Benny & Joon

Benny works as a mechanic in California and looks after his mentally ill sister Joon. His life is entirely built around that care; he has no life of his own. Then Joon loses a bet in a card game and Sam, a distant relative of the winning side, moves in. Sam can barely read but knows every routine Buster Keaton and Chaplin ever did: the hat, the cane, the silent gestures, the performances he gives in the street. The best-remembered scene has Sam dancing two bread rolls on the ends of forks at a diner table, a direct salute to Chaplin's routine in The Gold Rush. Johnny Depp plays Sam, Mary Stuart Masterson plays Joon and Aidan Quinn plays Benny. The film had a side effect too: The Proclaimers' I'm Gonna Be, released years earlier, charted in America because of it and became the band's one big hit there. Presenting mental illness as a sweet eccentricity is its weakest quality now. Depp's physical comedy and the fit between the three actors still hold it up.