Why I Don’t Love Roxanne Anymore: Revisiting Steve Martin’s 1987 Romantic Comedy

I think you’re way overanalyzing this movie. It was meant to be seen as a light-hearted rom-com of the times without being too dramatic, or just being a bit theatrical, as Martin’s character is (since it is based off a theatrical play). The original play was written as an entertaining escape, not to be taken seriously. There are a number of scenes which are drawn straight from the play (more or less). Since Martin wrote the script, he obviously chose to depict C.D. with a certain eccentric flair, which Martin often did with his characters. Whether one likes it or not is certainly a matter of personal opinion and taste. To each their own. Martin also wrote The Three Amigos, which is stupid-funny, or just stupid and broad depending upon one’s personal taste. By the way, I don’t laugh out loud at movies I did as a youngster either. I think that’s pretty common. Plus, we also now live in much more cynical times and the days of our youth are very innocent by comparison. One person may interpret many scenes in the movie as superfluous, but Martin being a comedian at heart, is going to include them because he thinks they’re funny. It’s really not a subject for in depth film critique. He wrote the screenplay, executive produced the film, and acted as the main protagonist in it so he seemingly had total creative license to include whatever he wanted to in the film. Some of this ‘pratfall-a-rama’ is included in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and a lot is included in The Jerk. The possibly superfluous scenes of humor work better in comedies like The Jerk than it would in a Rom-Com like Roxanne because we have a different expectation for each movie. With a Steve Martin comedy, you expect it to be what he writes into it. But if you just looked at Martin’s imdb page, you would’ve seen that he wore all these hats for Roxanne and understood why certain perceived superfluous elements were included, like the gymnastics of his character. At the time, I just took it to be something you could see Steve Martin bringing to his character. But maybe it also reflects Martin ‘paying homage’ to the theatrical character of Cyrano by imbuing his movie character, C.D., with some dramatic theatrics, like being able to gymnastically vault from the ground to the top of a 3 story Victorian home. Cyrano was quite the dramatic duelist who took people to task in the play. Likewise, Martin’s C.D. did in the opening scene with a faux duel with a tennis racket vs. ski poles. Nelson, British Columbia, where Roxanne was filmed is a ski town, although it’s a bit incongruous to see these two drunk guys carrying ski poles down the street when it isn’t even ski season. That opening bit is why I think you’re overanalyzing this movie because Martin is just being his typically, silly self in writing this scene. The scene is included as little more than a common plot device to introduce the main character and allow the audience to connect with him by seeing him being mistreated, thereby inducing empathy in the audience..pretty standard fare..but Martin keeps the scene lighthearted (with sound effects & C.D’s realtime narration) so the movie doesn’t become too serious and all about the character trying to overcome insurmountable odds. Then it would become a drama. Also, this scene is loosely drawn from Act I in the Cyrano de Bergerac play where Cyrano and his adversaries duel. As they fight, Cyrano typically invents a poem that matches exactly the action of the duel. So Martin ‘improvising’ as he walks down the street and calling ‘Play by Play’ on his life and the ensuing tennis racket/ski pole duel is not “to demonstrate he’s charming even when alone” but to demonstrate the character to the audience and modeling it off the original Cyrano play character. This is how he was. He would compose and recite poetry in the moment as he dueled. Even the scene where he falls out of the tree in front of the old ladies is loosely pulled from a play scene where he tries to convince a character of his being a madman by saying he has been to the moon. This scene chronologically follows one in which Roxanne and the other guy get married, so it matches up (even if loosely) with Martin telling these women of aliens after he seduces Roxanne into sleeping with the other guy. While I didn’t exactly care for this scene either, I can see somewhat how, or why he included it. I guess he thought that aliens attracted to older women would be funnier than it was ( as a means to get them to Roxanne's house). While he could’ve developed a better scene to interfere with getting Chris laid by Roxanne, this was what he went with. The central scene of Roxanne was more closely pulled directly from the Cyrano play. He manipulated her into bed with Chris, but this isn’t necessarily something to blame Steve Martin for. This is what occurred in the original play. He seduced her for someone else. In the play, she didn’t find out for another 15 years who wrote the letters, long after Chris’ original character (Christian) was dead. Maybe Martin felt like he needed to be truer to the play instead preventing Chris from sleeping with her in your alternate version of what he could have written. You have to realize that in the ‘80s, it was not a priority to write stories with the politically correct dictators in mind. The creepiness you have a problem with stems from the original play, which was also a product of its times. The play also not meant to be taken seriously and was meant to be an escape, like most entertainment is meant to be. But now everyone is a critic who lives in a glass house casting stones back into the past.