Themes: Boss from Hell, Hotshots, Romantic Betrayal
Main Cast: Alan King, Ali MacGraw, Myrna Loy, Dina Merrill, Keenan Wynn
Release Year: 1980
Country: US
Run Time: 112 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
In this Sidney Lumet romantic comedy, Max Herschel (Alan King) is a powerful businessman who keeps a bevy of beauties for pleasure to escape his alcoholic wife, Connie (Dina Merrill). His main minx is Bones Burton (Ali MacGraw), a successful television producer who is tiring of Max's lack of commitment. When she takes up with Steven (Peter Weller), Max does everything in his power to win her back. Silent screen star Myrna Loy plays Max's faithful secretary, in her last big-screen role, and steals the show. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
Review
Just prior to the dawn of the Reagan era, two of cinema's most frequent collaborators, Jay Presson Allen and Sidney Lumet (Prince of the City), teamed for this faithful adaptation of Allen's 1975 novel of high comedy, which satirized the New York upper crust from within and thus anticipated the decade of greed by several years. In what is probably his most cultivated onscreen invention, the legendary standup comic Alan King (Bye Bye Braverman, Memories of Me) brings to life one of the most concurrently obnoxious and endearing screen characters in movie history. He's Max Herschel, an industrial overlord in the Trump and Buffett mold, who carries around an almost pathological need to manipulate and control every single facet of his corporate empire and personal life. As the story opens, Max's commandeering has sent the missus (Dina Merrill) to the nuthouse; it threatens to drive his svelte mistress/protégé, "Bones" Burton (Ali MacGraw), to the point of exposing him as a backstabbing liar on national television and into the arms of a failing playwright; and it renders him susceptible to a gross betrayal at the hands of movie mogul Seymour Berger (Keenan Wynn). These substories might wax hostile or even tragic were it not for the razor-sharp precision -- and glee -- with which Allen and Lumet unveil the desperate, whiny child at Max's core, the anal need for say in every arena that he can get his mitts on. (Upon learning of his wife's cooking lesson at her institution, he coolly demands that the doctor box the meringues if she doesn't completely foul them up). Laughing uncontrollably as Max threatens to explode into cataclysmic rants, we consistently feel sorry for him, but, as played by King, he is too outrageous and much too pathetic to ever warrant any dislike or disgust. Even before the roof begins to collapse, Herschel perpetually breaches the edge of absurdity. (One of the film's comic highlights involves Max's tennis practice; informed that a female intern is sick, he commands his secretary, in between balls: "Call Hammacher-Schlemmer! Order a yogurt maker!"). Lumet and Allen thus set the stage for a series of near-conniptions and nervous breakdowns when everything that Max has learned to rely on as stable and predictable comes raining down onto the poor man's head. By the second half, the film explodes into a battle of egos between Herschel and the pushed-beyond-her-limits Burton, as Lumet and Allen aim their sights, more broadly, at kissing off the Manhattan elite, with its pompous, grotesque subculture of Bergdorf-Goodman garments, Bulgari jewels, and private planes. With ever-bristling, witty dialogue, world-class performances (including neat tertiary appearances by Tony Roberts, a young Peter Weller, and Myrna Loy), and a bouncy Charles Strouse score that revamps Gershwin, the film's only outstanding weakness is its inexcusably shoddy cinematography, by Hollywood vet Oswald Morris. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
Tony Roberts - Mike Berger; Peter Weller - Steven Routledge; Sara Truslow - Cathy; Judy Kaye - Baby; Joseph Maher - Dr. Coleson; Jeffrey Anderson-Gunter - Teddy; John Walter Davis - Stan; Leslie Easterbrook - Hospital Nurse; John Gabriel - Commentator; Stanley Greene - Bones' Lester; Joseph Leon - Julie Raskin; Annabel Lukins - New Baby; Ron Millkie - Waiter; David Rasche - Stopwatch Producer; Michael Gross - Lothar; Tony Munafo - Lukins Guard; Lacey Neuhaus - Party Blonde; Paddy Croft - Berger's Secretary; Andrew Murphy - Limo Driver; Raymond Thorne - Dr. Jowdy; Lee Doyle - Party Major Domo; Paul Farentino - Max's Chauffeur
Credit
John J. Moore - Art Director, Gloria Gresham - Costume Designer, Tony Walton - Costume Designer, Alan Hopkins - First Assistant Director, Sidney Lumet - Director, John J. Fitzstephens - Editor, Burtt Harris - Executive Producer, Charles Strouse - Composer (Music Score), Tony Walton - Production Designer, Oswald Morris - Cinematographer, Burtt Harris - Producer, Jay Presson Allen - Producer, Sidney Lumet - Producer, James J. Sabat - Sound/Sound Designer, Jay Presson Allen - Screenwriter, Jay Presson Allen - Book Author
