moonspinner55 Review of The April Fools

The April Fools (1969)

Old-fashioned romance attempts to trump chic, modern cynicism

[5/10 · 7 February 2016]

Upwardly mobile investment banker, married to a shallow mannequin out in the suburbs, picks up a sophisticated Parisian beauty at his boss's mod party in New York City, unaware she's the boss's wife. Forgotten star-vehicle for Jack Lemmon and Catherine Deneuve (who replaced an unavailable Shirley MacLaine) is an instantly-dated piece of absurdist romantic comedy in the modern idiom circa 1969. Most of the secondary characters are deadpan eccentrics who take turns staring at the strait-laced leads as if they're the ones who are odd, while the busy camera tries to catch everything about the city that is weird-for-a-laugh (often straining to do so). Lemmon is still doing his nervous schnook from "The Apartment" nine years earlier, only this time with dark brown hair dye. He never clicks with Deneuve, who never clicks with her unhappily married character. Director Stuart Rosenberg tries to keep it loose, but he falls into the general trap of the scenario, that of chic deadheads working too hard at having a good time. ** from ****