How Do I Love Thee? (1970)

          After conquering television in the 1950s, Jackie Gleason notched impressive achievements as a film actor in the 1960s, balancing credible dramatic work with loud comedic turns of the sort that made him famous. Then came flops including How Do I Love Thee?, Gleason’s last film for seven years and his final romantic leading role in a feature. Turgid and unfunny, How Do I Love Thee? is part character study and part romantic farce. Gleason plays Stanley Waltz, the aging proprietor of a small moving-and-storage company. Vexing Stanley are his wife, Elsie (Maureen O’Hara), a Bible-thumper constantly telling Stanley to embrace God, and Stanley’s son, Tom (Rick Lenz), a philosophy professor caught in a power struggle with uptight superiors. At the beginning of the picture, Stanley suffers a seizure while visiting a religious shrine in Lourdes, France, with the devout Elsie, so Tom rushes overseas to visit his ailing father—who refuses to see him. Through flashbacks, we learn that in a past moment of weakness, Stanley pledged to embrace God and never speak to Tom again. (Long story.)

          The central question is whether a man can truly change. Alas, the filmmakers want the benefit of presenting a heavy topic without the hard work of properly exploring that topic, so they wriggle free of serious implications by way of silly plot contrivances.

          Playing to the cheap seats, Gleason does everything from physical comedy to poetry recitals to sappy speeches. It’s exhausting to watch. And when he plays comedic bedroom scenes with the equally uninhibited Shelley Winters, brace yourself for enough screaming to make anyone’s ears bleed. How Do I Love Thee? is one of those awkwardly “with-it” late ’60s/early-’70s pictures, in which older Hollywood professionals try to infuse hokey storytelling with youth-culture attitudes. Unfortunately, every time something contemporary edges into the mix, the filmmakers quickly retreat to more conservative tropes (for instance, an endless car-chase scene). Therefore How Do I Love Thee? is mildly interesting as a snapshot of culture in transition. As a cinematic experience, it’s confusing and tiresome. As a showpiece for its legendary star, however, it’s labored and overbearing, which feels just about right—love him or hate him, Gleason worked hard for his laughs. Here, the strain shows.

How Do I Love Thee?: FUNKY

1980 Week: Smokey and the Bandit II

          Discussing the frothy action/comedy hit The Cannonball Run (1981), a snide critic once said that the picture seemed like an incidental byproduct of an enjoyable party, as if playing characters and telling a story was a secondary consideration for those involved. To a certain degree, the same observation could be made of all the lowbrow movies that stuntman-turned-director Hal Needham made with his buddy, leading man Burt Reynolds. The duo’s first effort, Smokey and the Bandit (1977), is a goofy romp made somewhat tolerable by lighthearted performances and spectacular car jumps. Their second and best movie together, Hooper (1978), comes dangerously close to having a heart, since it’s a loving homage to stuntman. But then comes the slippery slope comprising Smokey and the Bandit II, The Cannonball Run (1981), Stroker Ace (1983), and Cannonball Run II (1984). Each is dumber and lazier than the preceding. The problem, of course, is that Needham never really left his identity as a stuntman behind, so he offers little except the ability to stage automotive disasters and fistfights. Smokey and the Bandit II, for example, so enervated that the plot is virtually the same as the original picture’s narrative.

          While trucker Cledus “Snowman” Snow (Jerry Reed) and his escort driver, Bo “Bandit” Darville (Reynolds), haul illegal cargo through the Deep South, redneck Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason) follows them “in hot pursuit.” Meanwhile, Carrie (Sally Field) once again leaves Justice’s idiot son at the altar in order to join her once-and-future lover, Bandit, on the road. The “twists” this time are as follows: the cargo is an elephant, a wacky Italian doctor (Dom DeLuise) tags along to care for the elephant, and Justice enlists his two brothers (both played by Gleason) for aid in the final showdown. Smokey and the Bandit II comprises 100 mindless minutes of car crashes, country-music performances, drinking scenes, redneck clichés, slapstick, and (thanks to Gleason) unbearable overacting. It’s hard to know whether Field and Reynolds returned for the party or the paycheck, or simply out of loyalty to Needham, but even describing their participation as half-hearted would require exaggerating. The elephant probably gives the picture’s best performance. Incredibly, Smokey and the Bandit II made enough money to warrant a third installment, the execrable Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 (1983), which was produced without Needham’s participation, and in which Reynolds makes only a brief cameo appearance. A decade later, Needham somewhat pathetically resurrected the franchise with a quartet of TV movies (all originally aired in 1994) featuring Brian Bloom as “Bandit.”

