“The April Fools” with Jack Lemmon and Catherine Deneuve

Posted on April 1, 2016 at 12:00 pm

“The April Fools,” starring Jack Lemmon and Catherine Deneuve, is featured in my book, 101 Must-See Movie Moments, for a scene where Jack Lemmon and Catherine Deneuve (he’s an unhappy executive; she’s his boss’s unhappy trophy wife) meet a happily married older couple played by Myrna Loy and Charles Boyer.

Happy April!

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Trailers, Previews, and Clips

The History of The Odd Couple

Posted on February 17, 2015 at 8:00 am

“The Odd Couple” is coming back to television, starring “Friends'” Matthew Perry as the slob and writer/actor Thomas Lennon as the neatnik. The long-running television series starred Tony Randall and Jack Klugman. There have also been versions with a black odd couple, a female odd couple, and even an animated cat and dog odd couple.

But before that, it was a Broadway play and then a movie starring Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. And before that, it was kind of a true story.

Neil Simon, the most successful comic playwright of the last half-century, wrote the play based on his brother, comedy writer Danny Simon, who moved in with a friend following his divorce. It may also have been inspired in part by Mel Brooks (who was a writer with both Simon brothers on Sid Caesar’s “Show of Shows”). He also briefly lived with a friend following a divorce. Danny also inspired characters in his brother’s other plays, including “Plaza Suite,” “Laughter on the 23rd Floor,” and “Brighton Beach Memoirs.”

Matthau and Lemmon are ideal as Oscar and Felix, and the movie is well worth putting in your Netflix queue.

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Film History For Your Netflix Queue

Must-See Movie Moment: The April Fools

Posted on April 1, 2014 at 8:00 am

Happy April! This is from my book, 101 Must-See Movie Moments.

The April Fools is a 1969 film starring Jack Lemmon and Catherine Deneuve that, if remembered at all, is thought of as a dated mid-life crisis romance and a clumsy attempt by Hollywood to make something that was, to use a briefly popular term of the era, “relevant.”

Lemmon plays Howard Brubaker, a good man who tries to do his best but is not quite sure how he got caught up in the phony notions of success he seems stuck with. No one else is questioning it, so he hardly lets himself be aware of how unsatisfied he is. He is married to a woman who seems to care only about decorating their home (Sally Kellerman). His boss (Peter Lawford) encourages Howard to find happiness the way he has – by having a lot of affairs. When he politely asks a woman at the party (Deneuve as Catherine Gunther) if he can buy her a drink she takes it as an invitation to leave the party and he is nonplussed. And he is even more so when he finds himself falling in love with her. What he does not know is that she is married to his boss.

They go off together and spend an evening that will lead them both to realize how much they had been missing and how dishonest they had been with themselves.

Lemmon was so good in outlandish roles like “The Great Race” and “Some Like It Hot” it is easy to forget that no one was better at playing a decent guy struggling with the challenges of modern life and trying to do the right thing. Deneuve struggles with the English dialog, but she is so serenely gorgeous it does not really matter. It is a pleasant, if bittersweet little trifle, but one scene makes it worthwhile and that is when Howard and Catherine meet an older couple who more by example than by anything they say make them think seriously about where they want to be at that age and who they want to be with. And that couple is magnificently portrayed by two of the all-time greats, Charles Boyer and Myrna Loy.

Joseph Campbell wrote about the prevalence in myth of “the old man in the woods,” the character sought out by the hero to help guide him on his journey. Think of Yoda in “The Empire Strikes Back” or Professor Falken in “Wargames” or “Deep Throat” in “All the President’s Men” or Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films or Aslan in the Narnia movies or the psychiatrist in “Ordinary People.” These are the hero’s corner men, the ones who throw water on his face and rub his shoulders and get him back in the ring swinging. “The April Fools” is a particularly good example because as the characters played by Boyer and Loy show the younger couple how much they appreciate what they have together, we also get a sense of the older generation of actors passing the torch to Lemmon and Deneuve.

