DVD: Divine Viewing Diversions
When comedic dramatist Neil Simon passed away last year at 91, the world lost a staggeringly accomplished and prolific writer, arguably the greatest comedy playwright the world has ever seen.
Well, his comedies more than hold up and many have been turned into superior entertainments for the movie audience. Characteristically literate, insightful, affecting, and very funny, the stories are peopled with vivid characters that inspire talented actors and actresses to sink their teeth into.
Seventeen Tony nominations, four Oscar nominations, and a Pulitzer Prize – just to name a few honors – would seem to render Simon the most awarded comedy writer we’ve ever encountered.
So, here are 10 Neil Simon flicks, all but one of them adaptations of his staged plays.
Simon says: Watch. Relax. Laugh a lot. Cry a little. Enjoy.
THE ODD COUPLE (G, 1968)
If this were the only work of Simon’s that broke through to a mass audience, he would still have taken his place as a prominent landmark on the pop-culture landscape: it’s that arresting, iconic and hilarious. Receiving Oscar nods for Editing and Adapted Screenplay, it also had more than its share of incarnations, including the long-running TV sitcom that starred Tony Randall and Jack Klugman. But it was Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, a frequent screen team, who established the definitive roles of sloppy, outspoken Oscar and neat, uptight Felix. The mismatched-divorced-guys-living-together trope is by now overly familiar, but at the time was as sweet-smelling as Felix’s fabric spray. And with two consummate comedic actors at the top of their game, from the opening poker game to the climactic double date, with Simonized one-liners bouncing off the walls of every room in their New York apartment, we’re in comedy heaven.
PLAZA SUITE (PG-13, 1971)
Three alternating vignettes that take place in the same New York hotel room in The Plaza forms the offbeat structure of this uneven but sporadically funny work. Each skit stars frequent Simon collaborator Walter Matthau, in three roles, playing opposite Maureen Stapleton, Barbara Harris, and Lee Grant. One skit is an anniversary celebration, another is an intended seduction, and the third involves a reluctant bride who, for reasons unknown and to her parents’ chagrin, has locked herself in the bathroom and refuses to come out for her own wedding downstairs. All four performances are top-drawer and Matthau – taking over three roles that George C. Scott played along with Maureen Stapleton on Broadway – is in comic command throughout. The combination of solid, appropriate casting and Simon’s ability to write to his performers’ strengths makes for an entertaining viewing experience.
THE PRISONER OF SECOND AVENUE (PG, 1975)
Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft co-star as husband and wife in this dark, edgy dramedy in which the title character, a New York advertising executive in his late-40s played by Lemmon, feels useless and has a nervous breakdown after suddenly finding himself unemployed. Lemmon inherited the role from Peter Falk, who played it on Broadway, and is acceptable without quite hitting it out of the park. It’s not so much that his character, Mel Edison, lacks charm; it’s that he lacks it to such a degree. So, Lemmon and Simon share the blame for painting a portrait that gains the audience’s sympathy but not empathy. On the other hand, the real standout here is Bancroft, whose patient, long-suffering but devoted wife with a sharp tongue but a restrained style, creates domestic conflict when she becomes the necessary but apple-cart-upsetting breadwinner. So, withhold the accolades but color it watchable.
THE SUNSHINE BOYS (PG, 1975)
Walter Matthau and George Burns teamed up triumphantly as feuding ex-vaudeville partners who are urged to get back together and recreate their old comedy act for a nostalgic television special. The problem is that their mutual hatred is such that they can barely be in the same room. Eighty-year-old Burns, in his first starring role in nearly 40 years (and taking over for buddy Jack Benny when he passed away), took home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (becoming at the time the oldest Oscar winner ever), while Matthau was nominated for Best Actor and Simon got a nod for Best Adapted Screenplay. Richard Benjamin also contributes a nifty supporting turn as Matthau’s nephew and agent, but it’s comedy stalwarts Burns and Matthau working from Simon’s affectionate and very funny screenplay – a one-liner machine gun – that dispenses all kinds of insights about the art of comedy and makes viewers want to see it again. For Burns alone, a king of comic timing, it’s well worth it.