Smokey and the Bandit II: LAME

Mr. Billion (1977)

Representing an unsuccessful attempt to transform spaghetti-Western star Terence Hill into an American box-office attraction, Mr. Billion is one of those unfunny comedies with so many action scenes, onscreen smiles, tarted-up visual transitions, and upbeat musical cues that its desire to please the audience seems desperate—because, ultimately, Mr. Billion offers everything an audience wants except genuine entertainment. The story is a simplistic fable in the Frank Capra mode. When an American billionaire dies, he bequeaths his fortune to his Italian nephew, Guido (Hill). After this revelation, the billionaire’s nefarious executor, John Cutler (Jackie Gleason), flies to Italy intent on bamboozling Guido out of his inheritance. And while Guido initially seems like a rube—he’s a childlike soul infatuated with American cowboy movies—Guido insists on taking time before acceding to Cutler’s demands. Thanks to an iffy plot contrivance, however, Guido must arrive in San Francisco by a specified date in order to accept his money. And since Guido is afraid of flying, he travels by boat and train, allowing the filmmakers to present a “madcap” trek, during which Guido meets such stereotypical characters as ignorant rednecks (Slim Pickens alert!) and jive-talking African-Americans. Cutler also hires a prostitute, Rosie (Valerie Perrine), to seduce Guido into signing away his money—which means, of course, that Guido falls in love with Rosie and must eventually save her from Cutler’s henchmen. There’s not a single original idea in Mr. Billion, and director/co-writer Jonathan Kaplan can’t quite muster the right tonalities. Among other dubious choices, he shoots the picture in a dark, run-and-gun style that feels more suited to an exploitation movie than a laugh riot. Plus, while Hill is incredibly likeable, he’s hamstrung by the inability to master English dialogue. Furthermore, Perrine lacks the charisma that’s necessary for this sort of piffle, and Gleason’s performance feels utterly perfunctory.

Mr. Billion: LAME

Smokey and the Bandit (1977)

          Probably the most popular of the innumerable trucker flicks that blazed across American movie screens in the late ’70s, this Burt Reynolds hit was the No. 2 box-office success of 1977, topped only by Star Wars. On one level, it’s not hard to see why audiences embraced the action-packed comedy, because it delivers almost nonstop juvenile amusement through car crashes, cartoonish characters, and curse words—to say nothing of rebelliousness and then-trendy CB jargon. However, laughing at Smokey and the Bandit is a bit like laughing at the bad kid in high school who shoots spitballs when the teacher isn’t looking: You know it isn’t really funny, but you can’t help smiling every so often by reflex.
          The directorial debut of veteran stuntman Hal Needham, Smokey and the Bandit tells the silly story of a quest to illegally transport a truckload of beer across state lines in the Deep South. Bandit (Reynolds) drives a hot black Firebird Trans Am as a “blocker” for his trucker pal, Snowman (Jerry Reed), meaning it’s Bandit’s job to drive so fast that cops chase him while Snowman’s rig cruises by unnoticed. When Bandit picks up a sexy runaway bride, Carrie (Sally Field), he also picks up a persistent pursuer: redneck sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason), father of the schnook Carrie left at the altar. Therefore most of the movie cuts between scenes of Bandit and Carrie getting frisky and scenes of Justice and his idiot son zooming down the highway in a police car that gets demolished piece by piece as the movie progresses.
          Needham’s daring auto stunts are fun for those who dig that sort of thing (cars soaring over rivers, crashing onto the backs of flatbed trucks, and so on), and Gleason aims for the cheap seats with a stereotypical performance (he shouts things like, “Nobody makes Sheriff Buford T. Justice look like a possum’s pecker!”). Gleason’s characterization would be unbearable if the actor wasn’t blessed with such meticulous timing, although it’s a bummer to see “The Great One” saddled with not-great material. Beyond Gleason’s shtick and the highway high jinks, the most appealing aspect of the movie is the easygoing dynamic between Field and Reynolds (who were an offscreen couple at the time), and the similarly loose buddy-movie vibe between Reynolds and country-singer-turned-actor Reed.
          Plus, there’s no denying that when he made this picture, Reynolds epitomized a certain ideal of über-’70s macho swagger—he’s like a never-ending party crammed into a lean, 5’ 11’ frame. After the huge success of Smokey and the Bandit, Reynolds’ comedies mostly devolved into uninspired variations on a theme (like 1980’s awful Smokey and the Bandit II), so it’s interesting to study this flick as the moment when he simultaneously perfected his good-ol’-boy act and began squandering audience goodwill by generating lackluster product that was probably more fun to make than it is to watch.

Smokey and the Bandit: FUNKY