BEFORE: I'm sick at home today - the cold hit yesterday on my day off, so since I couldn't think straight and had the need to nap every few hours, I spent the day on the recliner, watching movies I'd seen before to kill time. I re-watched "Beavis and Butt-Head Do America", then found the episode of "Inside the Actors Studio" with Robin Williams, then it was "When Harry Met Sally", Mel Brooks' one-man show that was taped for HBO, "City Slickers 2", "The Big Lebowski", an episode of "Portlandia", the finale of "Top Chef" and the first three episodes of "Celebrity Apprentice". So at least I was well entertained during my convalescence yesterday, and then after midnight I finished off with Friday's film.
This was a last-minute addition to the February line-up, since TCM ran a ton of films written by Neil Simon during January - I'll watch most of these later this year in a Jack Lemmon-fueled chain or the Robert Redford chain, but I decided to drop this one in here, because, improbably, against all rational thought, it shares an actor with "Young Adult" - someone named Joel Thingvall had an uncredited role in "Young Adult" as a businessman, and another uncredited role in this film as a college student. Another bonus, parts of "Young Adult" and this film are both set in Minneapolis.
THE PLOT: Three days into his Miami honeymoon, New York Jewish Lenny meets tall, blonde Kelly. This confirms him in his opinion that he has made a serious mistake and he decides he wants Kelly instead.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Heartbreak Kid" (2007) (Movie #408)
AFTER: This brings up what I was saying the other day about "Head in the Clouds" with regards to Charlize Theron and Penelope Cruz - I couldn't understand how a right-thinking man would rather go fight in a war than live together with those two beauties. The flipside of that is, and I'm not excusing bad behavior here but merely explaining it, it's somewhat possible to understand what Charles Grodin's character does when he is approached on his honeymoon by the lovely and very flirty Kelly, played by Cybill Shepherd.
That said, spending time with another woman while on your honeymoon is not a very nice thing to do. Even if you factor in the possibility that he leaped in to marriage before he looked, or the fact that he didn't realize that he'd be annoyed by her terrible singing voice and obsession with egg salad sandwiches, plus her constant need for reassurance in the relationship, it's still assholish behavior, and there's really no excuse for it.
I remember on my first honeymoon, my wife ate some bad seafood and spent the first night of our vacation throwing up. That sort of thing happens, and it didn't give me the right to go flirt with another woman, and it certainly wasn't grounds for divorce. (No, that came a few years later...)
So I'm left wondering why the central character of this film is such an asshole, though obviously such people probably do exist, but why put his bad behavior on display in such a manner? He can't possibly be seen as a sympathetic character, even if you factor in his naivete and allow for bad timing. My theory is that this was made just 5 years after "The Graduate", and someone was trying to recapture a bit of that magic, by portraying a young man who's sort of adrift in life, and who gets caught between two women. (Certainly sleeping with your girlfriend's mother is sort of similar assholish behavior, no?)
I went back and read my review of the 2007 remake of "The Heartbreak Kid", which I rated as a 5. On TCM Ken Levine introduced this film and called the remake "awful", but I think he's got it sort of backwards. At least that film was occasionally funny, and this one isn't (unless you count this as dark comedy, and I'm not sure it qualifies) - the original just seems very mean-spirited, like how can we keep making this guy's life worse? How many extremely awkward situations can we put him in? It's a fine line between a black comedy and a series of just plain miserable complications with awful human beings.
Plus, it looks terrible. The cinematography is altogether awful, in the end it resembles one of those 1970's Miller Lite or Coke commercials that they show on those "Best Super Bowl Commercials" specials, where they have to put black bars on the top, bottom and sides because that ratio is outdated, and it looks like the film wasn't stored correctly.
The ending is very noncommittal - because this lead character has been B.S.ing Kelly's family for so long about his intentions, it's tough to determine if he feels at peace after finally achieving what he wanted, or if his assholish nature will reassert itself, and he will soon be feeling once again that the grass is greener somewhere else. By all rights, he deserved to have someone jilt him, after the way he ditched his first wife.
Also starring Charles Grodin (last seen in "The Great Muppet Caper"), Cybill Shepherd (last seen in "Alice"), Jeannie Berlin, Eddie Albert (last seen in "The Concorde: Airport '79"), Audra Lindley, Doris Roberts.
RATING: 3 out of 10 beach towels
Classic, schmassic: this is just a full-on bad movie. This is the story of a complete asshole acting like an asshole for no other reason than the man is a total asshole. And he's not even being a funny asshole. My frustration mounts as I keep reminding myself that this is a movie and that if I throw a chair at the screen, the violent damage that has been so earnestly earned by Charles Grodin's character will instead be suffered by an innocent piece of consumer electronics.
ReplyDeleteThis is why I'm always suspicious of the term "black comedy." More often than not, it means that the movie isn't funny enough to be an actual comedy, and isn't coherent enough to be a drama. But the actors' parents worked so very hard on the costumes and the critic wants to say something more positive than "what a piece of crap."
How to save this? Well, pour some funny into it. I guess that'd be my first note. It also would have benefitted if they'd trimmed some of the time from the 48 minute wedding scene and used it to introduce us to Charles Grodin's character. Do something to put his later actions into context.
This is the one "classic genius" movie where I'm certain that I'm right and the world is wrong. I wonder if part of my reaction is because I'm about thirty years too young to properly connect with this character. If I were an adult when this movie was released, I might recognize some of his insecurities and failings and pressures. This might seem like a funny movie if I were a product of the same society that made this film.
Buuuut I wasn't, so: this is just a terrible movie.