“THE WOOL CAP”
Sunday night at 8 on TNT
* * * (three stars)
If William H. Macy can’t make your upper lip quiver, you either have no upper lip or you’ve been mixing the Viagra with your toothpaste.
In 2002, he played a developmentally disabled door-to-door salesman, and this year it’s a mute building super in TNT’s “The Wool Cap.”
What’s left? A blind bus driver?
Of course, I’d weep like a willow even if he did play a blind bus driver, but that’s my problem. I can’t help it. Sunday night’s “The Wool Cap” is another Macy made-for-TNT tear-jerker, which he both co-wrote and co-produced from a story by Jackie Gleason. It’s the story of Gigot, the mute building super, who lost his voice and his heart years earlier in a car accident that killed his little sister. Gigot was driving stoned.
Fast forward many years, and he’s a super in a building that is supposed to be in New York but is so not filmed here. (For one thing, the Coney Island in this movie looks like some antiseptic fun park with planters.)
Anyway, Gigot is now the semi-down and semi-out super living with his pet monkey. Into his life, on Christmas Eve, comes a junkie mom, her terrific kid, Lou (Keke Palmer), and the mom’s creepy boyfriend.
Two days later, mom and beau split, leaving this mute building super to figure out what the heck to do with the kid. He gets some help from his pal, Ira (Don Rickles), who absolutely steals whatever scenes he’s in. For one thing, he’s a great comic actor and, for another, how can you lose with lines like: “Never underestimate the incompetence of government. Look at Amtrak.”
Or: “There’s a Yiddish word for what you’re doing, my friend. I don’t know what it is, but in Catholic, it’s ‘Jesus! Mary! And Joseph!'”
Palmer also is a natural kid actor … neither phony nor cutesy. Just a solid little performer.
Rounding out the cast are greats like Ned Beatty as Gigot’s long-lost dad and Catherine O’Hara as Gigot’s once-a-week hooker … Viagra not included.