1980 Week: Seems Like Old Times

          Rendered by a comedy dream team, Seems Like Old Times is an old-fashioned farce unburdened by narrative ambition or social significance. It’s a silly laugh machine with a serviceable love story at the center, showcasing the fizzy chemistry between Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn, who previously scored with Foul Play (1978). Seems Like Old Times is also one of the most consistently amusing movies written by Neil Simon, which is saying something. Until it sputters during in its final scenes (an almost inevitable outcome given the spinning-plates storyline), Seems Like Old Times is a sugar rush of a movie.

          At the beginning of the story, underemployed Northern California writer Nick Gardenia (Chevy Chase) becomes a pawn in a bank robbery. (Proving spectacularly inept at criminality, Nick stares right into the lens of a security camera.) Following the heist, Nick determines that he must bring the robbers to justice in order to clear his name. Enter L.A. district attorney Ira Parks (Charles Grodin), who is married to Nick’s ex-wife, Glenda (Goldie Hawn). His eyes on the job of state attorney general, Ira resolves to make Nick’s potentially embarrassing situation go away as quietly as possible. Which means, naturally, that Nick turns up at Ira’s house, seeking Glenda’s help. She’s an easy touch, since she works as a public defender and believes that all of her clients genuinely wish to rehabilitate themselves. You can see where this is headed: Glenda helps Nick without telling Ira, Nick exploits the situation to woo Glenda, and chaos explodes thanks to endless farcical misunderstandings.
          Beyond his usual gift for rat-a-tat jokes, Simon brings tremendous craftsmanship to plot construction, developing long-lead setups and wry running jokes as well as rendering droll supporting characters. (T.K. Carter is a riot as Glenda’s butler, a dubiously reformed ex-hoodlum.) As for the Chase/Hawn scenes, they never disappoint. He’s a charming rascal, she’s a ditzy altruist, and the sexual charge between them sizzles. Grodin, as always, stoops to conquer, beautifully underplaying the role of an exasperate schmuck. Meanwhile, director Jay Sandrich, one of the most celebrated sitcom helmers in history—his credits stretch from Make Room For Daddy in 1963 to Two and a Half Men 40 years later—does a remarkable job orchestrating this intricate brew of action and patter and tomfoolery, so it’s a wonder this was the only theatrical feature he ever made. Also bewildering is the fact that Chase and Hawn never reteamed, because Seems Like Old Times did about the same brisk business that Foul Play did.

Seems Like Old Times: GROOVY