Bye Bye Braverman

The description of this movie fails to convey how totally hilarious it actually is, although it gives a partial idea of its bittersweet qualities. Throughout the movie, we see things through the eyes of one of the main characters who keeps imagining his own death. His own pessimistic fantasies contrasted with the absurd predicaments the four friends keep getting into are a riot, and at the same time, convey human frailties most poignantly. There are wonderful cameo performances by Jessica Walter, Alan King and Godfrey Cambridge and others that are worth the price of admission all by themselves. The movie has a distinctly ethnic Jewish sensibility and a real New York feeling as we follow the characters from Greenwich Village to Brooklyn as they look for the funeral parlor for the dead Braverman. Oh, how I wish I could buy this movie on DVD! It's just wonderful. If you ever get a chance to see it, run to the theater!

I am not sure why the hate for this from so many quarters. It seems impossibly authentic, and while not for a funeral, like far too many trips I have taken with friends to get something done, and minor hijinks occur.

The death seems like a Macguffin at first, an excuse to get them rolling, but I think it really changed them, and as (deliberately) insufferable as some of the guys were, there were deep points, and some of them had (minor) revelations about life, death, and what their life means.

But, in the end, you feel nothing horrible or great will happen. It is the stereotypical slice of life story, and will change them all... a little. But tomorrow they will go do their writing, their tormenting their children and wives, and I suspect most of them will go see Randolph Scott and eat split pea soup on Thursday.

to me this movie turns the biblical story of the Exodus on its head. Instead of leading His people into the Promised Land, Monroe(Segal)leads His people out of the Promised Land(Manhattan), and into the desert(Brooklyn), and they wander and wander. While there, each character comes to question his faith. The four main characters, assimilated Jews, have abandoned their traditions when we first meet them. Upon their return to their roots(Brooklyn),characters and situations confront them, that force them to look inward at themselves, and what they have become. Listen to the speeches carefully. King's, Cambridges'(brilliant cameo), and don't overlook Segal's at the cemetery addressing the headstones(just beautiful. Strange that this move as released in 1968,at the height of so much turmoil. BBB is an overlooked classic. This movie is so important to me, that when it finally is released on DVD, I will be the first on line to buy it. And, I don't even own A DVD player! But for this movie I might just buy one.

For a movie to have something "going for it" other than slick pages an quark footers and headers... read public relations sic: it is the movie. Bye Bye Braverman is the Funniest Craziest Strangest Silliest Fun-ier est fun great great weird wired strange strange movie you may ever want to see. That is for the average movie goer....while I can't vouch for some of our other movie goers and listeners and i can say for me that braverman...notice how familiar we can get in here together... is about friends in a car ...going to a funeral Bye Bye Braverman has lots of music and lots of unusual outlandish clips of film and some very funny theatrical circumstances of a variety systemically derived....it is full of devices. .. coincidental,mechanical and abstract and by space and spacing creating a piece of good comedy that is at once about a bunch of professors from NYC and also about man's condition....j m s

I haven't yet seen "Starting Out in the Evening", but it clearly lives in much the same territory as "Bye Bye Braverman". Is it too much to hope that the release of this new film will lead to some efforts to rescue this lovely older Lumet film from its undeserved obscurity? At the very least, a DVD should be available!

It looks odd that those who write reviews of Braverman here give it a 9 or 10 (which is what I would do), yet the over-all viewer rating is below 6. I guess that you have to have some feeling for the New York (or upper west side) milieu in order to appreciate this film; but if you do have it, then you're apt to love this film.

Speaking of under-appreciated New York films, the second on my list, after "Bye Bye Braverman", would be Bill Murray's "Quick Change".