The Big Easy (1986)

[Edgy MD]

Dennis Quaid is a randy, dimpled cajun detective on the streets of the titular New Orleans, and he's dirtier than a blown out oil rig.

Ellen Barkin is a prissy DA investigating... police corruption! Can these two wayward souls somehow find love when the only thing they have in common is... a pile of dead bodies!

[Frayed Knot]

I saw this like a billion years ago and my recollection is that its somewhat predictable plot, fake N.O. accents, broad native/outsider characterizations, worked better than it had any right to do.

[Edgy MD]

Pretty good summary.

[Frayed Knot]

Quaid plays the charming rogue well enough as does Barkum as the cold northerner (un-named IIRC, but you get the idea that she's a nordic from Minnesota) who's a crayfish out of water amongst the laid-back (and mostly related) Crescent City gang.
Slow down Chere, this is N'Awlins, we all got a different way of doing things around here

[Edgy MD]

For a movie that presents New Orleans as a sleazy murderous slimepit of corruption, death and the occult, you half get the idea that the New Orleans tourism bureau underwrote the thing, they way they namecheck New Orleans culture left and right.

[list:33zhh3nv]"Remy, get your pants on. Angelo's bagman was just found murdered in Storyville."

"Ah, not tonight. I've got tickets to see the Neville Brothers."

"Just move your ass. You drive slower than a Mardis Gras float."

"Wasn't his brother the one we fished out of Lake Pontchartrain?"[/list:u:33zhh3nv]

[Frayed Knot]

Dinner at Tipitina's? ... Check

[Edgy MD]

There were two dinners at Tipitina's. Two!

[MFS62]

Edgy DC wrote: There were two dinners at Tipitina's. Two!

How could they eat two dinners anywhere with tongue so firmly planted in cheek throughout the movie?
And John Goodman as a bad guy alone was good enough reason to give it my three stars.

Later