1980 Week: Seems Like Old Times

          Rendered by a comedy dream team, Seems Like Old Times is an old-fashioned farce unburdened by narrative ambition or social significance. It’s a silly laugh machine with a serviceable love story at the center, showcasing the fizzy chemistry between Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn, who previously scored with Foul Play (1978). Seems Like Old Times is also one of the most consistently amusing movies written by Neil Simon, which is saying something. Until it sputters during in its final scenes (an almost inevitable outcome given the spinning-plates storyline), Seems Like Old Times is a sugar rush of a movie.

          At the beginning of the story, underemployed Northern California writer Nick Gardenia (Chevy Chase) becomes a pawn in a bank robbery. (Proving spectacularly inept at criminality, Nick stares right into the lens of a security camera.) Following the heist, Nick determines that he must bring the robbers to justice in order to clear his name. Enter L.A. district attorney Ira Parks (Charles Grodin), who is married to Nick’s ex-wife, Glenda (Goldie Hawn). His eyes on the job of state attorney general, Ira resolves to make Nick’s potentially embarrassing situation go away as quietly as possible. Which means, naturally, that Nick turns up at Ira’s house, seeking Glenda’s help. She’s an easy touch, since she works as a public defender and believes that all of her clients genuinely wish to rehabilitate themselves. You can see where this is headed: Glenda helps Nick without telling Ira, Nick exploits the situation to woo Glenda, and chaos explodes thanks to endless farcical misunderstandings.
          Beyond his usual gift for rat-a-tat jokes, Simon brings tremendous craftsmanship to plot construction, developing long-lead setups and wry running jokes as well as rendering droll supporting characters. (T.K. Carter is a riot as Glenda’s butler, a dubiously reformed ex-hoodlum.) As for the Chase/Hawn scenes, they never disappoint. He’s a charming rascal, she’s a ditzy altruist, and the sexual charge between them sizzles. Grodin, as always, stoops to conquer, beautifully underplaying the role of an exasperate schmuck. Meanwhile, director Jay Sandrich, one of the most celebrated sitcom helmers in history—his credits stretch from Make Room For Daddy in 1963 to Two and a Half Men 40 years later—does a remarkable job orchestrating this intricate brew of action and patter and tomfoolery, so it’s a wonder this was the only theatrical feature he ever made. Also bewildering is the fact that Chase and Hawn never reteamed, because Seems Like Old Times did about the same brisk business that Foul Play did.

Seems Like Old Times: GROOVY

1980 Week: It's My Turn

          One of the quintessential leading ladies of the ’70s, Jill Clayburgh, fell out of fashion almost as quickly as she achieved star status. Yet over the span of several character-driven films, including this slight romantic comedy, Clayburgh built an important body of work that reflects many of the key issues driving the early women’s movement. The characters Clayburgh portrayed were confused, multidimensional, powerful, and sexy, demanding an equal share of life’s bounty even as they navigated the myriad ways in which changes to traditional gender roles complicated their relationships with men. So even though It’s My Turn is plainly inferior to Starting Over (1978) and An Unmarried Woman (1979), the films are all of a piece.

          Penned by first-time screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein, who later achieved a major success with Dirty Dancing (1987), It’s My Turn opens in Chicago, where Kate (Clayburgh) is a mathematics professor at a prestigious university. She lives with Homer (Charles Grodin), who shuns real emotional commitment because he’s still recovering from a divorce. Therefore, when Kate travels to New York for the second wedding of her father, kindly widower Jacob (Steven Hill), Kate is susceptible to the charms of Ben (Michael Douglas), one of the sons of Jacob's fiancée. A former professional baseball player whose career ended because of an injury, Ben is dashing and handsome and self-deprecating. Alas, he's also married. Nonetheless, Kate dives headlong into a whirlwind romance during the weekend of her father’s wedding, soon deciding that she wants to leave Homer for Ben. Naturally, Ben has something to say about this, hence the slender drama that ensues.

           Long on character and short on story, Bergstein’s intelligent script features dialogue vibrates with the narcissism and neuroticism of the Me Decade: “I really don’t want to live through every moment of another person’s life,” Homer whines at one point. More damningly, much of the film is bereft of genuine dramatic conflict, so things just sort of happen without recognizable consequences. There’s a reason why director Claudia Weill, who earned critical raves for her independently made first feature, Girlfriends (1978), transitioned to helming TV shows after making this, her only studio picture. On the plus side, It’s My Turn showcases Clayburgh and Douglas at the apex of their charisma, and the supporting cast (which also includes Beverly Garland, Charles Kimbrough, Daniel Stern, and Dianne Wiest) is excellent. It’s My Turn may be little more than a cinematic snack, but it has a pleasant flavor.

