Lorin Stein

When an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court looms up out of a dark and stormy night, semi-automatic at the ready, and tells the hero, ‘don’t play games with me . . . I know your father hid something in the teddy bear,’ you should be able to look back at what has already happened, slap your forehead, and think: ‘Of course! Why didn’t I think of that? The judge has been after the teddy bear all along!’ That’s the thrill. But when anything remotely eventful takes place in The Emperor of Ocean Park, you will have either thought of it already or you could never have thought of it, because like that teddy bear, it’s utterly cuckoo bananas.