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

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

Such Good Friends (1971)

          Another of director Otto Preminger’s cringe-inducing attempts to explore themes related to the youth culture of the late ’60s and early ’70s, this awkward movie features a few cutting one-liners, but is so scattershot and tone-deaf that it’s nearly a disaster. Worse, this is very much a case of the director being a film’s biggest impediment, because had a filmmaker with more restraint and a deeper connection to then-current themes stood behind the lens, the very same script could have inspired a memorable movie.

          Adapted from a provocative novel by Lois Gould, the movie tells the story of Julie Messigner (Dyan Cannon), a New York City housewife who discovers that her husband (Laurence Luckinbill) is a philanderer—at the very same time her husband is stuck in a coma following complications from surgery. (Any resemblances to the 2011 movie The Descendants, which features a similar plot, are presumably coincidental.) As Julie discovers more and more about her husband’s wandering ways, she moves through stages of grief, first denying the evidence with which she’s confronted, and then acting out in anger by having affairs of her own. Mixed into the main storyline are semi-satirical flourishes about the medical industry, because one of Julie’s close friends is Timmy (James Coco), the leader of the incompetent medical team treating Julie’s husband. As if that’s not enough, Preminger also includes trippy bits in which Julie flashes back and/or hallucinates because she’s looking at the world in a new way. In one such scene, Julie dreams that a publishing executive played by Burgess Meredith is naked while he’s talking to her at a party, leading to the odd sight of Meredith doing a few bare-assed dance moves.

          Preminger’s atonal discursions clash with the poignant nature of the story, thereby undercutting strong qualities found in the movie’s script—the great Elaine May (credited under the pseudonym Esther Dale) and other writers contributed pithy dialogue exchanges that occasionally rise above the film’s overall mediocrity. Preminger’s sledgehammer filmmaking hurts performances, too. Cannon tries to infuse her character with a sense of awakening, but Preminger seems more preoccupied with ogling her body and pushing her toward jokey line deliveries. Costars Coco and Ken Howard, both of whom appeared in Preminger’s awful Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970), have funny moments playing unforgivably sexist characters, and model-turned-actress Jennifer O’Neill is lovely but vapid as a friend with a secret. As for poor Luckinbill, his role is so colorless that he’s a non-presence.

Such Good Friends: FUNKY

Mikey and Nicky (1976)

          This hyper-realistic crime drama should hit my ’70s art-cinema sweet spot: It’s a quiet character piece about low-level hoods, grounded in energetic performances by two creative actors with a long offscreen history. It’s also a novelty as the only drama helmed by the great Elaine May, best known for her work in the realm of sophisticated light comedy. So, why doesn’t Mikey and Nicky work for me? In a word: Cassavetes. I realize it’s heresy to criticize the father of American indie cinema, but Cassavetes’ onscreen persona was grating at the best of times, and he’s downright insufferable here. It’s not just that he’s playing a pain-in-the-ass character; the problem is that Cassavetes treats every scene like an acting-class exercise, spinning into seemingly improvised riffs and repeating dialogue over and over again, presumably while awaiting the “inspiration” to say something different. Actors may find this stuff endlessly fascinating, but there’s a reason films usually capture results instead of process—nobody needs to see the sausage getting made.

          As the writer-director of this sloppy enterprise, May has to take the blame for letting her leading man run away with the movie to such an extent that Mikey and Nicky feels like one of Cassavetes’ own directorial endeavors. It’s a shame May didn’t exercise more discipline, since the premise could have led to something exciting. Small-time crook Nicky (Cassavetes) is convinced he’s on a Mafia hit list, so he reaches out to his long-suffering best friend, Mikey (Peter Falk)—and that early moment is when the story goes off the rails. It’s never clear what Nicky wants from Mikey, except perhaps companionship, since Nicky shoots down every suggestion Mikey makes for avoiding danger. Instead of running to safety, Nicky drags Mikey along for an evening of boozing and whoring, with more than a few pit stops for childish tantrums and emotional meltdowns. Nicky’s behavior is so obnoxious that it’s tempting to cheer when Mikey finally asks the obvious question: “Don’t you have any notion of anything that goes on outside your own head?”

