1980 Week: Seems Like Old Times

          Rendered by a comedy dream team, Seems Like Old Times is an old-fashioned farce unburdened by narrative ambition or social significance. It’s a silly laugh machine with a serviceable love story at the center, showcasing the fizzy chemistry between Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn, who previously scored with Foul Play (1978). Seems Like Old Times is also one of the most consistently amusing movies written by Neil Simon, which is saying something. Until it sputters during in its final scenes (an almost inevitable outcome given the spinning-plates storyline), Seems Like Old Times is a sugar rush of a movie.

          At the beginning of the story, underemployed Northern California writer Nick Gardenia (Chevy Chase) becomes a pawn in a bank robbery. (Proving spectacularly inept at criminality, Nick stares right into the lens of a security camera.) Following the heist, Nick determines that he must bring the robbers to justice in order to clear his name. Enter L.A. district attorney Ira Parks (Charles Grodin), who is married to Nick’s ex-wife, Glenda (Goldie Hawn). His eyes on the job of state attorney general, Ira resolves to make Nick’s potentially embarrassing situation go away as quietly as possible. Which means, naturally, that Nick turns up at Ira’s house, seeking Glenda’s help. She’s an easy touch, since she works as a public defender and believes that all of her clients genuinely wish to rehabilitate themselves. You can see where this is headed: Glenda helps Nick without telling Ira, Nick exploits the situation to woo Glenda, and chaos explodes thanks to endless farcical misunderstandings.
          Beyond his usual gift for rat-a-tat jokes, Simon brings tremendous craftsmanship to plot construction, developing long-lead setups and wry running jokes as well as rendering droll supporting characters. (T.K. Carter is a riot as Glenda’s butler, a dubiously reformed ex-hoodlum.) As for the Chase/Hawn scenes, they never disappoint. He’s a charming rascal, she’s a ditzy altruist, and the sexual charge between them sizzles. Grodin, as always, stoops to conquer, beautifully underplaying the role of an exasperate schmuck. Meanwhile, director Jay Sandrich, one of the most celebrated sitcom helmers in history—his credits stretch from Make Room For Daddy in 1963 to Two and a Half Men 40 years later—does a remarkable job orchestrating this intricate brew of action and patter and tomfoolery, so it’s a wonder this was the only theatrical feature he ever made. Also bewildering is the fact that Chase and Hawn never reteamed, because Seems Like Old Times did about the same brisk business that Foul Play did.

Seems Like Old Times: GROOVY

1980 Week: Private Benjamin

          After years of sharing top billing with male costars, Goldie Hawn finally scored a major box-office hit of her own thanks to Private Benjamin, the military-themed comedy that she also helped produce. Hiding a multilayered feminist message beneath a silly farce about a Jewish American Princess becoming a soldier, the picture has just enough substance to make up for the paucity of laugh-out-loud jokes. And while supporting players including Armand Assante and Eileen Brennan excel in juicy roles, Hawn‘s goofy appeal anchors the picture. Private Benjamin is all about the ridiculous spectacle of a tiny blonde with doe eyes running around obstacle courses in fatigues, complaining about damage to her fingernails and the unsatisfactory accommodations in her barracks. If there’s a major flaw in Private Benjamin, it’s that the movie lacks a big mission that tests the title character’s mettle—essentially, the sort of third act that was contrived for the following year’s military-themed comedy, Stripes (1981). However, Private Benjamin is only nominally about the Armed Forces, because soldiering is just a phase the title character passes through on the way to self-actualization.

          The movie begins with a lively wedding sequence, during which spoiled Judy Benjamin (Hawn) suffers a surprising loss: Her brand-new husband, Yale (Albert Brooks), dies of a heart attack during wedding-night sex. Devastated and lost, Judy meets a friendly stranger named Jim (Harry Dean Stanton), who offers a new life filled with adventure and luxury. By the time Judy realizes Jim is a military recruiter, she’s fallen for his vision of Army service as an extended vacation. Basic training sets her straight, especially when Judy clashes with stern Captain Lewis (Eileen Brennan), but Judy soon realizes she needs to see this thing through because she’s never accomplished anything. Her journey is complicated when she meets dashing Frenchman Henri (Assante), so a dramatic question takes shape: Will Judy discard her newfound sense of pride by settling back into the narcotizing cycle of domesticity and wealth?

