Richard Benjamin is a bored Los Angeles stockbroker whose marriage to Joanna Shimkus is drying up. His only quirk is occasionally peeping at attractive girls, which doesn't help matters at home. Shimkus finally is sufficiently fed up to leave him and stay with her socially mobile sister, Elizabeth Ashley, and her husband, Adam West, in Pasadena. Benjamin keeps trying to win Shimkus back in the face of strenuous opposition from Ashley. Finally, Benjamin divorces Shimkus, tells her he's quit his job, and this wins her back. The jolly couple now zoom off in the family convertible for parts unknown, with Shimkus naked.
I kept trying to figure out why this movie was made. Benjamin's character really IS dull, and the actor delivers the salamagundi of small talk and evasions in the whiny, sing-song, voice of a child. Shimkus is no barrel of laughs either but she so startlingly attractive and sexy that I'd be willing to forgive her. The ending seems arbitrary and, after all this drama, the director ends it on a freeze that's supposed to be funny and isn't.
It occurred to me that this 1971 release was probably shot in 1970, which would make it two years after the rip-roaring commercial and critical success, "The Graduate." That's reason enough, I guess. Even that blissful escape in the convertible fits the template.
As far as the film goes, it's impossible for it to be exactly gripping, what with two mismatched people, one of whom talks about the weather and the other who says nothing at all. O men, O women! But, more than that, it's a little irritating because it's a kind of masculine backlash against feminism. Everything about feminism, insofar as it's represented by Elizabeth Ashley's character, is made ridiculous by obvious exaggeration. She's breathlessly seductive when she's alone with Benjamin, but he sensibly turns her down, knowing not only that it would be sick but that Ashley wouldn't be able to wait to spill the beans to Shimkus. She's got her husband, well, what in masculine military circles used to be described as, umm, "P-whipped." Adam West's dialog seems to consist of repeating two words: "Yes, dear."
There's nothing wrong with puncturing self-satisfied authoritarianism , whether male or female, but this taming of the shrew business was done better in "The Graduate" -- and much better in "The Quiet Man" -- if only because the writers and directors kept their senses of humor and put some zingers into the script. Here we get only apothegms like, "We were never married -- not in any REAL sense." What the hell does that mean?
There is a scene in which a shrink (female) makes a house call to hold a group session with the two couples and it constitutes a demonstration of everything that's wrong with the script. It mocks the shrink, which is okay, but it does so blatantly, without pretense. I suppose it's meant to be comic but it comes off as just immature and mean. Maybe "immature" is the wrong word. Like the rest of the film it's just relentlessly middlebrow and lacks challenge.
And the film is as phony as the shrink is supposed to be. This is a story that highlights the voyeurism of Benjamin's character as symptomatic. Yet the film itself never misses a chance to give us a tantalizing glimpse of somebody's breasts or an occasional terrific derrière. It's like Cecil B. DeMille showing us how ugly the decadence of the Ancients was by displaying a lot of moral terpitude and scantily clothed nymphs for the audience to lap up.
If you expect a pause in the movie, somewhere down the time line, while Benjamin wanders around aimlessly and tries to decide how to solve this emotional conundrum and a love song gets to play on the sound track, you won't be disappointed. The theme song is delivered with a flute, a guitar, and cloying lyrics along the lines of, "Can this be love....?"
There's another annoying scene too. Benjamin notices a sexy babe in a wet T shirt who wordlessly invites him into her apartment for a quick and joyless roll in the hay. Now, this is an everyday occurrence for me, common to the point of being humdrum, but it's hard to believe that Benjamin's timid, wimpy stockbroker has such an adventure. He's ecstatic when he leaves but confused too. He begins talking to himself. When he reaches the sidewalk he bumps into a man strolling along and the man turns and says, "Hah?" That's unbelievable right there. This is Laguna Beach or Santa Barbara or someplace and I defy any pedestrian to talk to another pedestrian on any residential street in the greater Los Angeles area. I swear you could tear your clothes off, leap about like a chimpanzee, and shriek gibberish in the middle of the street and in return you'd get -- nothing, because every eye is glazed over. Talk about your thousand-yard stares.
