Richard Lester is a competent farce director, whether he is directing farce or anything else. Yet [The Ritz] falls, unfarcically, flat….

[Farce], especially the kind that depends on a multiplicity of doors flying open and shut as ill-assorted people rush through them toward outrageous consequences, needs … stage space to play with. The buzzing human insects must describe bizarre trajectories, inscribe absurd patterns in their boxlike space, to illustrate the whims of that waggish demiurge variously identified as author, director, or life. Take away the spatial antics of farce, its solid geometry, and you're left with a flimsy contrivance.

Which does not mean that the filmmakers cannot refeel and rethink the farce in terms of the new dimensions and perimeters…. [But] Lester did not muster that camera energy that distinguishes even his lesser efforts. It may also be that Hollywood did not want to rub the noses of the...