Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Pretty Good

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

There are many things this film does really well.First of all, the acting is superb throughout. Grodin is brilliant as ever in a very demanding, heavy acting responsibility - had he been average at it, the film easily loses heaps of its ability. Jeannie Berlin (the wife) does really well, as does Eddie Albert (the father) and for a 22 year old beaut youngster Cybill Shepherd is solid also.Next: this isn't a generic superficial comedy. It's got that peculiar element about it. The humor isn't easy over-the-counter drivel, it's in fact uneasy, almost awkward and difficult to digest. It's about the little annoying details with people, invading personal space, being pathetic without noticing it...in a very real way, all of those things !Finally, the film holds up very nicely in its one hour forty-five minute frame, with not one moment too many or too few, has a well thought out structure to it that isn't obvious at first, and there's this sort of itchy, awkward anti-morality morality at the end of it that is just as weirdly charming and anti-heroic as its main character.8/10.

I remember seeing this movie when it first came out, and it always stuck with me. I rewatched it last night for the first time in decades, and I think my first impression as a teen is still pretty much my impression now. Charles Grodin plays a totally selfish person, Lenny Cantrow, who - unlike most of us - acts on every selfish impulse. He tries to kid himself into thinking he is a good unselfish person by giving his cast-off first wife all of the wedding presents and his car when the gash he's given her self esteem - telling her he wants a divorce after less than one week into a marriage and honeymoon, most of which he has spent with a Minnesota beauty on vacation (Cybil Shepherd as Kelly Corcoran) - is something that will likely never heal. Being older and a stepparent myself now, I could really relate to Eddie Albert's character, Kelly's father. He can smell Lenny's loopiness from a mile away, but how do you protect an adult daughter from a terrible fate - getting hooked up with someone like Grodin's character - that only time and wisdom can teach you to avoid. She doesn't have that wisdom yet.I always thought the second wedding scene sharing so many similarities with the first is basically saying that Lenny is going to go through life ruining other people's lives because he wants what he wants when he wants it, and worse, he will always convince himself he is not a bad guy when he walks all over people to get what he wants. Also you see just a smidgen of regret in his face after the ceremony as he talks in circles about his career plans to any wedding guest that will listen, suggesting that perhaps catching Kelly is not as satisfying as chasing her all of these months has been.Finally, I just have to tip my hat to director Elaine May. Somehow, in both 1971's "A New Leaf" and this film, she really knows how to make a female character annoying right down to the tone of voice and physical movements. She did it with her own character in A New Leaf and then did it with her own daughter, Jeannie Berlin, in this film as Lenny's first wife, Lila. Highly recommended.

This was written by Neil Simon but is more loose-limbed and subtle than most of his other work. It was directed efficiently by Elaine May and her daughter, Jeanne Berlin, has a prominent role as Charles Grodin's bride. They are in ecstasy, dancing to the tunes of Burt Bacharach. Both are bourgeois but differences soon emerge when they take off for their honeymoon in Miami. She pulls down her bodice and playfully bares her boobs to him while he's trying to drive on the crowded interstate. "STOP it, the TRUCK drivers will see!" She sulks a little.This is clearly Neil Simon territory, two slightly mismatched people, as in "The Odd Couple," only with far more nuance, as it develops.Grodin is conventionally handsome and young, while Berlin has more interesting characteristics. She's plumper than usual (too many Milky Ways) and she has strong, fleshy, attractive features. She is matronly towards Grodin and loving, too. Her voice is so nasal that it might make a good, irritating whine, but she speaks so slowly and mellifluously that her tone is endearing.The morning after their first night as a couple, they have breakfast in the attached motel restaurant. He eats his hamburger delicately, like a surgeon. She orders a double egg salad sandwich and a chocolate shake and smears everything all over her lips while Grodin stares aghast. "Want a bite?", she asks, offering him the half-eaten sandwich. And, "Leonard, look around. There's us in fifty years, isn't it?" Grodin looks over his shoulder to see a wizened, stooped old man trying to help his gnome-like wife into her coat. It's already funny and it's hardly begun. The film turns her into a repellent figure, covers her bright red body with cold cream and odium.Maybe it should have stuck with that one relationship -- Grodin and Berlin -- because half way through, Grodin falls for. Cybil Shepherd, the summum bonum of femininity, full of confidence, cute little quirks, and stunning. She's rich, she's beautiful, she's flirtatious, she has a perfect figure, she's indifferent, and she's a shiksa named Kelly. He bumps into her on the beach. You ought to see Miami Beach in the winter -- hardly a soul who isn't eligible for membership in AARP, wobbling stiffly about, retired, gray-haired, wrinkled, flabby, and brown. No kids. I take the caricature to be deliberate, another reminder of what Grodin and Berlin will be like in "forty or fifty years." Now the story takes us from Grodin feeling superior to Berlin, to Shepherd's Aryan Minnesota family and their goyim naches. Now HE gets to feel demeaned. The story is like a sandwich with a double filling of egg-salad humiliation and, while it's funny, it sort of disjoints the whole movie.The head of Kelly Corcoran's family is the very rich and anti-Semitic Eddie Albert, who is obnoxious throughout. But one of his friends is William Prince (the pharmacist's mate in "Destination Tokyo") whom I've always like because he and I share the same alma mater. Grodin dumps Berlin, gives her everything, and heads after Shepherd to Minneapolis, where he visits Kelly's house and her father threatens to kill him if he ever shows up again. Worse, Shepherd has almost forgotten him and now has no time for him because she's late for an English Lit class. The flirtation in Florida that she's laughed off, Grodin took seriously. It's like Bruno and Guy in Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train." Shepherd, quite unconvincingly, changes her attitude after a brief conversation. At their marriage reception, Grodin finds himself talking to wealthy businessmen who manufacture tear gas. He's polite but not interested. Finally, he's isolated on a couch with only two ten-year olds listening to him before they too leave, out of boredom. Grodin sits alone, humming Burt Bacharach to himself, and we have little idea of where this is all headed. He's young, resourceful, and innovative, but alternately determined and then so impulsive we can doubt that he has functioning frontal lobes. Or he could go mad and start screaming at any moment.

Lenny Cantrow and Lila Kolodny are a newlywed Jewish couple.During their honeymoon in Florida he meets this tall blonde, Kelly, and realizes he's made a terrible mistake.Now he wants to have an instant divorce and get together with this attractive gentile.Another problem is the girl's father who can't stand this guy.Elaine May, the former sidekick of Mike Nichols is the director of The Heartbreak Kid (1972).Its writers are Bruce Jay Friedman (story) and Neil Simon (screenplay).What a wonderful and funny comedy this is! Charles Grodin does a performance of a lifetime as Lenny.Same thing with Jeannie Berlin as Lila, who's Elaine May's daughter.Cybill Shepherd portrays Kelly Corcoran in a memorable way.And so does Eddie Albert as her father.Audra Lindley is wonderful as her mother.Doris Roberts does a small role as Mrs.Cantrow.Grodin's character is somewhat likable even though he acts like a real jerk.You can't help but feel sorry for this man.I mean, this gorgeous college girl wants him! But still, what he does is wrong.Leaving his wife, his beautiful and sweet wife like that is just wrong.But in the last image of the film you can see some kind of regret on the man's face.He's just married Kelly and he starts humming Close To You, that was played on his wedding with Lila.This movie made me laugh several times.Like the time Lenny lays out all his cards for Kelly's dad wanting to marry his daughter.Guess twice how the old man feels about that.The Heartbreak Kid is a real treat.Everybody should see it.