The Heartbreak Kid (1972 original)

 Before YouTube takes it down, make sure to check out the full-length Neil Simon/Elaine May classic "The Heartbreak Kid", which opened around Christmas 1972 and launched three careers on wildly different trajectories.  Except for the Florida beach and boat scenes, "Heartbreak Kid" could have just as easily been a Broadway play, but May overruling Neil Simon's requirement of filming the script exactly as written saved it from the "Simon Says" indulgences of "Max Dugan Returns" or "Only When I Laugh".  Cybill Shepherd, 22 and fresh off "Last Picture Show", replaced an actress whose bleached hair started falling out.  Virtual unknown Charles Grodin was essentially a funnier (and less Jewish) Dustin Hoffman.  But the star of this film was Elaine May's daughter Jeannie Berlin (note how the dimple in her egg-salad smeared chin appears later, lower, on a fireside Cybill), irritating and naive and clingy and like every morning after regret you've ever had and, when all is said and done, probably better off with the pecan pie.
It's a New York film with a New York/Jewish sensibility, which Hollywood feeds us westerners way too many of, but still earns a spot as my second favorite fish-out-of-water road-trip movie, behind Albert Brooks' "Lost in America".
The Heartbreak Kid (1972)

For background, see also this New Yorker review of the revival, and this TCM synopsis:
New Yorker
Turner Classic

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Getting Hostiles

Johanna writes

Okay so I'll say it