tucci, Impostors stars everyone under the sun. There’s Woody Allen in an uncredited turn as neurotic director, go figure; Alfred Molina as the horrid drunken Hamlet actor; Lily Taylor as gracious hostess; Isabella Rossellini as a fallen queen in hiding; Hope Davis as the once-miserable gal who falls in love with Steve Buscemi as a suicidal man named “Happy;” Billy Connolly as an old gay wrestler; and of course our two central stars, Tucci and his fellow out-of-work actor buddy and roommate, Oliver Platt. Just to name a few.

If the movie sounds crowded, it is. And it really begins to feel that way in the last two thirds I refer to as the “ship of fools” portion when Platt and Tucci become accidental stowaways on a luxury ocean liner.

I measure the movie roughly by pre-Music Hall and post. In the earlier, quieter moments of the film, when there are less hijinks and less actors to keep track of, things are still fresh and often funny. Once we enter the ship though, the laughs may drop off – not for lack of effort. The movie always remains fun, if not exactly funny, and you can’t fault these actors for making the most of their two-faced bit parts. They are clearly having a good time in their roles, overacting in the style the movie was going for, both set in the 1930s and harkening us back to the screwball comedies of that era.

But, as this is the Movies Made Here feature, what interests us most is Tarrytown and the scenes filmed therein. I wasn’t certain in my viewing how much surrounding the Music Hall stage and seats was also filmed in the Music Hall – “Long before my time,” said Hall director Bjorn Olson, though he had heard that Tucci was a pleasant fellow to work with.

Tucci and Platt are so destitute that they initially try to act their way into getting the baker to give them free baked goods. This backfires when the baker hands them instead two tickets to see a Broadway production with a big, overrated star at the helm. They go to the Music Hall to scoff and continue to do so after the show at a bar which gets them into the trouble that leads them to flee to that ship with its dancing sheiks and thieving lovers and so forth.

From the outside, the Music Hall looks grand with the handsome Depression-era cars parked in front. The inside seems as timeless as ever as our “oldest continually operating theater in Westchester” is so good at being. Onstage, Molina’s actor is ridiculously over the top. During intermission we see him in his dressing room in rough shape, having consumed his bottle of gin and basket of boiled eggs. Back onstage, Molina takes a swipe at a fellow actor with his sword, slicing a stripe through the middle of his bald spot. You can’t help but feel an alliance will develop between this bald-spotted man and the also bald-spotted Tucci’s Arthur, and sure enough, there they are later commiserating at the bar.

Is the movie itself timeless? You can be the judge of that. Roger Ebert dubbed it a “traffic jam” in the Chicago Sun-Times in ’98. “There are movies that work, and then movies like The Impostors that don't really work but are pleasant all the same. There was nothing I actively disliked about the film. But my affection was more polite than impassioned.” I only choose to quote him because that’s how I felt too, but there are as many opinions as there are viewers…or, for that matter, actors in this film.