          The script for Private Benjamin is shallow, and the writers tend to portray men as one-dimensional ogres. (Cowriter Nancy Meyers, later to become a rom-com titan, received her first credit—and her first Oscar nomination—for Private Benjamin.) Yet Private Benjamin works. The movie presents a steady stream of lighteheated moments, some of which contain a measure of sociopolitical resonance. Oscar-nominated Brennan makes a strong impression as a woman succeeding in a man’s world through pure toughness, while Assante explodes with energy and machismo, playing a special kind of dreamy jerk. Hawn floats through it all, coming across as bubbly even when her character is despondent, and setting the mood with her seemingly effortless comic skill and a touch of solid dramatic acting. She was rewarded with such impressive box-office success that a Private Benjamin TV show soon followed. Running from 1981 to 1983, the show replaced Hawn with Lorna Patterson, although Brennan reprised her supporting role.

Private Benjamin: GROOVY

Shampoo (1975)

          Here’s just one of the many fascinating details about Shampoo: Although it’s rightly considered a pinnacle achievement for the New Hollywood, the principal creative force behind the picture is very much a creature of Old Hollywood. Warren Beatty, the film’s leading man, producer, co-writer—and, according to gossip that’s surrounded the project for decades, uncredited co-director—was groomed for greatness by the studio system, even though his star didn’t truly rise until the counterculture era. And, just as Beatty is an inherently complicated Hollywood persona, the vision of late-1960s America he and his collaborators present in Shampoo resists simple classifications.
          On one level, the story of a lothario hairdresser who gets away with screwing his female clients because their husbands think he’s gay is a satire of social mores during a period of shifting sexual identities. On another level, Shampoo is a savvy political story examining various attitudes toward Richard Nixon at the time of his 1968 ascension to the White House. And yet on a third level, Shampoo is an ultra-hip study of Me Generation ennui, because nearly ever character in the film experiences some degree of existential crisis. Furthermore, the execution of the film is as classical as the content is brash—director Hal Ashby relies on elegant camerawork and meticulous pacing, rather than the flashy experimentation associated with many New Hollywood triumphs, even though the brilliant script by Beatty and Robert Towne breaks one taboo after another. (Let we forget, one of the film’s most memorable scenes involves costar Julie Christie drunkenly slurring, “I want to suck his . . .” Well, you get the picture.)

          Beatty, who often cleverly capitalized on his personal reputation as a Casanova, plays George Roundy, a Beverly Hills hairdresser beloved as much by female clients for his way with their bodies as for his way with their tresses. At the beginning of the story, he juggles relationships with his long-suffering girlfriend, Jill (Goldie Hawn), and with a rich housewife, Felicia (Lee Grant). Eager to open his own shop, George uses Felicia to get to her husband, Lester (Jack Warden), a wealthy businessman—who has a mistress of his own, Jackie (Christie). Smart and strong-willed, Jackie beguiles George, who somehow imagines he can have everything he wants—Felicia’s support, Jackie’s affection, Jill’s devotion, Lester’s patronage.
          Woven into all of this sexual farce is a bitter thread of class warfare, with Lester representing the arrogance of financial power and nearly every other character representing the desperation of financial need; Beatty and Towne draw provocative parallels between the cynicism of Nixon’s politics and the way various characters pursue skewed versions of the American Dream. The people in Shampoo are players and strivers, right down to Lester’s adolescent daughter, Lorna (Carrie Fisher), who has been taught by the unforgiving world to embrace her sexual power at a young age.

          Shampoo has moments that some find screamingly funny, such as the scene in which Christie makes the aforementioned startling declaration, but this is character-driven comedy of the most brittle sort, riding the fine line between humor and pathos. And that, among so many other things, is what makes Shampoo endlessly interesting—the film captures myriad facets of a confusing time. How appropriate, then, that the unobtrusive score is by pop star Paul Simon, one of the most important musical voices of the ’60s.