Nice photography, though. Laslo Kovacs. And some nice scenery. Joanna Shimkus.
I kept trying to figure out why this movie was made. Benjamin's character really IS dull, and the actor delivers the salamagundi of small talk and evasions in the whiny, sing-song, voice of a child. Shimkus is no barrel of laughs either but she so startlingly attractive and sexy that I'd be willing to forgive her. The ending seems arbitrary and, after all this drama, the director ends it on a freeze that's supposed to be funny and isn't.
It occurred to me that this 1971 release was probably shot in 1970, which would make it two years after the rip-roaring commercial and critical success, "The Graduate." That's reason enough, I guess. Even that blissful escape in the convertible fits the template.
As far as the film goes, it's impossible for it to be exactly gripping, what with two mismatched people, one of whom talks about the weather and the other who says nothing at all. O men, O women! But, more than that, it's a little irritating because it's a kind of masculine backlash against feminism. Everything about feminism, insofar as it's represented by Elizabeth Ashley's character, is made ridiculous by obvious exaggeration. She's breathlessly seductive when she's alone with Benjamin, but he sensibly turns her down, knowing not only that it would be sick but that Ashley wouldn't be able to wait to spill the beans to Shimkus. She's got her husband, well, what in masculine military circles used to be described as, umm, "P-whipped." Adam West's dialog seems to consist of repeating two words: "Yes, dear."
There's nothing wrong with puncturing self-satisfied authoritarianism , whether male or female, but this taming of the shrew business was done better in "The Graduate" -- and much better in "The Quiet Man" -- if only because the writers and directors kept their senses of humor and put some zingers into the script. Here we get only apothegms like, "We were never married -- not in any REAL sense." What the hell does that mean?
There is a scene in which a shrink (female) makes a house call to hold a group session with the two couples and it constitutes a demonstration of everything that's wrong with the script. It mocks the shrink, which is okay, but it does so blatantly, without pretense. I suppose it's meant to be comic but it comes off as just immature and mean. Maybe "immature" is the wrong word. Like the rest of the film it's just relentlessly middlebrow and lacks challenge.
And the film is as phony as the shrink is supposed to be. This is a story that highlights the voyeurism of Benjamin's character as symptomatic. Yet the film itself never misses a chance to give us a tantalizing glimpse of somebody's breasts or an occasional terrific derrière. It's like Cecil B. DeMille showing us how ugly the decadence of the Ancients was by displaying a lot of moral terpitude and scantily clothed nymphs for the audience to lap up.
If you expect a pause in the movie, somewhere down the time line, while Benjamin wanders around aimlessly and tries to decide how to solve this emotional conundrum and a love song gets to play on the sound track, you won't be disappointed. The theme song is delivered with a flute, a guitar, and cloying lyrics along the lines of, "Can this be love....?"
There's another annoying scene too. Benjamin notices a sexy babe in a wet T shirt who wordlessly invites him into her apartment for a quick and joyless roll in the hay. Now, this is an everyday occurrence for me, common to the point of being humdrum, but it's hard to believe that Benjamin's timid, wimpy stockbroker has such an adventure. He's ecstatic when he leaves but confused too. He begins talking to himself. When he reaches the sidewalk he bumps into a man strolling along and the man turns and says, "Hah?" That's unbelievable right there. This is Laguna Beach or Santa Barbara or someplace and I defy any pedestrian to talk to another pedestrian on any residential street in the greater Los Angeles area. I swear you could tear your clothes off, leap about like a chimpanzee, and shriek gibberish in the middle of the street and in return you'd get -- nothing, because every eye is glazed over. Talk about your thousand-yard stares.
Nice photography, though. Laslo Kovacs. And some nice scenery. Joanna Shimkus.