THE GOODBYE GIRL (PG, 1977)
Not every Neil Simon movie originated as one of his plays, and that goes for this warm, delightful comedy about forced roommates. Richard Dreyfuss, who would win the Oscar for Best Actor for this role (at 30, the youngest ever to do so at the time), stars as an off-Broadway actor about to open in a play who finds himself – because of a misunderstanding about the lease – having to share an apartment with an actress-dancer who is justifiably paranoid about the way men behave in romantic relationships. She’s played by Marsha Mason, one of Simon’s real-life wives. Her character’s 9-year-old daughter (precocious and funny Quinn Cummings) lives there, too. There’s plenty of domestic conflict and a treasure trove of witty banter in what is an unashamedly romantic romp. Oscar nominations also went to the film itself (Best Picture), Mason (Best Actress), Cummings (Best Supporting Actress), and Simon (Best Screenplay). That Simon wrote for his particular cast is obvious and pays major, happy dividends
CALIFORNIA SUITE (PG, 1978)
For a West Coast variation of “Plaza Suite,” Simon returned to the technique of juggling multiple unrelated situations and stories, this time involving four – as opposed to three – sets of characters, all staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Jane Fonda and Alan Alda play exes negotiating a new reality involving their daughter. Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby play doctors struggling with the amenities while on vacation with their wives. Walter Matthau tries to hide an unexpected female visitor from wife Elaine May. And, in what was generally perceived as the highlight, spouses Maggie Smith and Michael Caine attend the Oscar ceremony at which she is a nervous nominee. And not only was Smith a real-life Oscar nominee, she actually took home the Supporting Actress statuette, while Simon was once again nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. To call the film uneven is to understate the case, but the Smith-Caine segment is a gem.
CHAPTER TWO (PG, 1979)
Next up for Simon, a semi-autobiographical comedy-drama with James Caan starring as a 42-year-old widower, and Marsha Mason more or less playing herself as the recently divorced second wife, with the grieving writer protagonist embarking on a romance and marriage with her before recovering from the death of his first wife. Mason received an Oscar nomination as Best Actress for her role, but Caan was essentially miscast. The script is not among Simon’s best, although it’s nonetheless witty and insightful as it details the way the memory of the author’s first wife comes between the mature lovers after their two-week courtship has eventuated into marriage. This, after they honeymoon at the same place that the writer and his previous wife vacationed and while they are living in the house he shared with her predecessor. This is a respectable and absorbing dramedy for Simon completists.
BRIGHTON BEACH MEMOIRS (PG-13, 1986)
Another semi-autobiographical Simon work, here was the kickoff of Simon’s trilogy about an extended Brooklyn family in the 1930s. To be followed by “Biloxi Blues” and “Broadway Bound,” the nostalgic first installment, which finds two families living under the same roof, features Blythe Danner, Jonathan Silverman, Bob Dishy and Jason Alexander. It’s a poignant and funny coming-of-age tale about a Brooklyn boy during the Depression. Silverman, in his Broadway debut, is the protagonist, a future accomplished playwright, through whose adolescent eyes the tale is told in a role Matthew Broderick played on the Broadway stage. And Danner plays the critical role of his mother, but the talented actress is miscast in the Jewish-mom role. Purists might find the production unnecessarily stagy, but Simon’s repeatable one-liners still abound and the characters are nothing if not three-dimensionally lifelike.
LOST IN YONKERS (PG, 1993)
Simon’s comedy-drama, “Lost in Yonkers,” won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for drama, no less. Starring Richard Dreyfuss, Mercedes Ruehl and Irene Worth, it’s about a struggling widower who leaves his two teenage sons with their stern German grandmother and his simple-minded adult sister as he struggles to find a job and make ends meet during World War II. Ruehl is a particular standout, reprising her Tony-winning role as the boys’ childlike Aunt Bella. Worth also gets to recreate a role that won her a Tony on Broadway, and Dreyfuss inherits the showy role of the boys’ Uncle Louie, a seeming small-time gangster, from Tony-nominated Kevin Spacey, who played it on the stage. Lots of strong performances help to make the movie version touching and amusing and intriguing. Dysfunctional family dynamics are on Simon’s mind with the semi-autobiographical boys suggesting Simon and his real-life brother, and it offers characters to care about and root for.
LAUGHTER ON THE 23RD FLOOR (R, 2001)
It would have been a crime if no one ever memorialized the special gathering of comedy minds who worked on “Your Show of Shows” in the 1950s. So Simon, who was a young and nearly silent participant but certainly a part of the team, did it himself. Thus, this absolutely hilarious telemovie, directed by Richard Benjamin (who years before directed the similarly themed “My Favorite Year”) and starring Nathan Lane as Max Prince, a thinly disguised version of Sid Caesar, the era’s king of comedy. It’s fascinating to witness where our nation’s sense of humor came from, and it was from that era’s version of “Saturday Night Live.” As for Simon’s affection for and understanding of comedy, it couldn’t be more obvious as the zingers and insults and bits go flying off the walls. Everyone in the cast has got the comedic chops, and Simon’s screenplay is spit-out-your-popcorn funny.