Shampoo: RIGHT ON

The Girl from Petrovka (1974)

Goldie Hawn’s career took some odd turns between her late-’60s breakout period as a goofy starlet and her late-’70s ascension to A-list status in light comedies. For instance, around the same time Hawn made a credible dive into dramatic material with The Sugarland Express (1974), she toplined this unsuccessful attempt at blending comedy with drama. It’s not difficult to see what might have appealed to Hawn, since her role requires a foreign accent and the character she plays exerts a profound influence on everyone she meets. Unfortunately, Hawn is wrong for the role on nearly every level. Her accent is amateurish (and sometimes completely absent); her hippy-dippy persona makes the film’s central notion of a free spirit in a totalitarian state far too literal; and the fact that she’s 20 years younger than her main love interest, costar Hal Holbrook, gives the whole enterprise a seedy quality. In Hawn’s defense, however, The Girl from Petrovka is so poorly assembled that better casting wouldn’t have made much of a difference. Adapted from a book by George Feifer, the movie takes place in Moscow, where American journalist Joe (Holbrook) meets a community of artists including flighty ballerina Oktyabrina (Hawn). Blonde and giggly and unreliable, Oktyabrina worms her way into Joe’s life, taking advantage of his apartment and his expense account while she operates outside the Soviet legal structure. (She has no papers.) As the turgid storyline progresses, Joe inexplicably falls for Oktyabrina while she directs her affections toward a young lover and an elderly sugar daddy. Eventually, the Joe and Oktyabrina attempt couplehood until her scofflaw status creates problems. Even though The Girl from Petrovka has admirable qualities, such as atmospheric location cinematography (Austria subs for Russia) and mature performances by Holbrook and costar Anthony Hopkins, the failure of the title character to command audience attention derails the film. Worse, the movie’s attempt to shift into quasi-tragic mode at the end clashes with the lighthearted vapidity of what’s come before. Many great stories were told during the Soviet era about the complexities of finding love in the U.S.S.R., but The Girl from Petrovka is not one of them.

The Girl from Petrovka: LAME

The Sugarland Express (1974)

          An early Steven Spielberg feature that doesn’t get discussed as much as his breakthrough TV movie, Duel (1971), or his effects-driven blockbusters Jaws (1975) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), this dark adventure arguably represents an instance of Spielberg tackling mature subject matter before he was ready to do so. Even though the film is highly watchable (and intermittently exciting), it’s easy to see how a director with a deeper worldview—and a different cast, for that matter—could have given the story even greater impact. The movie also has tonal problems, since it wobbles between lighthearted escapism and symbolism-drenched tragedy. Therefore, it’s a testament to Spielberg’s innate talent that the movie mostly overcomes its flaws. Especially during the finale, when Spielberg demonstrates his gifts for imaginative camerawork and meticulous pacing, The Sugarland Express packs a punch.

          Based on a real story about a Texas housewife who busted her husband out of jail and then led police on an epic chase in a reckless attempt to reclaim custody of her infant child, who was in foster care, the movie is a forerunner to Thelma & Louise (1991), the polarizing Oscar winner about two women on the run. Like Thelma & Louise, this movie asks questions about what rights women have in a male-dominated society while delivering an exciting yarn about a likeable antihero fleeing an army of cops. Goldie Hawn, taking a huge leap from the sexy-hippie roles that had dominated her career prior to The Sugarland Express, stars as Lou Jean Poplin, a poorly educated Texan married to a likeable petty criminal, Clovis Michael Poplin (William Atherton). Hawn was obviously eager to demonstrate dramatic range, and she’s fairly persuasive when called upon to embody Lou Jean’s turbulent emotions. Nonetheless, a more experienced actress—Ellen Burstyn, for instance—could have rendered a characterization with more dimension.

