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The Heartbreak KidRating:
Release Date: 05 February, 2002 Retail Price: $14.98 Sorry, this product is not currently available. Cast: Complete Cast (7 total) |
The Heartbreak Kid Reviews
"Stay the He// Out of Minnesota, You ** Newlywed!"
This blurry, grainy (because they used a poor copy of the film to make this DVD? It was the "in" thing in film back then? Or "added" to the DVD release for ambiance & effect?) dramedy flashback to the way we were at the U of M in 1972 is an interesting sociological study on the times that in the end leaves the viewer in a blurred state, saying "hunh - what?" Who is the master manipulator here?
(a.) Kelly Corcoran - gorgeous, boy-teasing rich girl about campus, as played by Cybill Shepard after leaving the Last Picture Show in Texas and before "Moonlighting" in San Francisco?
(b.) Her rich Daddy as played by Eddie Albert after leaving Arnold and the Hooterville folk down on the "Green Acres" farm?
or (c.) Lenny Cantrow, (Charles Grodin) who abandons his wife- played to perfection by the director's daughter deserving the Academy Award nomination she received - of less than a week on their Miami Honeymoon to go trotting off to Minnesota in the winter to "win" Kelly/Cybill?
Two things are as clear as the Sky Blue waters:
(1) neither director Elaine May nor screenwriter Neil Simon is very familiar with our Great State - as when Kelly and Lenny run off to the Corcoran "summer cabin in the mountains." Um, er, what Minnesota Mountain Range are we talking about here? The taconite piles up on the Iron Range?
(2) Viewers will never again be able to eat an egg salad sandwich without recalling Lila Cantrow.
/TundraVision, Amazon Reviewer
Great, Funny Treatment of Extended Adolescence
Social critic Tom Wolfe once labeled the Seventies "The Me Decade," when self-absorption was in high fashion, especially among white males in major metropolitan areas. Two films released at the start of that decade, both in a sense dark comedies, capture the essence of navel-gazing and the drive for upward mobility that epitomized the era.
In "Diary of a Mad Housewife", Richard Benjamin stars as a success-at-any-cost husband who rides his wife mercilessly for her unwillingness to play the role of dutiful corporate wife. Two years after "Housewife", Charles Grodin assumed the role of Lennie, a malevolently charming newlywed who dumps his bride during a severe attack of libido in Elaine May's "Heartbreak Kid".
With Benjamin's character, it's all about whipping the wife into line so he can ride the crest of success. Lennie, Grodin's character, only knows that there's some sort of mountain to be conquered - in this case, Cybil Shepherd - but initially fails to grasp the implications of what she can do for him socially and financially. In the end, each of these extended adolescents doesn't quite know what to make of their place in the world - it takes someone half Lennie's age to ask a basic question that he can't quite digest.
Both Benjamin and Grodin give stunning performances in their respective vehicles - each pouts pitifully and uses his voice in a wonderfully deprecating way at times - but because of the nature of their respective characters, Grodin is given much freer rein to let it all loose. And that he does, turning in the finest performance of his career through bouts of surface charm, sarcasm, unctuousness and inner loneliness. "Heartbreak" is a very funny satire about a man-boy who wants to have it all and does his damnedest to make it happen, half-faking it as he goes. With an inspired script and exceptional acting by all - but most especially by Grodin - it's one for the time capsule.
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