Neil Simon's Grand Hotel

Films: California Suite
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on laptop.

Neil Simon must’ve hated when the ‘70s came to an end. He had 12 plays turned into movies in the 1970s, which is kind of amazing. One of those was California Suite, which was unusual for Simon-penned screenplays in that it has a substantial cast list rather than a couple of major stars in big roles. I can’t say that makes the film more or less than any other Neil Simon script; it’s just something that happens to be true.

California Suite is a title with a double meaning. It takes place in the main in a Beverly Hills hotel in a series of suites. In that sense, the title is literal. It’s also, though, a “suite” of four stories that take place in that location at roughly the same time. At least that’s my assumption. Since the stories don’t really interact with each other at all and the characters from one story don’t appear in the other three, it’s possible that they could be taking place at different times and even at different hotels. In truth, this is one of the weaknesses of the film.

Happy Endings Only in Songs

Film: Pennies from Heaven
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

When you think of musicals in general, you think of happy and fluffy. At least I do. Sure, there are some that go against that trend: West Side Story, Oklahoma, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, but most of them shoot for the happy ending and pure entertainment from start to finish. That’s what I was expecting with Pennies from Heaven. It’s not at all what I got, though. In fact, Pennies from Heaven is tonally very close to a film like The Purple Rose of Cairo.

Arthur Parker (Steve Martin) is a sheet music salesman around Chicago during the Great Depression. Sales aren’t good and worse for him, his wife Joan (Jessica Harper) is frigid and unaffectionate. Arthur would like to own a store that sells records, but Joan will not loan him the money she’s inherited from her father. In fact, she won’t even let him borrow from the bank using that money as collateral. This is Arthur’s reality, but in his head, everything in his world is perfect, just like the lyrics of the songs he sells.

...And Mrs. Salsa, too

Film: Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969)
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

Was there a reason I decided to watch Goodbye, Mr. Chips tonight? Really, I felt like sitting down with Peter O’Toole, a man nominated for eight Oscars and who got a goose egg for his troubles. There are multiple times when I think O’Toole was rightfully nominated, but I have trouble understanding this particular nomination. I guess more than anything I was surprised to find this a musical. I probably shouldn’t have been since Petula Clark is his costar.

This does more or less follow the story of the original version of the film from 1939. Arthur Chipping (O’Toole) is a stuffy professor of Latin at an all-boys school near London. He’s not a favorite of the boys, who find him dull and officious. He actually agrees with them in general; he is officious and stuffy. He’d like the boys to like him, but he also doesn’t see any reason to change the way he is. We get a good sense of the sort of man he is as the film opens. His students have performed poorly on a test, so he keeps them after class to go over their work despite one of his boys being in a championship tennis match. The boy is forced to miss the match thanks to Chipping keeping him in his seat.

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.

Elementary!

Film: The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
Format: DVD from Oregon Public Library through interlibrary loan on rockin’ flatscreen.

I can’t call myself the world’s biggest Sherlock Holmes fan, although I did name my dog after one of Doyle’s books. (My dog’s name is Baskerville if you’re playing the home version of my trivia game.) I feel about Holmes roughly the way I feel about, say, Star Trek. I’m enough of a fan to follow it and know the main players, but it’s nothing I particularly seek out. I was interested in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution mainly for the cast, which includes Robert Duvall and Alan Arkin. Now that I have a little time away from work (first time in months), I can work a little more with interlibrary loan, which is why I ordered this one for today.

This, it should be noted, is not a story by Arthur Conan Doyle, but Nicholas Meyer using Doyle’s characters. It’s kind of a two-part story. The first half deals entirely with Holmes and the second half with a case that arises suddenly. Despite this, the film doesn’t feel disjointed. Events of the first half creep into the second, and the narrative actually works despite there being two legitimate conclusions.

I Looked Around to Find Her but She'd Gone

Film: The Goodbye Girl
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop.

There’s a huge failing at the heart of The Goodbye Girl. This is a film that tries very hard to be likable, cute, and funny and parts of it are. Parts of it, though, and some of the main pieces that are to be likable, cute, and funny are absolutely the opposite. It takes what could have been a really solid entry into the romantic comedy genre and drops it down a few significant pegs. That’s kind of a shame.

This is not, as it happens, the first time I’ve seen The Goodbye Girl. I remember it as a film that had some things I really liked about it and a few things that I was iffy on. This rewatch has skewed my opinion in both directions. The things I like about this film I like very much; the things I dislike, I dislike far more than I remembered and dislike them almost to the point of distraction.

The Turning Point

Format: Internet video on laptop.

I might be surprising a number of people with this review. Musicals generally aren’t my thing, but The Turning Point isn’t a musical, but a dance film, and specifically a ballet film. I’m certain I’ve mentioned my tenuous ballet connection here before; it’s the one section of the Arts that I actually know something of thanks to my daughters. And while The Turning Point is a ballet movie, it’s also a drama. In fact, it’s kind of unfair to call it a ballet movie. It is one in the same way that Field of Dreams is a baseball movie. This is a film about relationships and people seen through the lens of a ballet company. It’s impossible to divorce the story from the dance, but this is in no manner a film about dancing.

I admit that I was mildly worried at the outset because of the presence of Shirley MacLaine, who tends to come off in many of her roles as completely neurotic. It’s unfair of me to prejudge in this way, but also virtually impossible for me not to. I’ve seen too many neurotic Shirley MacLaine performances to go into a film like this with my eyes closed. And, it’s about dancers, and she plays a former dancer/current dance teacher, and I can tell you from personal experience that dancers in general and ballet dancers in specific have their own patented brand of neurosis.