It’s My Turn: FUNKY

Thieves (1977)

          During one of the best scenes in Thieves, the film adaptation of Herb Gardner’s seriocomic play about a couple whose marriage is disintegrating, Sally Cramer (Marlo Thomas) attempts small talk with a would-be lover, quickly realizing how challenging it is to be cute and superficial after reaching adulthood. “I think men like young girls because their stories are shorter,” she quips. Moments later, Sally discovers that the man’s bedroom is located at the top of a ladder leading to a loft. “Jesus,” she exclaims, “it’s hard to make this look like an accident.” These snippets capture the sharp wit that makes Thieves worthwhile, despite the project’s muddy approach to storytelling, theme, and tone. Although Thieves effectively depicts the thousand slights that drive spouses apart, Gardner also burdens the piece with lyricism, metaphor, and whimsy, trying to parallel domestic issues with larger societal problems. For instance, the title has multiple meanings, referring not only to the actual robbers who prey upon the New York City apartment building where Sally lives her husband, but also to time, which steals people’s lives though the passage of hours, minutes, and seconds. The heady stuff feels artificial and pretentious, whereas the intimate material is crisp and humane.

          When the story begins, Sally and Martin (Charles Grodin) have reached a marital impasse. She’s an effervescent delight with a deep social conscience and a wild imagination, but he’s become a dull conformist preoccupied with money and propriety. More than a decade into their union, they’ve managed to argue themselves into the early stages of a divorce. During the brief separation that ensues, Sally trysts with a swinger (John McMartin) whom she met in Central Park, and Larry makes time with a sexy neighbor (Ann Wedgworth). Also woven into the story are vignettes featuring Sally’s loudmouthed father (Irwin Corey), the Cramers’ eavesdropping neighbor (Hector Elizondo), and a teenaged criminal (Larry Scott).

          The tone is erratic, with serious topics including abortion treated lightly while comparatively trite subjects including nostalgia are presented with operatic scope. Moreover, Gardner’s flights of fancy—both in terms of dialogue and plotting—add an element of stylized satire, which clashes with the realism of the scenes involving the Cramers’ spats. Music is another weak spot, because scenes are connected via chirpy flute compositions and nonsense ragtime songs. (VIPs Shel Silverstein and Jule Style penned the tunes.) All of these incompatible elements produces a lack of focus that detracts from the charm of the best dialogue, and from the skill of the performances. Grodin’s mixture of deadpan moments and emotional outbursts is modulated nicely, Thomas adds grown-up world-weariness to the sexy/spunky vibe she perfected on That Girl, and the supporting players lend diverse flavors. Incidentally, famed choreographer/director Bob Fosse plays a small part as a junkie who tries to rob Grodin’s character.

Thieves: FUNKY

The Heartbreak Kid (1972)

          Crafted by two of New York’s most celebrated wits—and based on an idea by a lesser light from the same stratosphere—The Heartbreak Kid represents satire so cutting the movie borders on outright tragedy. The film tells the story of a young Jewish guy who marries a simple girl, experiences buyer’s remorse, meets a beautiful shiksa while on his honeymoon, and gets a quickie divorce so he can pursue his Gentile dream girl. To describe the lead character as unsympathetic would be a gross understatement—Lenny Cantrow’s sole redeeming quality is a deranged sort of relentless positivity.

          Based on a story by humorist Bruce Jay Friedman and written for the screen by Neil Simon—who mostly avoids his signature one-liners, opting instead for closely observed character-driven comedy—The Heartbreak Kid was directed by Elaine May. After achieving fame as part of a comedy duo with Mike Nichols in the ’60s, May embarked on an eclectic film career. She wrote, directed, and co-starred in the dark comedy A New Leaf (1971), which was the subject of battles between May and the studio during postproduction, then took on this project as director only. While May’s world-class comic instincts are evident in the timing of jokes and the generally understated tone of the acting, it’s easy to envision another director taking the same material to greater heights of hilarity.

          Or not.

