Better Late Then Never

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Gilbert Rolfe (Ron Silver) is a pushover at work. His mother Estelle (Anne Bancroft) is an opinionated crusader who frustrates him. His wife Lisa (Carrie Fisher) tries to get him to work for her parents but he refuses. Jane Mortimer (Catherine Hicks) is his flirtatious co-worker. His father Walter (Steven Hill) divorced Estelle long ago after tiring of her relentlessness. Then she's told by the doctor that she has 4 to 6 months to live. She's a Greta Garbo fan and wishes to meet her. He decides to do all he can to talk to the reclusive Garbo.This is set up for a fun comedy. I can see the movie is trying to do a comedy. However it soon becomes obvious that the comedy isn't hitting right. I think Anne Bancroft tries her best but Ron Silver is no comedian. He can't make it work. It also isn't much of a drama. It's obvious from the start that Gilbert will learn from his experience and stop being a pushover. Everything in between falls flat except for Bancroft. She's great.

..."It's not true-- I was arrested last month in Brooklyn; they gave me a sandwich and some cigarettes-- it was Mozzerella Cheese." This is the response of Estelle Rolffe when she is told, "They don't give you nothing' in detention, honey." She's in jail, and she's demanding to know: "Who do you have to pay off to get a little water around here?"Her son dutifully comes to pay her bail, and, asks her if it's ever going to stop... "marching for Washington, getting arrested, lying down in front of cars"...? But as Estelle reminds him, "I am who I am, you are who you are." She also says she doesn't mind going to jail for something she believes in. She's a firm believer that if the present generation would be a little more active, she could take it a little more easy. Her son Gilbert, is dominated by a spoiled, pampered wife, who never stops telling him that she wants him to move to California where her parents are. He's pushed around at work and never says a word. And somewhere in the middle of all this is the infamous Greta Garbo. We know Estelle adores her because we are introduced to her when she is crying her eyes out at the end of "Camille"-- possibly Garbo's best known film... "You can get other opinions, but there's nothing to be done." When Estelle begins having headaches that turn out to be a brain tumor, Gilbert gets the news he must pass on to his mom. "That's an attitude she won't understand," he says. So, Estelle is given the "speech" for a woman who now has but a short time to live, and in response she says just one thing... It's not a last wish... she has a lot more, she's just short on time. Now, Gilbert is spending his lunch hours hunting for biographies and calling obscure phone numbers. In the process, he meets an eccentric, aspiring actress named Jane Mortimer, who adores him because he's so "off center." Estelle loves Garbo possibly even more than she loves Gilbert... What would you do? When the film was released in 1984, the real Garbo was alive and well, and living in New York (where the film takes place). Many of the "rumoured" details of Garbo's later life are depicted in the story, such as her notorious hatred of photographers, her vacant apartments in the building where she lived, her Swedish maid, and mention that she still has the first nickel she ever made (by a forgotten actress who knew her back in the day). To create a movie centered around a woman still living, right in the city where she lived, must've indeed been a risk; and when you consider that the real Garbo was most famous in later life for her being a recluse, it makes the mystique of the movie greater. Superb performances by Anne Bancroft, Carrie Fisher, and Catherine Hicks, make this film one of my very favorites. The cheesy, 80's violin music in the scenes is way overkill, but under that is an endearing story of an admiration for a mother Gilbert loved, but didn't understand... so he goes on a journey which helps him understand himself better than ever before.

There is hardly a difference in the approach that the estimable Anne Bancroft takes as the incorrigible Estelle Rolfe in this sentimental 1984 comedy versus what she did three years later as the equally feisty Helene Hanff in David Jones' "84 Charing Cross Road". Somehow, this fine actress can take what may appear to be a caricature on paper and infuse it with her special blend of warmth and moxie to make the characters come alive. Just as it was Helene's love of antiquarian books that drove the story of the later film, it is Esther's adoration of screen legend Greta Garbo that drives this movie. Perpetually jailed for her overzealous liberal activism, Esther discovers she has a malignant brain tumor and asks her son Gilbert to help her fulfill her last wish - to meet Garbo.The movie focuses on Gilbert's relentless search for the reclusive actress, while confronting his marital problems and developing a burgeoning interest in a struggling actress. As a director hardly known for his deftness with comedy, Sidney Lumet guides this talky venture with a melancholy lugubriousness that makes it feel longer than its 103-minute running time. Written by TV-movie writer Larry Grusin, the story plods along with Gilbert meeting several eccentric characters along the way - a bedraggled paparazzo in pursuit of Garbo for years (Howard Da Silva in his final role), his lunatic cat-lady agent (Broadway veteran Dorothy Loudon), a senile actress who worked with Garbo once (Hermoine Gingold in her final role), and a lonely gay man on the Fire Island ferry (Harvey Fierstein who overplays the tear-jerking aspect of his cameo).Garbo (who would have been nearly eighty at the time of filming) does finally show up in the story - sort of - from the back and is embodied by legendary Broadway songwriter Betty Comden. This gives rise to a nicely performed monologue scene with Bancroft. There is another good one with Steven Hill, who plays Estelle's frustrated ex-husband. It would have been absurd to expect the real Garbo to show up, but one can't help but have a glimmer of hope throughout that it could have happened. Ron Silver plays Gilbert sympathetically if rather too glumly to maintain interest in his character's plight. As the aspiring actress, Catherine Hicks ("Seventh Heaven") pops in and out of the story to twinkle and inspire Gilbert. Just finished with the "Star Wars" trilogy, Carrie Fisher effectively plays an entirely different princess as Gilbert's wife Lisa, the Long Island variety by way of California. The 2004 DVD offers no extras.

There are two stories here. The obvious one is about a man who grows by succeeding in impossible quest: the dutiful son fulfills his dying mother's wish, to meet her idol. That makes for a very pleasant movie. The more interesting story, beautifully summed up in the animation of the opening credits, concerns the role of idols in our lives. The conversation that forms the culminating scene of the movie hints, in several subtle ways, that this relationship has an almost religious dimension: because our interaction with media idols can mark the defining moments of our lives; and because of the intriguing way that Garbo talks... This second story makes this film exceptional.