Brighton Beach Memoirs

One of my favorite movies. Great cast, lead by Jonathan Silverman and Blythe Danner. Serious drama situations with brilliant comedic punches. An exact mixture of character and story. Real people with real problems, and everyone has a different relationship with each family member. Sensitively moves from slightly-sad to hilariously-funny. Read the quotes. This is the best adaptation of a Neil Simon play.

If you wanna see more of Eugene check Biloxi Blues (starring Matthew Broderick who played in both stage versions) is OK, a bit on a darker side. Get away from the made-for-TV Broadway Bound.

This is a gently amusing coming-of-age comedy that comes from the later, more mature period of Neil Simon's writing. Although there are plenty of wisecracks to go around, this is not one of those Neil Simon pieces where every character spouts out one-liner jokes for 2 hours like they're guest stars on a Bob Hope special. There are also dramatic elements (some work, some are overkill) that lend some weight to the story.

The performances are good across the board, especially Blythe Danner as the mother (although she and Judith Ivey were oddly WASP-ish choices to play Jewish women). I've never been a fan of Jonathan Silverman, but I will say that he hits the right notes as the obnoxious, gawky, and totally horned-up teen-age narrator/protagonist of the story.

The movie is very similar in tone to Woody Allen's "Radio Days," but the latter is far more imaginative and funny than this one.

Whether the actors are really Jewish or not, these are some of the most forced Brooklyn/Jewish accents in Hollywood history. The way they spread the schmaltz around it's downright unbearable. Blythe Danner in an unbelievably poor piece of casting, lumbers her way through the part of the Jewish mother like a shiksa doing the horah. The mess of bad interpretations is practically racist. It made it impossible for me to stick with it. Oy gevalt! Avoid this piece of work at all cost. On the other hand if the play comes around to your local theater, go see it--there it works! Neil Simon always works best in live theater anyway, Yep, that's it.

The viewer who said he was disappointed seems to be wildly missing the point here. This is a superb movie, excellent and realistic portrayals of a middle class Jewish family in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, of long ago. The nuances are perfect and I felt the casting of everyone was superior. I especially found the acting done by Judith Ivey just perfection---especially the speech she has with her daughter when the daughter comes home late one night. That scene was Oscar worthy. But, really, all the acting was fine. I recommend this movie. It is a fun, family film and delightful to see how a lovely middle class family lived in Brooklyn so long ago. See it and you will be glad you did. Has some very funny lines and the Eugene character is a real comedian--very funny.

Brighton Beach Memoirs is directed by Gene Saks and adapted to the screen from his own play by Neil Simon. It stars Jonathan Silverman, Blythe Danner, Judith Ivey, Bob Dishy, Stacey Glick, Lisa Waltz and Brian Dillinger. Music is by Michael Small and cinematography by John Bailey.

This is the first of what would become a trilogy of films detailing the adventures and learnings of Neil Simon's life trajectory. His alias in the three productions comes in the guise of Eugene Morris Jerome, here played by Silverman, and by Matthew Broderick in Biloxi Blues (1988) and Corey Parker in Broadway Bound (1992). This is set in 1937 Brooklyn, New York, and finds Eugene, a Polish-Jewish American youngster experiencing sexual awakening in a family home packed to the rafters.

Having never seen a Neil Simon play before I have no frame of reference, either here or with Biloxi Blues, the latter of which is a personal favourite. So taking it on its filmic terms only, it delivers much of the requisite razor sharp humour that was a trait of the hugely talented writer. The young version of Eugene here has sporting dreams as well as that of being a professional writer, his literary bent evident in his vocal discourse with his family and us on the fourth wall. He's the family gofer, a slave to his adoring but firm handed mother, as if battling the on-set of puberty wasn't taxing enough!

Though primarily humourous in narrative drive, the serious side of family values is always a strong current within. Gambling addiction also features, so to does vivid sibling rivalry later in life, while the dangling thread of Polish family members trying to exit their homeland for a better life in New York strikes a poignant chord. I can't vouch for accents or adherence to natural race standards, but the sense of the period and areas (real location filming of course) is impressive - the cast uniformly tight to the material's various themes.

Obviously not for everyone, but for those not bothered by closeness to the play, and those who love the sort of zingy dialogue found in other Simon film adaptations, then this hits the spot for sure. 8/10