1972 - THE HEARTBREAK KID, is a comedy of supreme discomfort.

Charles Grodin plays a man who decides it's time to get married.  He hooks up with a woman and after the marriage ceremony heads down to Florida for their honeymoon.  On the drive down he decides that the woman he married is really annoying the crap out of him. He runs into a beautiful blonde played by Cybill Shepherd probably at the peak of her beauty.  He begins to formulate a plan to dump his new wife and hook up with the Cybill Shepherd character instead.

 

This film has some big time comedy talent behind the camera.  Elaine May is the director and Neil Simon wrote the screenplay.  Simon gets sole screenplay credit, but I find it had to believe that May didn't have considerable input into the story.

 

The film is a real showcase for Charles Grodin's talent as an actor.

Running time, 106 minutes.

1987 - ISHTAR, is this funny?

Elaine May directing and writing a comedy inspired by the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby road films has a sense of humor so inside and weird it makes the Coen Brothers comedies look like sitcoms. 

Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman are aspiring untalented songwriters who get involved in middle eastern politics and intrigue all the while composing horrible but hilarious songs actually written by Paul Williams. For Ishtar, Paul Williams is working on a level so inspired it's awesome.  A partial list of the songs performed includes, "Wardrobe of Love, Half Hour Song, That A Lawnmower Can Do All That," and the immortal "Portable Picnic."

The film is very well cast, Jack Weston is their agent and Charles Grodin is a very goofy CIA agent.  Beatty's current girl friend at the time Isabelle Adjani was a classic French beauty. In a perverse sense of casting humor,  Elaine May has her play her part disguised as a boy throughout the film.  Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman were big stars at the time this film was made and it's fun to watch them  play a couple of fools. 

It's hard to convey the nutty nature of this film with its mix of bad songs, a blind camel and an incomprehensible plot line. 

The incredible weirdness of Ishtar was asking for trouble with film audiences and found it.  The film was a big box office disaster. Warren Beatty produced the film hoping to keep the eccentric Elaine May under control.  He failed, this film is funny but very strange.

107 minutes.

1971 - A NEW LEAF, pretty funny

Here's an example of a film studio taking a film away from it's creator and probably saving it.

The writer and sort of director Elaine May filmed a story about a selfish rich man who finds himself broke from overspending.  He devises a plan where he will marry a rich clueless woman so he can maintain his present lifestyle.  Walter Matthau plays the broke playboy who sets his sights on a professor of botany.  May's character is a real klutz and the film is about their marriage. 

On to the good stuff, Elaine May went 3 million dollars over budget and after a year of editing delivered a film that was 3 hours long and had Walter Matthau murdering 2 people.  Paramount took the film away from May and cut it down to it's present length of under 2 hours and eliminated the parts with Matthau killing people.  It's hard to blame them.  The film is essentially a funny and pretty good natured comedy and having one of your lead characters start killing people off towards the end of the picture would have seemed pretty jarring. 

 

Walter Matthau is as usual the master when it comes to performing comedy.  Elaine May is also very good as his goofball wife.

A New Leaf is a good picture but I doubt a 3 hour running length would have ever worked for this film.