Whenever I rewatch films from my childhood, too often I am disappointed that the film doesn’t hold up as well as I remember. This should be no surprise, but pleasantly there are those narratives that do hold up upon rewatch. Earlier this year I reviewed the 1988 camp classic Cocktail that, despite its quality soundtrack, is a film that I knew wasn’t good when I saw it, aged 12. Steve Martin’s Roxanne, however, delivered a warm rendering at the time but also holds up well today. Granted, much of the story is set within an absurd reality, thus requiring a suspension of disbelief, but more on that later.

Written by and starring Steve Martin, the film is a retelling of Edmond Rostand’s 1897 verse play Cyrano de Bergerac with Martin as the witty hero with one big problem: his nose. It’s so big, in fact, that it offers a nice perch for the birds. Furthermore, he can’t drink wine from a wine glass but must inhale it instead. Clearly, people don’t inhale liquids, and this silliness is why the story works. Daryl Hannah plays Roxanne, a beautiful, brilliant astronomy student who believes she’s discovered a comet. Upon getting locked out of her house one night without any clothes, she must trek to the fire department behind a row of bushes. There, she encounters Charlie (Martin), the fire chief, who she hopes will be able to let her back in. ‘Do you want a coat or anything?’ he asks. ‘No, I’d rather stand here naked in a bush in the freezing cold,’ she speaks while shivering. Charlie takes what she says literally, and when asked why no one had a coat, Charlie replies, ‘You said you didn’t want one.’ (Irony escapes him and deadpan humor seems to be his thing.) Then, when she asks if he would like to come inside, he’s already making himself a snack. ‘I sort of already did.’ (In any other film, such behavior would be regarded as creepy, but not here.) […]