The Most Adorable Gangster Movie Ever

I don't know why it's taken me this long to see "Bugsy Malone," the 1976 mob musical where every single member of the cast is either prepubescent, or at least looks the part. I was the right age at the right time, and I easily could have crossed paths with it during my childhood. Instead I had to settle for the likes of "Annie" and "Xanadu." Well, bygones.

How do you make a mob movie starring children? The kids talk and behave like adult gangsters and gun molls, but only up to a point. The guns fire whipped cream "splurge" instead of bullets, the cars are all push-pedal operated, and the drinks at the speakeasy contain no alcohol. I suspect adults will get more out of the film than the children it was made for, simply because the cleverness of many of these child-friendly touches requires more knowledge of old gangster film tropes than the under-twelve set is likely to have. Modern kids would probably be more baffled than anything else, since the 1920s gangter era is so much farther removed from the popular culture now than it was in 1976. At the ripe old age of thirty-something, however, I found "Bugsy Malone" charming and sweet and very nostalgic.

Aside from its central conceit, "Bugsy Malone" is also known for the fact that two of its featured young stars, Scott Baio and Jodie Foster, would grow up to be famous actors. Before I watched it, I had an image of the film in my mind of a much stiffer affair, with the child actors mouthing lines and doing impressions of adult performances without really inhabiting the characters. Fortunately this isn't the case. Baio plays Bugsy, a tough guy hero in requisite suit and fedora, who is perhaps too popular with the ladies. Foster is the hard-boiled femme fatale, Tallulah. They're both excellent, but there are two other equally good performances. Florrie Dugger plays Bugsy's love interest, Blousey Brown, and John Cassisi is the local kingpin, Fat Sam, who runs the speakeasy where Tallulah and Blousey are performers. Cassisi especially keeps stealing the show as the blustery, beleaguered Sam, perpetually on the verge of losing his criminal empire.

It's a fine line between child actors simply mimicking adults or going too far in the other direction and behaving eerily like adults trapped in child bodies, but the mix is just about right here. It helps that the mood is light and all the kids seem to be having a great time playing gangsters. There are some genuine talents among the cast, which is vital. The movie's gimmick wouldn't work half as well if the kids weren't good enough actors to make us buy them as these characters. The suspension of disbelief required is pretty hefty, though, and the filmmakers wisely don't try to push the joke too far. The trappings are elaborate, but the story is simple enough that you could see how some enterprising kids could have come up with it themselves. Cast and crew keep up the act convincingly until the very end of the movie, where the big showdown turns into a pie fight and song number, the spell is broken, and all the kids are kids again.

Directed by Alan Parker, who would go on to make other musicals like "Fame" and "Evita," it's ironic that the music in the film is the weak link here. I don't take issue with any of the songs, which were written by the great Paul Williams, but having them sung by adults with the kids lip-syncing to them in the film doesn't work. The results are extremely jarring, especially since the adult voices are the only sign of grown-ups in the whole film, and undermine the conceit of this fantasy universe populated only by children. In every other aspect, the illusion is almost perfect, down to the radio announcers and the chorus line. The speakeasy performance scenes are perhaps a little too reminiscent of those terrifying beauty pageants for little girls with their moments of playacted sexiness, but these are brief and appropriate in context.

Is "Bugsy Malone" great cinema? No, but it's an interesting little experiment with modest ambitions, and manages to be awfully entertaining. It showcases some great young talents, provides a lot of laughs, and it's impossible to get "You Give a Little Love" out of your head for hours afterward. Watching it made me feel like a kid again, and the movie should do the same for other viewers of a certain age, who still appreciate a good pie fight.