The Neil Simon era in film didn't last long (circa 1977-1983) but some of us are old enough to remember when all they had to say in the trailers was "In Neil Simon's XYZ" to lure moviegoers. Many of the pictures were sub-par, but Max Dugan was a good swan song, in part due to Marsha Mason (if there were an Oscar for Best Couple, she and Dreyfuss should have received it for Goodbye Girl) but also simply because it's a neat little movie that's never received its due. Matthew Broderick's first movie. Donald Sutherland got a new haircut. Jason Robards may have been cast as an afterthought to lend cachet, but who else could play the ironic, world-weary, Kierkegaard-and-Wittgenstein-reading jailbird title character? I only have one acquired gripe: that so much of the dialogue is so "sharp" and "witty" that it feels contrived (not that they aren't memorable). This is one of the rare instances when a screenplay may be almost "polished" out of existence. That said, if you don't have a warm spot, you can forget it. This isn't a cinematic masterpiece (and I say that as a Polanski-and-Coppola type); but the story is neat and the performances are genuine, and in a decade when films set in L.A. focused primarily on glitz and bling-bling (which Max Dugan indirectly parodies), it's still refreshing to be made to feel at home among the sunlit bungalows of the city's low-key/low-rent, lower middle class suburbs.
Review of Max Dugan Returns
