Oscar Got It Wrong: Best Actor 1975

The Contenders:

Al Pacino: Dog Day Afternoon
James Whitmore: Give ‘em Hell, Harry!
Maximilian Schell: Man in the Glass Booth
Jack Nicholson: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (winner)
Walter Matthau: The Sunshine Boys

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 1975

The Contenders:

Barry Lyndon
The Man Who Would Be King
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (winner)
Profumo di Donna
The Sunshine Boys

Vaudeville

Film: The Sunshine Boys
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

I’m not a huge fan of Neil Simon. I realize that there was a time (generally the 1970s) when Simon could do no wrong, but there’s something artificial about his plays. Simon was too clever by a half; all of his characters were not merely quirky; they were all quirky in the same way. Everyone always had the right thing to say all the time. Everyone is an emotional train wreck. A little Neil Simon goes a long way with me, so it wasn’t without reservations that I watched The Sunshine Boys.

The Sunshine Boys suffers from the exact same problem as all of the other Neil Simon that I’m familiar with. However, it’s tempered here. First, this really is a well-done screenplay. Second, it contains a couple of truly great performances. Walter Matthau was nominated for Best Actor for this role, and George Burns (in his first movie in more than 30 years) won for Best Supporting Actor. The characters, especially Matthau’s, are extreme, but I can’t fault the performances for a second.