Lovers and Other Strangers (1970)

          A significant commercial and critical hit back in the day, the ensemble dramedy Lovers and Other Strangers mixes keen observations about marriage with hit-or-miss sex-comedy vignettes. Based on a play by Joseph Bologna and Renée Taylor, the movie concerns the wedding of a young couple and how the event impacts the couple’s friends and relatives. On a deeper level, the story is an exploration of changing values during the Women’s Liberation era. Does marriage mean anything during a time when young people embrace premarital cohabitation? Is the old notion of accepting contentment in marriage passé for kids who expect to sustain passion forever? And how can young women protect themselves from predatory men who use with-it lingo to pressure women into sex? These were important questions in 1970, so even though time has dulled the edge off Lovers and Other Strangers, the picture is still interesting as a snapshot of a turbulent period. Additionally, some of the characters are rendered so well that they’re timeless.

          The youngsters preparing to marry are Mike (Michael Brandon) and Susan (Bonnie Bedelia). He’s terrified of commitment even though he and Susan have lived together for some time, and he’s nervous that his old-fashioned Italian parents will find out he’s “living in sin.” The engaged couple’s anxieties are juxtaposed with problems plaguing new marriages, troubles faced by single people, and the wisdom of people who have been married for decades. One of the imperiled new marriages is between Susan’s sister, Wilma (Anne Meara), and Johnny (Harry Guardino)—she tries to keep the sexual spark alive while he resents her rejection of the idea that being male entitles Johnny to unconditional dominance. The other endangered new union is between Mike’s brother, Richie (Joseph Hindy), and Joan (Diane Keaton, in her first movie role), who have scandalized the family by announcing plans to divorce. Representing the singles scene is Susan’s friend Brenda (Marian Hailey), who runs hot and cold with fast-talking horndog Jerry (Bob Dishy). There’s also a subplot about Susan’s father, Hal (Gig Young), having an affair with his sister-in-law, Kathy (Anne Jackson). Rounding out the principal cast are Mike’s parents, Frank (Richard Castellano) and Bea (Beatrice Arthur).

          Some threads of the story have more punch than others. The stuff with Bea and Frank is terrific because veteran stage actors Arthur and Castellano give pitch-perfect comic performances; Castellano earned an Oscar nomination for his work, and Lovers and Other Strangers helped pave the way for Arthur’s conquest of television a few years later. The Brenda/Jerry storyline gets old quickly because Brenda is depicted as a mess of catch phrases and neuroses, while Jerry is portrayed as nothing but a compendium of come-on lines. Similarly, the Hal/Kathy storyline is mostly a vehicle for Hal contriving ways to string Kathy along while Kathy endures humiliating treatment because the alternative of being alone is too dismaying. Whereas those two subplots feel shallow and trite, the Johnny/Wilma storyline pays off nicely when the couple embraces compromise.

          Lovers and Other Strangers gives viewers a lot to digest, but despite some honest insights and zippy one-liners, the movie never achieves real depth or hilarity. Although the film is thoroughly respectable, the writers (including David Zelag Goodman, who helped adapt the play) employ comedy as a means of dancing around tough issues. Nonetheless, the mere fact that Lovers and Other Strangers engages with serious topics places the movie a few notches above the average bedroom farce, and the presence of consistently good acting raises the movie’s quality even higher.

Lovers and Other Strangers: GROOVY

Jennifer on My Mind (1971)

          Here’s the premise of this would-be comedy for the druggie generation: After a with-it dude’s far-out girlfriend dies of a heroin overdose, he spends several days hiding her body in his apartment (and then his car) because he thinks he was responsible for her death and doesn’t want to get in trouble. Are you laughing yet? No? Well, guess what, you won’t be laughing when you watch the actual movie, either. Instead of being irreverent, which was undoubtedly the goal, Jennifer on My Mind is distasteful and unfunny. It’s also very boring, which is quite an accomplishment given the lurid storyline. Seeing as how the movie was directed by Noel Black, who made the masterful black comedy Pretty Poison (1968), and seeing as how the film was based on a book by the respectable Roger L. Simon, it’s tempting to point the finger of blame at screenwriter Erich Segal. Yes, that Erich Segal, Mr. Love Story himself. Once again, Segal demonstrates his unique gift for generating slick tedium. In fairness, though, nothing works in Jennifer on My Mind, so the script may simply be the most glaring of myriad unsatisfactory elements.