          You see, the problem is that The Heartbreak Kid tells such a fundamentally cruel story that it’s hard to really “enjoy” the movie, even when the comedy gets into a groove. Much of the film comprises Lenny (Charles Grodin) abandoning or lying to his wife, Lila (Jeannie Berlin), so he can make time with Kelly (Cybill Shepherd), a bored rich girl who uses her sexual power for amusement. In other words, it’s the tale of a rotten guy dumping a nice girl for a bitch. The piece is redeemed, to some degree, by the skill of the performers, each of whom is perfectly cast. Grodin, a master at deadpan line deliveries, is all too believable as a middle-class schmuck with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. Berlin (incidentally, May’s daughter) bravely humiliates herself to make sight gags work, amply earning the Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress that she received for this movie. Shepherd, at the time a former model appearing in only her second movie, does most of her work just by showing up and looking unattainably beautiful, but one can see glimmers of the skilled comedienne she eventually became.

          The film’s other recipient of Oscar love, Best Supporting Actor nominee Eddie Albert, excels in his role as Kelly’s father, because his showdown scenes with Lenny are among the picture’s best—watching Albert slowly rise from simmering anger to boiling rage is pure pleasure. In fact, there’s so much good stuff in The Heartbreak Kid that it becomes a laudable movie by default, even though the central character is a putz of the first order. Inexplicably, the Farrelly Brothers remade The Heartbreak Kid in 2007 with Ben Stiller in the Grodin role, only to discover the story hadn’t lost its ability to infuriate. The remake flopped.

The Heartbreak Kid: GROOVY

11 Harrowhouse (1974)

The title of actor/humorist Charles Grodin’s first memoir, It Would Be So Nice if You Weren’t Here, stems from the making of this caper film. In the book, Grodin recalls that he and costar Candice Bergen were killing downtime by chatting in a lovely room of a large English estate where the production was shooting. Then a representative from the estate discovered the actors and explained they’d ventured into an off-limits space: “It would be so nice if you weren’t here,” the representative said. If only the film had as much dry humor as Grodin’s anecdote. Instead, 11 Harrowhouse is a moderately diverting picture elevated by charming performers but weighed down by a flat screenplay. Grodin plays Howard Chesser, a diamond merchant drawn into a criminal enterprise involving the theft of a valuable jewel from a high-security facility. Bergen plays Howard’s girlfriend, who aids in the crime, and the great James Mason plays an unlikely accomplice. (Other veteran British actors in the cast include John Gielgud and Trevor Howard, both droll in their distinctive ways.) Adapted from Gerald A. Browne’s novel by Grodin himself, and polished into a final script by Jeffrey Bloom, 11 Harrowhouse aspires to soft-spoken pithiness of a veddy British sort, which would seem to suit Grodin’s reserved screen persona. Unfortunately, the onscreen events aren’t quite novel enough to sustain interest, and Grodin lacks onscreen counterpoint—he’s best when bouncing his deadpan energy off an expressive costar, but in 11 Harrowhouse, everyone is as taciturn as Grodin. The result is monotony, even when the story twists and turns through clever-ish developments. Further, the script doesn’t withhold enough information from the audience, so there aren’t many surprises; thus, even when the execution of a complex crime is shown, the only tension derives from the possibility of error. One misses the fun of discovering an imaginative scheme as it unfolds. 11 Harrowhouse isn’t a total bust, of course—how could it be, with so much talent involved?—but it badly wants for an injection of vitality.

11 Harrowhouse: FUNKY

Heaven Can Wait (1978)

          One of the most endearing love stories of the ’70s, Heaven Can Wait boasts an incredible amount of talent in front of and behind the camera. The flawless cast includes Warren Beatty, Dyan Cannon, Julie Christie, Vincent Gardenia, Charles Grodin, Buck Henry, James Mason, and Jack Warden; the script was written by Beatty, Henry, Elaine May, and Oscar-winner Robert Towne; and the picture was co-directed by Beatty and Henry. With notorious perfectionist Beatty orchestrating the contributions of these remarkable people, Heaven Can Wait unfolds seamlessly, mixing jokes and sentiment in an old-fashioned crowd-pleaser that’s executed so masterfully one can enjoy the film’s easy pleasures without feeling guilty afterward.

          Furthermore, the fact that the underlying material is recycled rather than original works in the picture’s favor—Beatty found a story that had already been proven in various different incarnations, cleverly modernized the narrative, and built on success. No wonder the film became a massive hit, landing at No. 5 on the list of the year’s top grossers at the U.S. box office and earning a slew of Oscar nominations.

