`The Heartbreak Kid' is a curious mix of light and dark comedy. I couldn't help thinking of `The Graduate', made four years earlier, and in many ways it was the flip-side of `The Graduate's' reflections on youthful ennui and dissatisfaction with the status quo. Charles Grodin as Lenny actually pursues the status quo, in terms of conventional standards of taste and beauty and his relentless pursuit of middle America and its acceptance. Whereas The Graduate maintained a mix of light and dark in equal measures, The Heartbreak Kid starts out as a wince-inducing comedy of manners (and mannerisms) and then slowly becomes darker as it unfolds, leaving the abandoned wife halfway through Act II, as he pursues Cybil Shephard to the frozen Midwest. The ending
well, one can only assume from Lenny's gradual separation from his new wife during the last scene and his dismal efforts to make conversation with his in-laws and newly-extended family that he'll never be more than a poseur. Even the two little kids shun him at the end. He ends up alone on the sofa humming `Close to You', which was played at his first wedding, oblivious to any sense of irony or sadness. It's pretty clear by now that he's a shallow and selfish man who can't see beyond surface blemishes (such as Lila's tics and mannerisms) and becomes infatuated with exterior sheen (Cybil Shephard's beauty and the respectability of marrying into a whitebread and wealthy goyish family). In the end, we realize that he doesn't know himself and never will. The disappearance of Lila, never to return to the story, left me a little unsatisfied, but overall I think it's worth a look, if only for the terrific scene-work of Grodin and Jeannie Berlin, and Grodin's hilarious dead-pan attempts at subterfuge.
Review of The Heartbreak Kid