          Hawn’s costar, Atherton, is similarly underwhelming. Although a fine character actor with a particular affinity for playing uptight assholes—witness his great work a decade later in Ghostbusters (1984) and Die Hard (1988)—he’s neither a natural leading man nor the right choice for portraying a Southern outlaw. And as for poor Michael Sacks, who plays the highway patrolman whom the Poplins capture for a hostage during their long trek across enemy territory, he barely registers, though much of the fault lies with an underwritten role. Rounding out the principal cast is Ben Johnson, who lends gravitas as the conscientious top cop trying to end the chase without bloodshed—a precursor to the role Harvey Keitel played in Thelma & Louise.

          Working from a superficial but well-crafted script by Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins, Spielberg plays to his strengths, as when he illustrates the reactions of normal people who elevate the Poplins to folk-hero status. It’s also worth nothing that the technical execution of the film is beyond reproach. Master cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond uses the hot Texas sun to sculpt images from long shadows, resulting in one beautiful panorama after another, and The Sugarland Express was the project with which Spielberg and genius composer John Williams began their legendary collaboration.

The Sugarland Express: GROOVY

$ a/k/a Dollars (1971)

          Obnoxiously titled with a typographical symbol instead of proper language, writer-director Richard Brooks’ $ is among the least memorable heist movies ever made, despite the presence of two highly charismatic stars, Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn.

          Brooks’ story is a paper-thin lark about a security expert who uses his inside knowledge to steal money that criminals have deposited in a German bank—ostensibly the “perfect crime” because the victims cannot seek redress through proper authorities. Hawn figures into the storyline as a prostitute who employs her wiles to pump criminals for information, and of course her characters is in love with Beatty’s. Theoretically, this should be a formula for frothy fun, but two major factors put a damper on the proceedings. First and most damagingly, Brooks lacks the lightness of touch that someone like, say, Blake Edwards brings to the heist genre. Brooks gets so preoccupied with the machinations of plot that watching $ is a bit like doing tedious math homework—things get zippier once the movie shifts into an extended chase scene that chews up the entire third act, but up to that point, tracking the picture’s interchangeable supporting characters is tiresome. (That said, it’s a hoot that Brooks cast Goldfinger himself, Gert Fröbe, as a bank manager tasked wit protecting, among other things, a giant bar of gold.)

          The movie’s second big impediment is its leading man. Beatty gives an indifferent performance, presumably because he was at a strange juncture in his career. After piddling away the early ’60s in a string of overwrought melodramas, he reinvented himself not only as an actor of substance but also as a formidable producer with Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Then he disappeared from the screen for three years, resurfaced in yet another overwrought melodrama (1970’s The Only Game in Town), and subsequently issued mixed messages: The same year Beatty starred in $, the epitome of vapid nonsense, he starred in Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller, the epitome of challenging New Hollywood cinema. Therefore, $ raised a troubling question: Will the real Warren Beatty please stand up? Anyway, Hawn, as always, does her best to enliven the proceedings with her comeliness and ebullience, but $ fits with the paradigm of other early Hawn films—she’s simultaneously offered to the audience as a childlike flibbertigibbet and as a dimwitted sex object. Creepy.

          Nonetheless, it’s impossible to call $ a complete wash, because the film’s production values are top-notch, the jazzy score by Quincy Jones has a good bounce to it, and one presumes that dedicated fans of the stars will find much to enjoy. For those who crave more than empty spectacle and marquee-name eye candy, however, $ is far from compelling.

$ a/k/a Dollars: FUNKY

Butterflies Are Free (1972)

          Well regarded for its sympathetic portrayal of a young blind man whose travails echo those of all persons living with disabilities, Butterflies Are Free has some fine ideas and sentiments, but it’s also long-winded, stilted, and trite. Adapted by Leonard Gershe from his successful play of the same name, the picture explores challenges faced by Don Baker (Edward Albert), a college-aged suburban youth trying to live on his own for the first time. For the first half of the story, he’s excited by the affections of a sexy neighbor, cheerfully irresponsible hippie Jill Tanner (Goldie Hawn), and for the second half the story, Don is tormented by the smothering attentions of his overprotective mother, referred to only as Mrs. Baker (Eileen Heckart).

