Director Peter Bogdanovich (LAST PICTURE SHOW) set out to make an homage to ‘30s screwball comedies and succeeded with flare. In many ways, it stands with the best of the genre.
Howard Bannister (Ryan O’Neal, LOVE STORY) and his fiancée, Eunice Burns (Madeline Kahn, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN) travel to San Francisco for a musicology event where Howard is up for a $20,000 grant. Zany craziness ensues from the beginning to the end due to four identical plaid bags each containing Howard’s musical rocks, secret documents, stolen jewels and Judy Maxwell’s clothes. Maxwell (Barbra Streisand, MIRROR HAS TWO FACES) provides most of the wackiness as she wills herself upon Howard, even renaming him Steve.
Streisand has never been so wonderful. Her charm and pitch perfect comedic timing is impressive. Her smile is effervescent and full of delightful innocence. She is given a great character. While accidents follow her everywhere, surprisingly, she’s not a dimwit. She’s actually Howard/Steve’s intellectual equal with scheming skills that match any con artist.
O’Neal does a good job of blending Cary Gant’s role from BRINGING UP BABY and Fred MacMurray from THE ABSENT-MINDED PROFESSOR. He’s so single-mindedly focused on his musical rocks that he can barely accomplish any other simple task. But it’s not like his overbearing fiancée would let him think for himself anyway. Kahn does a great job of being the exact opposite of the carefree Judy. It was her big break and she nailed it, making Eunice a shrew, but in a believable way. You never see her winking at the audience to make them like her as an actress. Because we hate her so much, we love Judy even more, which is what great supporting work is supposed to do.
The plot is a mash-up of various twists and turns. The crux of the tale is Judy’s gorilla-style courtship of Howard. She starts by posing as Eunice in front of the head of the grant foundation, Frederick Larrabee (Austin Pendleton, THE MUPPET MOVIE), who takes a quick liking to the Howard’s dynamic “wife.” So what happens when the real Eunice shows up? Howard’s Yugoslavian rival Hugh Simon (Kenneth Mars,YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN) suspects something fishy. But we suspect something fishy about that accent. Meanwhile, Mr. Smith (Michael Murphy, BREWSTER MCCLOUD) takes a bag of secret documents from the airport and is pursued by Mr. Jones (Philip Roth, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST). Additionally, the rich Mrs. Van Hoskins (Mabel Albertson, TV’s BEWITCHED) shows up with a bag full of her jewelry, which the desk clerk Fritz (Stefan Gierasch, HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER) and hotel detective Harry (Sorrell Booke, Boss Hogg from DUKES OF HAZZARD) conspire to steal.
These elements crisscross in episode after episode of misdirection and misunderstandings and misappropriations. Nothing ends up being as it appears at first, which gives the film a lasting freshness. The elements are woven into a nonstop cavalcade of wit and anarchy. The only thing that makes the film less than a total success is that it borrows a lot of its gags from other films. Some are really tired gags. But the glue that holds everything together is the charming, if highly unlikely, romance between Howard and Judy.
I really liked how the film ends with a Bugs Bunny cartoon – a perfect wink to the film’s inspirations. Its loving affection for the films that inspired it makes it a fun comedy that reminds us that some silliness sometimes is a good thing.
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Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
