Bye Bye Braverman

One of the best off-beat movies I've ever seen. The eulogy by Alan King was one of the best that I've ever heard. It reminded me of so many sermons that I've heard on the high holidays: a lot of words in search of a theme.

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 am not convinced that "Bye Bye Braverman" is much more than a stage play inside a red Volkswagon. This is all about the dialog, and quite frankly a lot of it is kind of boring. The characters, four Jewish intellectuals, are well developed, but seem very one dimensional. The movie is essentially one long misadventure on their way to a funeral. Godfrey Cambridge as a "Black Jewish cabdriver", and Alan King as a long winded Rabbi, are the most memorable scenes. George Segal is his usual droopy self, and Jack Warden his usual gruff self. Overall the film is a time capsule, that you may or may not want to open, depending on your tolerance for a lot of often times meaningless dialog. - MERK

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.

Segal, Wiseman, Booke and Warden: each actor's performance makes for a superb piece of a patchwork quilt. These old friends may rub roughly against each other, in a NY/ethnic kind of way, but we recognize the deep understanding they share from long familiarity. The story offers us a superb ensemble cast, with a wonderful cameo from King. It will never knock "Citizen Kane" off anyone's shelf, but makes a great candidate for the second tier of movie treasures.