          According to the introduction accompanying a recent broadcast of Butterflies Are Free on Turner Classic Movies, the significance of the picture is that it captured the tone of the early-’70s “independent living” movement, during which persons with disabilities attempted to break from the traditional cycle of home care and institutionalization. And, indeed, Gershe’s narrative crisply depicts myriad hardships people like Don must have faced on a daily basis in less-informed times, from condescending attitudes to the genuine fear of overwhelming situations. Alas, Gershe’s weapon of choice is overly literate dialogue, so the characters in the story feel more like polemic representations than actual people: Mrs. Baker represents oppression, Jill represents freedom, and Don wants to exist somewhere between those extremes.

          If the filmmaking had more vitality and the acting was transcendent, the mannered nuances of Gershe’s writing would be more tolerable. Unfortunately, director Milton Katselas does little more than film a theatrical production; Butterflies Are Free is so flat one can almost feel the curtain descending whenever the story lurches from one act to the next. Yet leading man Albert is the movie’s biggest weakness. Bland and unmemorable, he delivers a performance more suited to an afterschool special than a theatrical feature. Hawn fares better, simply because of her beauty and charm; if nothing else, the fact that she spends a third of the movie in her underwear commands a certain kind of attention. Heckart, who won a Supporting Actress Oscar for the movie, benefits from Gershe’s best-written role. Anguished and sarcastic, Heckhart’s character charts a believable arc from assumption to understanding. Heckart’s isn’t a performance for the ages, per se, but her solid work elevates an otherwise mediocre endeavor.

Butterflies Are Free: FUNKY

There’s a Girl in My Soup (1970)

          Adapted from a hit play about a middle-aged lothario in swinging London who exploits the Sexual Revolution by sleeping with every young woman who falls for his pickup lines, There’s a Girl in My Soup is a mildly entertaining and mildly insightful sex farce that benefits from exceedingly nimble leading actors. In fact, the movie’s appeal stems almost entirely from the presence of British comedy icon Peter Sellers, who plays the lothario, and American funny girl Goldie Hawn, who plays, well, the girl in his soup—because the underlying material isn’t funny or purposeful enough to impress on its own merits. When the story begins, TV personality Robert Danvers (Sellers) is enjoying his fame immensely, seducing nearly every attractive woman he encounters. One evening, however, he meets an ebullient American named Marion (Hawn), who agrees to go home with Robert because she’s trying to get away from her two-timing musician boyfriend, Jimmy (Nicky Henson). Robert thinks he’s got it made, since Marion is a sexy little blonde, but it turns out she’s got attitude to burn. She derisively laughs at his pickup lines, mocks his age, and shames him into feeling guilty about wanting to use her.

          Relenting from his seduction, Robert is forced to engage with Marion as a person, and he soon falls under her offbeat spell. Meantime, she sees glimmers of decency behind his sex-crazed façade. Yet just when it seems like the story is about to head down the interesting path of a soul mate shaking Robert free of his pretensions, the characters become lovers and Robert begins entertaining notions of marriage. Compounded by the presence of a disappointingly flat ending, this left turn into domestic melodrama makes There’s a Girl in My Soup feel quite ordinary. Worse, the jokes aren’t particularly memorable. Sellers’ send-up of smoothies is amusing—his catchphrase, “My God, but you’re lovely,” is cringe-worthy—and Hawn’s eroticized dizziness has its charms. Somehow, though, their scenes never catch fire. There’s a Girl in My Soup gets points for presenting Marion as a fully formed person instead of a brainless sex object, but beyond that, the film’s virtues are few and modest.

There’s a Girl in My Soup: FUNKY

The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox (1976)

          A spectacularly unfunny comedy made by a group of people who should have known better, The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox features the promising onscreen combination of Goldie Hawn and George Segal. Despite working so hard to elicit laughter that they sometimes seem close to collapsing from exhaustion, the stars cannot compensate for an uninspired storyline and a litany of wheezy jokes.