          The story is fanciful in the extreme. After Joe Pendleton (Beatty), a second-string quarterback for the L.A. Rams, gets into a traffic accident, his soul is summoned to heaven by The Escort (Henry), an overeager guardian angel. Only it turns out Pendleton wasn’t fated to die in the accident, so in trying to save Pendleton pain, The Escort acted too hastily. Enter celestial middle manager Mr. Jordan (Mason), who offers to return Pendleton’s soul to earth. Little problem: His body has already been cremated. Pendleton adds another wrinkle by stating that he still intends to play in the upcoming Super Bowl. Eventually, Mr. Jordan finds a replacement body in the form of Leo Farnsworth, a ruthless, super-rich industrialist.

          Joe becomes Farnsworth—although we see Beatty, other characters see the industrialist—and Joe uses his new body’s resources to buy the Rams so he can play for the team. The delightful storyline also involves Joe’s beloved coach (Warden), Farnsworth’s conniving wife and assistant (Cannon and Grodin), and the beautiful activist (Christie) campaigning against Farnsworth’s ecologically damaging business practices.

          Heaven Can Wait is a soufflé in the mode of great ’30s screen comedy, featuring a procession of sly jokes, inspirational moments, and adroit musical punctuation. Every actor contributes something special—including Gardenia, who plays a detective investigating misdeeds on the Farnsworth estate—and the memorable moments are plentiful. Beatty’s legendary charm dominates, but in such a soft-spoken way that he never upstages his supporting players; Heaven Can Wait features some of the most finely realized ensemble acting in ’70s screen comedy. And, as with the previous screen version of this story—1941’s wonderful Here Comes Mr. Jordan, which was adapted, like the Beatty film, from Harry Seagall’s play Heaven Can Wait—the ending is unexpectedly moving. Whatever Heaven Can Wait lacks in substance, it makes up for in pure cotton-candy pleasure.

Heaven Can Wait: RIGHT ON

Sunburn (1979)

          There isn’t much to enjoy about a comedy-romance caper flick that’s neither amusing nor seductive, so even though Sunburn offers some kitschy distractions, the picture is so bland and uninvolving that it feels much longer than its actual 99-minute running time.
          The premise is fine, because Sunburn is about an insurance investigator who travels to Acapulco in order to sniff out possible fraud related to a multimillion-dollar policy; he recruits an actress/model to pose as his wife, and they fall for each other while exposing the bad guys. Where it all goes wrong is in the casting and execution. The leading man is Charles Grodin, a comic actor whose style is so bone-dry that if he doesn’t have a great scene partner, he’s left flailing; seeing him slide dialogue toward an unresponsive costar is like watching someone lob tennis balls at a mannequin. The leading lady, and unfortunately the picture’s biggest impediment, is ’70s sex goddess Farrah Fawcett-Majors, at the apex of her sun-kissed prettiness. Although Fawcett looks lovely in a series of revealing gowns and swimsuits, she’s so vapid one actually starts to forget her presence while she’s still onscreen: After the initial impact of her dazzling smile wears off, there’s simply nothing about her to sustain interest.

          To cut the actors some slack, they’re not helped by an inept screenplay that wastes all the potential of the premise, bombarding the audience with stupid attempts at bedroom farce and high-stakes action. The bedroom farce comes courtesy of a boozy nympho (played by Joan Collins in an epically awful performance), and the high-stakes action features trite gimmicks like a car chase and an underwater assault on a scuba diver. In the most painfully stupid sequence, Fawcett-Majors and Grodin drive a car into a bullring, leading to an unfunny fight between an automobile and a steer. All of this nonsense is scored with gruesomely bad disco music, complete with a cringe-inducing theme song by Graham Gouldman, of 10cc fame, who should have known better. Poor Art Carney, quickly descending from the heights of his amazing ’70s revival, does his usual professional work as Grodin’s sidekick, and his scenes are among the movie’s only redeeming values.

