Well , I had to run out and see this one. I read it was finished about two years ago but didn’t see the light of day because someone thought it was a stinker. The big name cast probably added to the delay – when you’re a guy like Warren Beatty, you’d rather not have another bomb in the category of “Ishtar” on your hands.
And quite a cast it is – there’s Warren and Gary and Goldie and Diane. Do I need to mention last names? In addition, there’s Natassaja Kinski and Andie MacDowell and Jenna Elfman and Charlton Heston. Now you know why they held off releasing it just in case it was that bad. And was it? Let’s put it this way – I was hoping to really trash it, but it turns out to be a perfect “5.0”. Yeah, that’s my rating. This movie is as exactly in the middle as it could be. I didn’t hate it but I don’t recommend it.
The basics are that Warren and Diane are one married couple having just reached their twenty-fifth anniversary. Their best friends are another married couple, played by Gary and Goldie. I kind of thought Gary and Diane seemed more like a natural coupling and Goldie should have been with Warren, but, never mind. This movie plays out much like a very expensive television sitcom. Quick scene here, cue the laugh track, cut to the next wacky scene, cue the laugh track. They were trying so hard it hurt. There weren’t conversations with bits of humor in them, there was just thirty second scenes all motivated by, hopefully, something funny by the end of them. It could have been an episode of “Laugh-In”. Which is too bad, because the punch lines aren’t very funny and the whole movie is about remaining faithful to your spouse. Which isn’t really a very funny thing to most people.
The movie starts out trying to give you an idea of Warren’s very wacky world. He and Diane come home from Paris and immediately encounter culture shock in the home when we are introduced to the foreign lovers of their daughter and their housekeeper. Both guys barely speak English and one runs around with no shirt and his belly hanging out. Zany, isn’t it? Shortly thereafter, the infidelities begin and it’s like a bad version of “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice”. For those of you who are younger, there are reminders of the television sitcom “Three’s Company”. You know, where one person is talking about something and the other person thinks it’s something else and there’s misinterpretations, and, before you know it, mayhem ensues!
But it’s not all bad. Both Warren and Diane are architects and at one point they talk (seriously too) about marriage and long-term relationships and do some comparing to buildings. I liked that. There wasn’t enough of that. Instead, it was time to slip on another banana peel. You get the impression the cast is above all this. I felt like this is how it’s going to be if the writers do have that strike. And just wait till the movie gets to Sun Valley, Idaho. That’s when Charlton Heston enters the fray as the wackiest of all the wackies in this movie. I did laugh, mostly at his wife, a wheelchair bound nasty person with a dirty mouth. Sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it? So, how does it end up with a “5.0” on my scale? Simple- I laughed just enough not to get angry with all the poor attempts at humor. I mean this movie takes a lot of shots at making you laugh. You won’t laugh very much, but these four main characters give it their all and I have to give a few points for that. I’m just not recommending you spend any money on this movie. Wait for television, which won’t be long.
