The Pigeon Egg Strategy . Austin Chronicle . 03-30-98

The Pigeon Egg Strategy

DIRECTED BY: Max Makowski

REVIEWED: 03-30-98

For a film that wears its Saussure on its sleeve, this experimental romp into semiotics and semantics (it is equal parts Monty Python, Seinfeld, and faux Godard) ambles along with surprising ease. The mere excuse of a plot, which involves a couple on the run from bumbling mobsters, offers a comfortably familiar if not specifically recognizable backdrop (it was shot in Hong Kong by a Chinese crew with an American cast) for the film's chief concern: lacing the characters' incessant chatter with doublespeak, non-sequiturs, double-entendres, wordplay, and anything else to showcase the ever-elusive and shifting nature of oral language. Sounds like Philosophy 101, I know, but lucky for us the filmmaker apparently studied his Howard Hawks, too - the wit and repartee of 1930s screwball comedy pulls us through what could have potentially been a ponderous exercise. And except for the severe misstep of the film's climax (an obligatory shoot-out scene that is clumsily staged and offers absolutely nothing new to the film in particular or the shoot-out cliché in general), the film proves there's no reason semiotics can't be a breezy walk in the park.

--Jerry Johnson

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