Sunburn: LAME

Real Life (1979)

After bringing cinematic style to the small screen, Albert Brooks brought TV style to the big screen. Comedy auteur Brooks gained mainstream attention by creating offbeat short films for early seasons of Saturday Night Live in the mid-’70s, then graduated to features with Real Life, a satire of invasive documentary series like PBS’ groundbreaking 1973 show An American Family. Brooks plays an unflattering character who is also named Albert Brooks, a shallow Hollywood hustler who travels to Phoenix with a plan of spending a year shooting the normal activities of a normal American family. He’s accompanied by a crew of cameramen wearing absurd helmet-like cameras (the movie’s best running gag), and a pair of psychiatrists who observe the filming to ensure the subject family isn’t “adversely affected” by the experience. Suffice it to say that Brooks’ overbearing behavior exacerbates tensions in the subject family, turning the filming process into a soul-crushing nightmare. As the heads of the subject family, Charles Grodin and Frances Lee McCain give immaculate performances, coming across as such pedestrian and uncomfortable individuals that they’re completely believable. More importantly, the ordinary-people vibe they generate is a sharp comedic counterpoint to Brooks’ showbiz-asshole narcissism. J.A. Preston steals all his scenes as Dr. Ted Cleary, one of the shrinks, because his utter disgust with Brooks gives viewers an outlet for their own frustrations with the protagonist’s insufferable behavior. The intentionally amateurish filmmaking technique is a drawback, and the long stretches of the movie that merely lay narrative pipe are dull, but the most outrageous scenes—like a cringe-inducing vignette of equine surgery and a series of hilarious conference calls with an unseen movie-studio executive—are inspired. A prescient meditation on the genre we later came to know and loathe as “reality TV,” Real Life is also noteworthy as the first major statement from one of comedy’s most intelligent voices.

Real Life: GROOVY

King Kong (1976)

          With director John Guillermin’s austere camerawork and screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr.’s tongue-in-cheek wordplay leavening the histrionics producer Dino De Laurentiis obviously had in mind, this notorious picture tries to rethink a Hollywood classic as a blend of social commentary and epic tragedy. (Chances are you don’t need to be reminded that the 1933 original is a creature feature depicting the discovery and capture of a giant ape living on a remote island.) The most effective bit of updating is providing a credible reason for American explorers to visit mythical, mist-enshrouded Skull Island: the promise of untapped oil reserves. The picture was made just after the 1973-1974 gas crisis, so the lust for crude was prominent in the American consciousness.
          The least effective bit of updating is the application of Ms. Magazine feminism onto Jessica Lange’s character Dwan, an admirable but failed attempt to make the female lead more assertive than Fay Wray was in the 1933 original. Playing a shipwreck victim who joins the oil expedition and captures the big primate’s heart once she goes ashore with the crew, Lange is so pretty and curvaceous it’s not hard to understand why the ape goes ape. Unfortunately, her performance is as cringe-worthy as Dwan’s dialogue, so King Kong nearly ended the actress’ career before it began.
          However, the portrayal of Kong is heartfelt in a clunky sort of way, especially with John Barry’s alternately menacing and sweeping score jacking up the emotional stakes, and some the movie’s jolts work just like they should. The hit-and-miss special effects feature silly gimmicks like monkey specialist Rick Baker cavorting in an ape suit, plus impressive animatronic monsters created by Carlo Rimbaldi; one memorable scene features a bloody fight between Kong and a ginormous snake with Dwan caught in the middle of the carnage. All of this made a big impression on me as a ’70s kid, which might explain why I still enjoy the movie—but as it happens, I’ve gotten into an embarrassing situation or two by admitting my admiration, like the time I shared my secret Kong shame with classic-cinema champion Leonard Maltin. He was a good sport as I explained that I first saw the movie when I was 7, but he wasn’t buying what I was selling.
          Nonetheless, in defense of this much-maligned movie, I can attest that the 1976 Kong looks gorgeous because Guillermin knows how to fill a widescreen frame like nobody’s business, and Jeff Bridges, all hippy-dippy shaggy as a bleeding-heart naturalist who stows away on the ship headed for Skull Island, contributes an energized performance. Charles Grodin is terrifically hammy as the villain who unwisely tries to exploit Kong, and familiar ’70s players Rene Auberjonois and John Randolph lend flavor as members of his crew. Furthermore, the ending of the 1976 version amplifies the intensity of the original film’s conclusion, replacing a daytime dogfight atop the Empire State Building with an eerie nighttime shootout atop the then-new World Trade Center.
          So, while not a great movie by any stretch, the 1976 Kong has more going for it than you might remember—but keep the fast-forward button handy for the awkward romantic scenes between Kong and Dwan. You’ve been warned.

King Kong: FUNKY