The Heartbreak Kid (1972)

          Crafted by two of New York’s most celebrated wits—and based on an idea by a lesser light from the same stratosphere—The Heartbreak Kid represents satire so cutting the movie borders on outright tragedy. The film tells the story of a young Jewish guy who marries a simple girl, experiences buyer’s remorse, meets a beautiful shiksa while on his honeymoon, and gets a quickie divorce so he can pursue his Gentile dream girl. To describe the lead character as unsympathetic would be a gross understatement—Lenny Cantrow’s sole redeeming quality is a deranged sort of relentless positivity.

          Based on a story by humorist Bruce Jay Friedman and written for the screen by Neil Simon—who mostly avoids his signature one-liners, opting instead for closely observed character-driven comedy—The Heartbreak Kid was directed by Elaine May. After achieving fame as part of a comedy duo with Mike Nichols in the ’60s, May embarked on an eclectic film career. She wrote, directed, and co-starred in the dark comedy A New Leaf (1971), which was the subject of battles between May and the studio during postproduction, then took on this project as director only. While May’s world-class comic instincts are evident in the timing of jokes and the generally understated tone of the acting, it’s easy to envision another director taking the same material to greater heights of hilarity.

          Or not.

          You see, the problem is that The Heartbreak Kid tells such a fundamentally cruel story that it’s hard to really “enjoy” the movie, even when the comedy gets into a groove. Much of the film comprises Lenny (Charles Grodin) abandoning or lying to his wife, Lila (Jeannie Berlin), so he can make time with Kelly (Cybill Shepherd), a bored rich girl who uses her sexual power for amusement. In other words, it’s the tale of a rotten guy dumping a nice girl for a bitch. The piece is redeemed, to some degree, by the skill of the performers, each of whom is perfectly cast. Grodin, a master at deadpan line deliveries, is all too believable as a middle-class schmuck with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. Berlin (incidentally, May’s daughter) bravely humiliates herself to make sight gags work, amply earning the Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress that she received for this movie. Shepherd, at the time a former model appearing in only her second movie, does most of her work just by showing up and looking unattainably beautiful, but one can see glimmers of the skilled comedienne she eventually became.

          The film’s other recipient of Oscar love, Best Supporting Actor nominee Eddie Albert, excels in his role as Kelly’s father, because his showdown scenes with Lenny are among the picture’s best—watching Albert slowly rise from simmering anger to boiling rage is pure pleasure. In fact, there’s so much good stuff in The Heartbreak Kid that it becomes a laudable movie by default, even though the central character is a putz of the first order. Inexplicably, the Farrelly Brothers remade The Heartbreak Kid in 2007 with Ben Stiller in the Grodin role, only to discover the story hadn’t lost its ability to infuriate. The remake flopped.

The Heartbreak Kid: GROOVY

The Longest Yard (1974)

          A great sports movie, a memorable comedy, and one of leading man Burt Reynolds’ best films, The Longest Yard is also a potent expression of anti-Establishment rage, channeling the tenor of its time through the unlikely prism of a prison picture about football. Directed by action master Robert Aldrich at his sharpest, the movie blends brutal gridiron violence with intense behind-bars clashes to create a pervasive vibe of us-vs.-them tension. The film’s humor emerges almost entirely from character and circumstance, and the script (by Albert S. Ruddy and Tracy Keenan Wynn) is filled with characters who are strangely believable even though many of them should seem absurd. The prison angle justifies the presence of extreme personalities, and the cast—which mostly comprises character actors and real-life athletes—relishes the story’s ample opportunities for super-sized moments.