          Hawn plays Amanda Quaid, a prostitute/showgirl eking out an unsatisfactory living in Old West-era San Francisco. Segal plays Charlie Malloy, an arrogant gambler who recently absconded with $40,000 from a group of gun-toting robbers. When their paths cross, Amanda seduces Charlie and steals the valise in which he’s hidden his cash, so an adventure ensues with various interested parties chasing after Amanda, Charlie, and the stolen loot. The tiresome plot also involves Amanda’s attempts to masquerade as an English duchess so she can secure the job of caretaker to a wealthy Mormon’s numerous children.

          Among the film’s myriad problems is the fact that neither protagonist is remotely likeable. Amanda is foul-tempered and Charlie is smug, so the idea that we’re supposed to care about these characters falling in love is dubious. Furthermore, neither character is sufficiently clever to make his or her misdeeds interesting. In a typically witless scene, Amanda and Charlie speak in pidgin code mixing French, Italian, and Yiddish so they can avoid the prying ears of the nearby Mormon whom they refer to as “El Schmucko.” Oy!

          The scenes in which Amanda performs barroom tunes are especially grating, since Hawn sings in a crass Cockney accent, and the various chases and shootouts are painfully dull. About the only watchable bit is the long passage during which Amanda and Charlie get stranded in the wilderness, because that sequence relies entirely on the stars’ considerable charm. To its meager credit, the movie looks great, with handsome photography by Owen Roizman, and the costuming and production design are lush. But director/producer/co-writer Melvin Frank, who began his film career writing gags for Bob Hope in the ’40s, was clearly out of ideas, so The Duchess & the Dirtwater Fox is a vacuous wasteland.

The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox: LAME

Foul Play (1978)

          Easily the best-fitting star vehicle that Goldie Hawn made in the ’70s, comic thriller Foul Play is also the first movie that Chevy Chase made after bailing on Saturday Night Live to pursue a big-screen career. The actors’ enjoyable chemistry and the breezily entertaining machinations of writer-director Colin Higgins’ deeply silly script helped make Foul Play one of 1978’s biggest hits. A lighthearted riff on the Alfred Hitchcock formula featuring an innocent character who gets embroiled in a conspiracy, the picture is lavishly produced but so insubstantial that it sometimes threatens to float away. Yet for those who set their expectations appropriately, it’s a tasty serving of empty calories.

          Hawn stars as a San Francisco librarian who stumbles upon plans for an assassination attempt, and Chase plays a smart-aleck police detective who slowly discovers the scheme based on sketchy evidence she brings to his attention. The two fall in love, naturally, to the tune of Barry Manilow’s bombastic theme song “Ready to Take a Chance Again”—which is to say that Foul Play is a loving throwback to old-school Hollywood romance. And while Higgins falls short in terms of visual style, evincing no special gift for camerawork in his directorial debut, he compensates with a imaginative and playful storyline. After all, he earned the opportunity to helm this project after scoring as the screenwriter of Harold and Maude (1971) and Silver Streak (1976), the latter of which provided something like a template for Foul Play.

          From the smoothly handled opening scene to various comic setpieces, some of which land more effectively than others, Higgins serves his script well with brisk pacing and the good sense to keep his actors from playing the material too broadly, notwithstanding some over-the-top villainy toward the end. Unsurprisingly, special care was taken to ensure delightful leading performances. Hawn achieves a winning transition by playing a grown-up intellectual instead of the airhead stereotype that made her famous, and Chase is uncharacteristically warm even though his signature cockiness bubbles beneath the surface. Key supporting player Dudley Moore nearly steals the movie as a diminutive lothario who keeps crossing paths with Hawn, and the long scene in which he unveils his tricked-out bachelor pad is a great example of a comedian humiliating himself for the sake of a joke. Burgess Meredith is lively as Hawn’s eccentric landlord, and ace character players including Billy Barty, Don Calfa, and Brian Dennehy pop up in smaller roles.

          Though it gets a bit windy at 116 minutes (the climax in particular gets draggy), Foul Play is both a respectable homage to classic Hollywood piffles a fine maiden voyage for a promising screen duo. Alas, Chase and Hawn only did one more movie together, the intermittently wonderful Neil Simon romp Seems Like Old Times (1980), which is reviewed here.

Foul Play: GROOVY