The Men's Club

A group of men in Berkley form a men's club. Former baseball star Cavanaugh (Roy Scheider) is a hound dog cheating on his wife Sarah. He brings his family-man friend Berkley professor Phillip (David Dukes) into the group. Kramer (Richard Jordan) is a psychotherapist. Solly Berliner (Harvey Keitel) is a real estate broker cheating on his wife. Harold Canterbury (Frank Langella) is a senior partner in his law firm and his wife left him after finding herself. Paul (Craig Wasson) is a manager at an auto parts company. Terry (Treat Williams) is a single doctor. Kramer's wife Nancy (Stockard Channing) comes home to find the group trashing the place. She kicks the men out and they decide to go to a high class gentlemen's club. The club is run by Jo with her puppet. She introduces Harold to Teensy (Jennifer Jason Leigh).

The first half of the movie is a touchy feely inner-self of the Neanderthal man. Many of the men are various shades of the cave man. Then they go to the brothel and things get even weirder. It's insane and not in a good way. Unless you're itching to see Langella in crazy makeup.

This sleaze-o-rama would have been a good theatrical play. But not a movie. I believe the cast made of the finest actors took the roles because the screenplay played like a play in their heads. On screen, it plays like a rather dull porn film because the actors talk too much. There's a beautiful closeup of Roy Scheider in bed with a prostitute. Turn it into a gif and throw the rest away.

Well, at least it's different. This was apparently one of those "art house" type of films, as I cannot imagine anyone thinking it would be a commercial success. I didn't find it terribly bad, but certainly not very good, either. Direction, acting, photography were all OK. The script was what it was, and I can't think of any way to do it differently. One note for the ladies: there do exist a lot of guys who are faithful to their wives. Who want to be, and are. These might not be the best-looking ones, though. You make your choices, and you take your chances. Interesting, the conception of what goes on in high-dollar whorehouses. Having never been to one (in any price range) I've always wondered.

This might be worth watching if you've nothing better to do (or watch)

This movie is consisted of 3 parts: a shrink's home, the whore house and the wedding. The wedding part concentrates what this movie really wanted to tell to the audience. It is extremely philosophical and impressive movie not by naked women but the underlying idea about humanfs nature. The poem read at the wedding was very nice.

This movie is a bizarre mess. Long before Frank Langella wanders into camera range in women's make-up with a cigar, the blathering causes you to lose interest. Bewildering. Mind-numbing. Avoid this movie like the plague unless you are planning a triple feature with Showgirls and Battlefield Earth.