Category: 1980s

Bette Midler is a Vegas singer who is married to Rip Torn, a career gambler. Rip is currently on a winning streak that is dependent on playing at the blackjack table where Ken Wahl is dealer. Midler and Wahl meet, have an affair, and plot the murder of Torn. The tone in this thing is all over the place. There’s spousal abuse, infidelity, suicide, and then out of nowhere a scavenger hunt. The three leads all seem to be in a different film. Midler is her usual effervescent, somewhat manic self. Torn isn’t menacing, but still a cruel, evil bastard. Wahl seems almost stoned, or at least a mindless air head. There is absolutely no chemistry in any of the three possible pairings.

I’m making a very bad habit of watching these romantic comedy stinkers. Sally Field and Michael Caine have absolutely no romantic chemistry in this film about a writer who is fed up with women he thinks are using him for his money so he creates a ruse when he meets up with a new woman who catches his interest. Caine’s character is actually terribly unappealing as a romantic lead and it’s puzzling how he would have gotten with the likes of Field and Iman. The meet-cute between Sally and Mike happens when they are made to undress and be tied up together at a charity event that gets hijacked. The rest of the movie is just as preposterous as that. It completely squanders the talents of its supporting cast, which includes the likes of Julie Kavner, Steve Guttenberg at his 1980s finest, Peter Boyle, and Jackie Cooper. It’s like no one even bothered watching the movie as it was being filmed to see if it had any potential at all. 

I’ve wanted to see this for a rather long time. It’s got the great cast of Annabeth Gish, Bridget Fonda, Phoebe Cates, and Page Hannah as four young women on a road trip to Myrtle Beach, a last girls’ vacation before one of them gets married. It does have the unfortunate usage of Confederate imagery popping up on random occasions and the confounding casting of Gish as fat and undesirable, but for the most part, it’s a fun beach flick of four gals coming to terms with the challenges of figuring themselves out and growing apart as they move on to adulthood. It doesn’t always feel like the film is set in the 1960s, but it does at least have a soundtrack to support the conceit.

This movie should have been much funnier than it was. Dan Aykroyd is a mental patient who escapes from a Chicago hospital to fill in for a Los Angeles radio psychiatrist, Charles Grodin, who needs a mental health break. The only funny bits are the few scenes where he’s actually taking calls at the radio station. Mary Gross is also cute as the neglected wife of Charles Grodin. The rest of the film is a nothingburger that just goes through the motions of being a movie. I really have no idea why they even put Walter Matthau in this film. As another mental patient out in the world, he adds some conflict to the plot but it’s a complete misuse of his great talents and mostly just strange.