          Appraising May’s contributions to Mikey and Nicky is almost impossible, since she seems like a passive observer capturing Cassvaetes’ tempestuous “genius” on film; stylistically, there’s nothing recognizable here from May’s other pictures. And befitting its on-the-fly nature, Mikey and Nicky is fraught with technical errors. In one scene, a boom operator is plainly visible in the mirror of a hotel room supposedly occupied only by the title characters. These amateur-hour mistakes are exacerbated by the fact that supporting actors including Ned Beatty, William Hickey, and M. Emmet Walsh are wasted in nothing roles. Mikey and Nicky gets all sorts of credit for trying to be something, and doubtless many discerning viewers will find admirable qualities. However, if there’s any great redeeming value buried in the self-indulgent muck, it was lost on me.

Mikey and Nicky: LAME

A New Leaf (1971)

          To say that Elaine May did not enjoy the same level of success directing movies as her onetime comedy partner, Mike Nichols, is to greatly understate the situation. Whereas he became an Oscar-winning superstar, May helmed just three pictures before focusing her energies on writing and occasional acting. The reasons why May’s directing career sputtered are well known—not only did her three features underperform commercially, but she repeatedly went over-budget and over-schedule thanks to indecisiveness and inefficiency. (Her third movie, 1987’s Ishtar, has become synonymous with behind-the-scenes chaos.) Given this context, it’s unsurprising to learn that May’s directorial debut was the subject of massive battles between the filmmaker and Paramount, which heavily recut the movie against her wishes. Yet while the resulting picture bears obvious scars from postproduction tinkering, it’s a bold and sometimes delightful concoction that undercuts the romantic-comedy genre by presenting a grim plot.
          At least as far as Paramount’s version goes, A New Leaf is a simultaneously sweet and pitch-black comedy about a would-be ladykiller whose scheme gets derailed by love. The film is visually unimaginative but filled with clever dialogue, so it comes across like filmed theater—fitting May’s background as part of an iconic comedy duo, the best scenes are two-person sketches that soar with wry patter. In addition to writing and directing the picture, May costars, quite effectively, as Henrietta Lowell, a meek heiress who lands in the crosshairs of Henry Graham (Walter Matthau), an aging heir who has depleted his fortune. Receiving advice to marry a woman with money, the hopelessly self-involved Henry resolves to find and kill an heiress, since the thought of actually sharing his life with another person is abhorrent. For a time, he believes he’s found the perfect mark in Henrietta, a shy klutz who can’t see through his duplicity, so dark humor steams from the way he cajoles her into marriage, even as her exasperated lawyer, Andy McPherson (Jack Weston), tries to protect Henrietta for less-than-noble reasons. The inevitable twist is that Graham develops the capacity to care about another human being, making it difficult to follow through on his homicidal intentions.
          Based on a Jack Ritchie story, A New Leaf presents a sturdy narrative that hums along nicely even though the humor is never riotous. The title refers to Henrietta’s interest in botany, one of several traits that make her likeable because she’s a complete innocent. May’s performance is charming and utterly devoid of vanity; it’s also a kick to watch her trade punchlines with stone-cold comedy pro Matthau, cast against type as an immaculately dressed sophisticate. Among the supporting players, Weston delivers one of his patented uptight characterizations, James Coco gives a fun turn as Graham’s repulsive uncle, Doris Roberts pops as a lascivious housekeeper, and George Rose adds heart in the role of Henry’s patient butler.

          Nonetheless, the playful quality of May’s dialogue drives this picture more than anything else. Once farcical moment finds Henry  trying to propose while resting a knee on the remnants of a household accident: “Kneeling on broken glass is my favorite pastime,” he says through gritted teeth. “It keeps me from slouching.” Sight gags rarely land as strongly as verbal ones given May’s inexperience at visual storytelling, and it’s tempting to imagine how much better A New Leaf would have played with a stronger hand calling the shots. After all, even though May tried to get her name off the picture, it’s hard not to form the impression that Paramount did her a favor by editing out extraneous material. At 102 minutes, A New Leaf endears without dazzling, so one imagines that May’s 180-minute version considerably overstayed its welcome.

A New Leaf: GROOVY