Star Spangled Girl

A woman trying out for the Olympics moves into a suburban home next to a couple of extremists lefty nuts who publish a little underground newspaper (back in the day when both parties distrusted government overreach and the media, before one seized a stranglehold on both). One of them (Todd Susman, Officer Shiflett from "Newhart") falls hard for the girl and makes a nuisance of himself. So?

Neil Simon wrote some great plays. He also wrote lots of twaddle (try "The Cheap Detective" or "Murder By Death," which has a great cast with nothing to say).

The Olympian (perky Sandy Duncan) is "conservative." I despise terms like "left" and "right" and "liberal" and "conservative" (or even "radical" since Republicans and their ilk were called "radical" under Presidents Lincoln and Trump). All these terms are historically meaningless. The USSR types who kidnapped Gorbachev were called "conservative" even though "liberals" here want exactly what they wanted: viz., a Communist autocracy.

But they're the terms we have to use because we're too ignorant to have jargon with greater precision in our combative political vocabulary.

As a writer myself (though not of plays) I can only smile at the likes of Simon, who probably never rubbed shoulders with a "conservative" but out of the depths of his ignorance sets up easy targets he smugly knocks down with softballs.

Curiously enough, though, the "conservative" America-loving Duncan is the only sympathetic character in the movie, terrorized as she is by Susman.

Frankly, the publishers of the underground paper aren't too radical. They're just a couple of nice boys too full of themselves. Tony Roberts' "radicalism" is no deeper than apparently wanting to tear things down simply because they're there. Susman doesn't seem to have the gumption or wherewithal to operate without Roberts' tyranny over him. Yet Susman is the only one who earns any genuine smiles.

Frankly, when I go to the movies I don't want political debate, even with soft targets and idiots on both sides. Simon's constant stream of dialogue gets tiresome quickly. Hardly a great movie; but if you love Simon and have to see everything he wrote, go for it.