Yeh... I kinda see what you're getting at.
At first sight, the kidnapping-gone-awry setting seems ripped straight from 'The Switch', which was first published in 1978. Its' sequel (of sorts) followed 14 years later with Elmore Leonard's book 'Rum Punch', which was adapted five years later into the film 'Jackie Brown' by director Quentin Tarantino.
'Ruthless People' falls somewhere in the middle. It's of course a comedy first, but it's a shame Zucker and Co. didn't just acquire the right to the Leonard novel and make it into a film, since the novel is scorching and should've already been made into a film. The trouble these days is, no matter if 'The Switch' is made, someone's going to assume it's a remake or re-hash of 'Ruthless People'.
I put the blame most squarely on studios in the 1980s, for the financing and distribution pulls that left a few people holding the bag. Nothing against the production team or writers/directors of this movie, but it relates strongly to a novel which had been in print for almost a decade prior to the film's production. It's possible someone had recalled the storyline from the Leonard book 'The Switch' and tried pitching it, and a studio mogul decided the book was not prime for a blockbuster comedy, couldn't acquire the rights (though having been a writer for close to 30 years at that point, around 1986 Elmore Leonard was just becoming hot-property in tinsel-town with more and more of his books becoming motion pictures), or this film just happens to bear a number of resemblances to the novel. Having both read the book and seen the film in question, I know the similarities and differences, but I don't know if it's substantial enough for Leonard to take the producers anywhere near a court (he was already doing so just a couple of years before 'Ruthless People' was completed, with limited success).
All I can say is, this was a pretty funny movie, 'The Switch' was a definitely a great read (and I recommend it to the fans of this film), and Elmore Leonard has indelibly left his mark on a countless number of films since the late 1960s when he was just moving from Western to Contemporary Crime fiction. His works have influences such an array of audiences and since he has a form of writing that is difficult to transform into screenplay-form (since it already reads like script pace), it's been difficult to make his books into films, and vice-versa; Leonard's attempts at writing for the screen, taking 1974's 'Mr. Majestyk' and 1999's 'Be Cool' as examples-- are very lackluster affairs on paper or on-screen.
The question remains... does this pit fans of Elmore Leonard fiction against the production company behind this feature? Even if the screenplay blatantly steals from Leonard's novel, one cannot say that this film was not in some form, a trimuph for him since it maintains the spirit of humor and plot-turns he is notorious for, even if he's only the man that planted the seed which developed this movie.
Sneedy Baumbach
eleventh.hour@[REMOVE]gmail.com
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