          Reynolds stars as Paul “Wrecking” Crewe, a former pro quarterback whose career was tarnished by a point-shaving scandal. After a fight with his girlfriend, Paul gets drunk and instigates a police chase by driving recklessly. Then he’s thrown into a prison run by sports nut Warden Rudolph Hazen (Eddie Albert). Hazen has organized his guards into a football squad, and he expects Paul to coach the team while incarcerated. Paul refuses, so he’s put on backbreaking labor duty. Eventually, Paul makes a counter-proposal to Hazen, offering to train a team of inmates for an exhibition game against the guards. Although it’s understood that Hazen expects the guards to win, Paul inspires his fellow convicts by saying the game is a chance to pummel their oppressors. The plot goes through several twists past this point, and interesting relationships develop between Paul, the guards, and the inmates; Hazen’s scheme to exploit a convict ends up enflaming the resentment that festers inside the prison walls. And if none of this sounds particularly funny, rest assured The Longest Yard is filled with wicked humor, even as the storyline deftly integrates dramatic elements.

          The centerpiece of the movie is, of course, the big game, which stands alongside the football match in M*A*S*H (1970) as one of the funniest gridiron sequences in movie history. Reynolds thrives here, infusing his role with the sardonic attitude that distinguishes his best performances, and Hollywood veteran Albert makes a terrific villain by portraying a man whose greatest weakness is his arrogant reliance on power. Among the large supporting cast, standouts include James Hampton as Paul’s sidekick, Caretaker; Ed Lauter as the cruel coach of the guards’ team; and Bernadette Peters’ as Hazen’s va-va-voom secretary, who becomes sympathetic to Paul’s plight. Best of all is the film’s terrific climax, which perfectly crystallizes the complex textures of the storyline. The Longest Yard was loosely remade in 2001 as the Vinnie Jones movie Mean Machine, and directly remade in 2005, with Adam Sandler taking over the Reynolds role. Stick with the original.

The Longest Yard: RIGHT ON

Hustle (1975)

          An admirable but not entirely successful attempt at transplanting classic film-noir themes into a hip ’70s milieu, this downbeat detective thriller features the peculiar pairing of delicate Gallic beauty Catherine Deneuve and suave Deep South stud Burt Reynolds. The fact that these actors don’t exist in the same cinematic universe reflects the many clashing tonalities director Robert Aldrich brings to Hustle. After smoothly blending comedy and drama in an earlier Reynolds movie, The Longest Yard (1974), Aldrich tries to do too many things here, because Hustle aspires to be a tragedy, a whodunit, a commentary on sexual politics, and more. Since Aldrich was generally at his best making unpretentious pulp, with deeper themes buried below the surface, his striving for Big Statements is awkward—much in the same way that Deneuve’s cool sophistication fails to gel with Reynolds’ hot emotionalism, the high and low aspects of this movie’s storytelling collide to produce a narrative muddle.

          The picture begins with cynical LA detectives Phil Gaines (Reynolds) and Louis Belgrave (Paul Winfield) commencing their investigation into the murder of a young hooker. The victim’s father, Korean War vet Marty Hollinger (Ben Johnson), is sniffing around the crime as well, because he wants revenge. When clues identify lawyer Leo Sellers (Eddie Albert) as a possible suspect, things get tricky not only because Sellers has political influence but because Sellers is a patron of another hooker, Nicole (Deneuve)—who happens to be Phil’s girlfriend.

          The idea of a cop living on both sides of the law is always provocative, but in this case, Phil’s relationship with Nicole makes him unsympathetic. Tolerating her demeaning career paints him as a user, while pushing her to abandon her work suggests he’s a chauvinist; there’s no way for Reynolds to win. Nonetheless, the actor gives a valiant effort, while Deneuve struggles to elevate her clichéd role despite obvious difficulty with English-language dialogue. Inhibited by iffy writing and overreaching direction, the stars end up letting their physicality do most of the acting—Deneuve looks ravishing and Reynolds looks tough. But that’s not enough. Excepting Johnson, whose obsessive bloodlust resonates, most of the skilled supporting cast gets lost in the cinematic muddiness, and Aldrich does no one any favors by shooting interiors with ugly, high-contrast lighting. Still, Hustle gets points for seediness and for the nihilism of its ending.

Hustle: FUNKY