Brubaker and Catherine go to the club the boss recommended, an outlandish place with a jungle theme, where animal-skin waitresses are summoned by popgun blasts to their rear ends. They leave for a disco, where they meet Grace (Loy) and when her driver turns out to be drunk, they take her back to her home. There they meet her husband André (Boyer), who explains that nothing good happens during the day (the sun beats down, people have to work), so he has chosen to live at night (women are beautiful, there is champagne to drink). This is just one of the ways in which Brubaker and Catherine have entered an upside-down world that encourages and enables them to think about what is possible for them. Grace tells Catherine her fortune, smiling that “it’s bad luck to be superstitious but the cards are so pretty” and guiding her to let herself insist on being happy. But the most important way Grace and André guide Brubaker and Catherine is by showing them that there is such a thing as sustaining, enduring love. Whether it is Grace and André or Loy and Boyer, we cannot help being moved and inspired by the example of these wise and beautiful souls.

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Great Movie Moments Neglected gem

The Great Race

Posted on May 26, 2008 at 8:00 am

B+
Lowest Recommended Age: All Ages
Profanity: None
Alcohol/ Drugs: Social drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness: Comic peril and violence, no one hurt
Diversity Issues: A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters: July 1, 1965

Dedicated to “Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy,” this movie is both a spoof and a loving tribute to the silent classics, with good guys, bad guys, romance, adventure, slapstick, music, wonderful antique cars, and the biggest pie fight in history. The opening credits are on a series of slides like those in the earliest movies, complete with cheers for the hero and boos for the villain, and a flickering old-fashioned projector that at one point appears to break down. Always dressed in impeccable white, the Great Leslie (Tony Curtis) is a good guy so good that his eyes and teeth literally twinkle. His capable mechanic and assistant is Hezekiah (Keenan Wynn). The bad guy is Professor Fate (Jack Lemmon), assisted by Max (Peter Falk). Like Wile E. Coyote, Fate’s cartoonishly hilarious stunts to stop Leslie inevitably backfire.

After a brief prologue, in which Fate tries to beat Leslie in breaking various speed records, literally trying to torpedo him at one point, they both enter an automobile race from New York to Paris. So does a beautiful reporter (Natalie Wood as Maggie DuBois) trying to prove she can get the story — dressed in an endless series of exquisite ensembles designed by Hollywood legend Edith Head. Great%20Race2.jpg

The race takes them across America, through the Wild West, to a rapidly melting ice floe in the Pacific, and into a European setting that is a cross between a Victor Herbert operetta and “The Prisoner of Zenda,” where a spoiled prince happens to look exactly like Professor Fate and it takes all of the stars to foil an evil Baron (Ross Martin) who wants to use Fate to take over the throne.

This is a perfect family movie, just plain fun from beginning to end.  It may also provide an opportunity for a discussion of competition and sportsmanship.  At the end, Leslie deliberately loses as a gesture of devotion to Maggie DuBois.  Professor Fate, after all, shows some sense of honor — apparently it is all right for him to cheat to win, but not all right to win by having Leslie refuse to compete.  “You cheated — I refuse to accept!”  Modern adults may wince a bit at Dubois’ notion of how to attain equal opportunity — she ultimately succeeds by showing her leg to the editor, who becomes too dazed to argue further.  But like “Mary Poppins,” it provides a chance to remind children that when their great-grandparents were children, women did not even have the right to vote.

Questions for Kids:

  • Should Leslie have let Fate win?
  • Why wasn’t Fate happy when he beat Leslie?
  • Why was Fate so jealous of Leslie?
  • Why did DuBois want to be a reporter so badly?

 

Connections:  Curtis and Lemmon also appeared together in one of the greatest comedies of all time, “Some Like it Hot.”   Children who enjoy this movie might like to see some of the silent classics it saluted, like “Two Tars,” in which Laurel and Hardy create chaos in the middle of an enormous traffic jam.  They might also enjoy “Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines” or “Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies.”  Children who have enjoyed Ed Wynn as Uncle Albert (who “loves to laugh”) in “Mary Poppins” may like to know that his son, Keenan Wynn, plays Leslie’s assistant Hezekiah.

 

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