Jodie Foster Movie:

				Salesrank: 129938
		Our Price: $151.00
		Used Price: $26.98
		MPAA Rating: G (General Audience) Media: DVD

Editorial Review:
Writer-director Alan Parker's feature debut Bugsy Malone is a pastiche of American movies, a musical gangster comedy set in 1929, featuring prohibition, showgirls, and gang warfare, with references to everything from Some Like It Hot to The Godfather. Uniquely, though, all the parts are played by children, including an excellent if underused Jodie Foster as platinum-blonde singer Tallulah, Scott Baio in the title role and a nine-year-old Dexter Fletcher wielding a baseball bat. Cream-firing "spluge guns" sidestep any real violence and the movie climaxes cheerfully with the biggest custard pie fight this side of Casino Royale (1967).

Unfortunately for a musical, Paul Williams's score--part honky-tonk jazz homage, part 1970s Elton John-style pop--lets the side down with a lack of memorable tunes. Nevertheless, Parker's direction is spot on and the look of the film is superb, a fantasy movie-movie existing in the same parallel reality as The Cotton Club and Chicago. A rare British love letter to classic American cinema, Bugsy Malone remains a true original; in Parker's words "the work of a madman" and one of the strangest yet most stylish children's films ever made. --Gary S. Dalkin

Bugsy Malone [Region 2] Reviews:
Bugsy Malone is great
2009-11-01 - When my children were very young, I let them watch Bugsy Malone, now they are grown up and have their children watching it also. This is the best piece of work ever made. Thank you Amazon for having it because we could not find it any place else.

A great kids movie
2009-01-07 - The kids loved this movie made for kids
hard to find movies these days without swearing and bad language

Great Musical
2008-10-06 - I remember watching this movie as a kid. It really has memorable songs, and cute aspects that make an otherwise violent subject (prohibition-era gangsters) humorous. It was cool finding a clean DVD.

Let's do the time warp
2008-08-03 - The Chinese writing/Jodie Foster cover is kind of funny/weird but still, it's the same movie I saw as a kid. After reading some reviews here I find that people either love or hate this movie. I love it because it's part of my childhood. My brother and I saw it in the mid-seventies when I was around 6 and the songs stuck with us for life. He told me he often sings "So You Wanna Be a Boxer" while working and no one ever gets the reference. It is obscure but shouldn't be. Aside from the two big stars that would come out of it the movie is amazingly well done for it's time. The sets, dance routines, props (how about those pedal powered limos!), costumes and unforgettable music suggest that the producers really put their hearts into it. Yes, they plagerize mobster films to the tee but that's the point- a true children's world: Instead of brains splattering on a wall when someone is shot in the face they are litterally "creamed" with custard; steamy sex is replaced by sweet pecks and hugs, and the "big shoot out" that left a bloody mess in "Scarface" is replaced here with a food fight, singing, dancing and brotherhood. Wouldn't it be cool if the world were really like that? Maybe not to some, but to those who can see things with children's eyes it might.

Yeah, some adults may find some of this creepy, particularly the girls dancing around like Jon Benet Ramsey in short shorts, but remember this movie was made in 1976 before Ramsey, before the "tweens" ware a market or even a word, before the Britney and Lohan melt-downs, before reality only existed on TV, before children's cartoons needed parental guidance, before having to keep up with the Kardashians, before everyone felt you really didn't mind hearing their cell phone conversation, before personal computers, before paparazzi killed Diana, before the terrorists slammed into the twin towers, before Bush declared war on the world and mission accomplished and before $4/gallon gas. It was a nice time to be around for most five/six year olds and this movie takes me back. For that, it gets five stars.

BUGSY MALONE
2008-03-20 - THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST FILMS I HAVE EVER SEEN I RECOMEND IT ANYONE 5 STARS.