Bananas (1971)

USA
Feature Film
Director: Woody Allen
Writers: Woody Allen, Mickey Rose
Cinematographer: Andrew M. Costikyan
Composer: Marvin Hamlisch
Cast: Woody Allen, Louise Lasser, Carlos Montalbán, Nati Abascal, Jacobo Morales, Miguel Ángel Suárez, David Ortiz, René Enríquez, Jack Axelrod

Perhaps the best of Allen’s early funny ones, Bananas follows Fielding Mellish (Woody Allen), a products tester for a large multi-national company, who falls for the radical left-wing activist, Nancy (Allen’s second wife Louise Lasser), and ends up, after a kidnapping, an attempted murder, a revolution, a counter-revolution and a ridiculously large lunch order, ends up as the president of San Marcos (a tiny, fictional Latin American country.) The most consistently funny of Allen’s early films, it takes satirical jabs at American foreign policy, irresponsible journalism and political naivety amongst many other things, and contain some of his most memorable set-pieces, not the least of which is a court case in which Mellish declares “I object, your honour! This trial is a travesty. It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.” Hugely entertaining.