I sat down to watch this film because of the three wonderful actresses in the cast - Maureen Stapleton, Barbara Harris and Lee Grant - and I've never been disappointed by Arthur Hiller. I've been slow to warm to Neil Simon, but "The Sunshine Boys" had me in stitches. I mention this to indicate that I had reasonable expectations for this movie.
Now I have to be honest and admit that I could only watch one segment, it left such a nasty taste in my mouth. In it, Neil Simon presents us with a marriage that has turned sour and seems to have lost any reason for continuing. Trouble is, the pair just aren't sympathetic or particularly interesting. Never mind the husband (Walter Matthau), Maureen Stapleton as his wife drove ME crazy! Arriving, it seems, right off the set of "Bye Bye Birdie", she prowls the hotel suite, nattering incessantly and hopping from place to place like a sparrow on speed, with that irksome camera constantly pursuing her. I don't wish to sound impatient or cruel. I know she plays a doormat begging for crumbs of respect, and I know that whatever happens (past the final fade-out) she'll get the short end of the stick, and I did feel sorry for her, but her neediness and whining were irritating. As for the husband, he's a heel, plain and simple. The story provides no surprising or interesting revelations. At the end, having sat through the entire segment, I wanted to know the outcome. No such luck. Instead, there's an unmerited and annoying void between the moment when the husband strides out of the suite in the evening to meet with his "secretary" and the wife hops out of the hotel in the morning.
When the second segment started - "Just one drink," insists one of the characters (a warning to me that there would be many more) - and the creepy new Matthau persona loomed and it looked as if I was going to be stuck in that same hideous suite, with its puke green and yellow palette, for another forty minutes, I turned the movie off, and breathed a sigh of relief.
Now I have to be honest and admit that I could only watch one segment, it left such a nasty taste in my mouth. In it, Neil Simon presents us with a marriage that has turned sour and seems to have lost any reason for continuing. Trouble is, the pair just aren't sympathetic or particularly interesting. Never mind the husband (Walter Matthau), Maureen Stapleton as his wife drove ME crazy! Arriving, it seems, right off the set of "Bye Bye Birdie", she prowls the hotel suite, nattering incessantly and hopping from place to place like a sparrow on speed, with that irksome camera constantly pursuing her. I don't wish to sound impatient or cruel. I know she plays a doormat begging for crumbs of respect, and I know that whatever happens (past the final fade-out) she'll get the short end of the stick, and I did feel sorry for her, but her neediness and whining were irritating. As for the husband, he's a heel, plain and simple. The story provides no surprising or interesting revelations. At the end, having sat through the entire segment, I wanted to know the outcome. No such luck. Instead, there's an unmerited and annoying void between the moment when the husband strides out of the suite in the evening to meet with his "secretary" and the wife hops out of the hotel in the morning.
When the second segment started - "Just one drink," insists one of the characters (a warning to me that there would be many more) - and the creepy new Matthau persona loomed and it looked as if I was going to be stuck in that same hideous suite, with its puke green and yellow palette, for another forty minutes, I turned the movie off, and breathed a sigh of relief.