          The storyline unfolds on two levels. In the present-day narrative, rich twentysomehting Marcus (Michael Brandon) avoids family members and friends who visit his pad because he’s concealing a corpse. In flashbacks, we see Marcus’ courtship with the girl who ended up rotting in his bathtub. She’s Jennifer (Tippy Walker), a dimwitted hippie whom Marcus meets in Europe. Over the course of their hot-and-cold relationship, Jennifer got involved with hard drugs. To say that the narcotics angle feels incompatible with the film’s various gooey, music-driven love montages is an understatement, but as we all know from Love Story, Segal’s got a thing for gooey, music-driven love montages. Leading players Brandon and Walker are forgettable, but several semi-famous players show up in incidental and/or supporting roles, namely Peter Bonerz, Barry Bostwick, Jeff Conaway, Renée Taylor, and Chuck McCann. The picture also features an early performance by a future superstar. Robert De Niro shows up for one scene piloting a gypsy cab—yep, it’s De Niro playing a taxi driver five years before Taxi Driver. The actor brings his usual early-career intensity to a silly bit part as a hack wired on speed, but his brief appearance isn’t sufficient reason to trudge through Jennifer on My Mind. 

Jennifer on My Mind: LAME

Made for Each Other (1971)

Actors Joseph Bologna and Renée Taylor have been married in real life since the mid-’60s, and they’ve written and performed a number of lighthearted projects together for film, television, and theater. One of their earliest endeavors was this low-budget romantic comedy about a pair of neurotic New Yorkers who meet in an encounter group, embark on a whirlwind romance, and bicker their way to the realization that they love each other. The premise is fine, and the offscreen history that Bologna and Taylor share lets them get totally comfortable with each other onscreen; their interplay feels credible and spontaneous from start to finish. Unfortunately, the characters that Bologna and Taylor wrote for themselves are unrelentingly shrill. Gig (Bologna) is a nasty blowhard who perceives himself as a world-class stud, while Pandora (Taylor) is a lunatic who fancies herself a cabaret performer even though she can’t dance, sing, or tell jokes. To the duo’s credit, Bologna and Taylor don’t take the obvious route of showing these misfits supporting each other until their crazy ol’ dreams come true. However, in eschewing predictability and cheap sentiment, the writer-stars overcompensate by showing their characters berating each other so incessantly that it’s hard to see what they enjoy about each other. It’s true that Gig and Pandora would be intolerable to anyone except fellow basket cases, but still, where’s the fun in watching overbearing narcissists realize they’re stuck with each other? If Bologna and Taylor had some sort of satirical intent in mind, perhaps skewering the extremes of Me Decade self-centeredness, it’s not evident amid the screeching arguments and suffocating self-loathing. FYI, Olympia Dukakis and Paul Sorvino show up in supporting roles as Gig’s loutish parents.

Made for Each Other: LAME

Last of the Red Hot Lovers (1972)

A fair amount of Neil Simon’s career was spent exploring the angst of middle-aged men, from the newly divorced roommates of The Odd Couple to confused sad sacks like Barney Cashman (Alan Arkin), the protagonist of Last of the Red Hot Lovers. Happily married but bored with his life, he’s preoccupied by fantasies of having a wild romantic affair. So when a self-confident woman named Elaine (Sally Kellerman) propositions him one afternoon, he begins a series of near-miss attempts at extramarital sex, bringing three different women to the unlikely trysting place of his 73-year-old mother’s apartment on the days Mom volunteers at a hospital. The movie primarily comprises three long scenes, one with each potential lover, and the mild amusement of the picture is watching Barney get more crazed each time a would-be rendezvous goes awry. Simon’s rat-a-tat dialogue is as impeccable as ever, with quirky character touches and that special Noo Yawk flavor of neurotic sarcasm, but like many of the pieces he brought to the screen in the ’70s, Last of the Red Hot Lovers can’t quite decide whether it’s going for sly pathos or out-and-out farce. The chatty lulls between big jokes go on too long, and the big jokes aren’t that big (although watching Barney try to smoke pot is a highlight). Arkin’s delivery and timing are impressive, even though his aloofness makes the piece feel too clinical, and his costars are inconsistent: Kellerman is strong as a depressive with a sharp tongue, and Renee Taylor is fun as a desperate housewife, but Paula Prentiss is badly miscast as the sort of space-case hippie Goldie Hawn excelled at playing during this period. So, despite the adjective in its title, this one is strictly lukewarm.

Last of the Red Hot Lovers: FUNKY