SimonJack
I didn't go to movies often in the 1970s when raising my family. Of course, I took my oldest three children to see the first Star Wars flick, "Episode IV – a New Hope," when it came out in 1977. I had seen parts of "California Suite" in the past – probably late night TV or something. So, I finally watched this recently on DVD. If most of the 1970s film fodder was like this, I can see that I didn't miss much. (I have watched a few 1970s films that I think are quite good). As a comedy, which I understand it mostly was supposed to be, "California Suite" fails miserably. The only laughter we get is from Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor. They are two doctors, Willis Panama and Chauncey Gump, who are in-laws and supposedly good friends. They are on a vacation together with their wives, and butt heads throughout in some very funny slapstick scenes. The dramatic and slightly comedic witty part of the film is taken up with Maggie Smith and Michael Caine, both of whom give excellent performances. Smith won her second Oscar playing Diana Barrie, a British actress who was nominated for an Academy Award in the movie. Caine is her husband, Sidney Cochran. Smith's Oscar was one of three nominations the film got, and it's curious that she was best supporting actress to Jane Fonda's Hannah Warren. The two seemed to have the same screen time. Fonda plays opposite Alan Alda as Bill Warren, but he has very few lines. Her part is mostly a running diatribe against everything. First, her ex-husband Bill; second, California and its lifestyle; and third, anything and everything else that comes to mind after that. I'm sure that Neil Simon wanted this to be a funny part in his screenplay, but neither actor does well in their respective roles. Alda is a bland wall off which Fonda's character can bounce her vitriol at break neck speed. Fonda delivers her lines like a robot – just seemingly spewing some lines she has learned. There's no emotion or even fluctuation in her voice. On the other hand, Simon was a clever writer. So I wonder if maybe he didn't intend her character to come across the way I saw her. She was definitely an itch in the film, and with a "b" in front of the word, one will have her character down pat. Walter Matthau is OK as Marvin Michaels. We don't see much of his scandal, but his scenes were as much pathos as comedy. Elaine May, who plays his wife Millie, was an interesting role to put in this film. But, I'm glad Simon did it, because we seldom see such characters in movies. She is a character with great character. She knows he's telling the truth when he says he would never do anything to hurt her, and that he loves her. She has the wisdom, and the love and understanding that transcend 90 percent of us most of the time. There would be no sense, no value, and no good in her dumping her husband and fighting him in court. Instead, she can forgive him. I wonder why Hollywood so rarely shows something like this. I sat through this film, expecting that it would get better, but it didn't. The short part with Matthau and May was good, Cosby and Pryor gave some laughs, and Smith and Caine were interesting and very good. All the rest was pretty dismal.
James Hitchcock
"California Suite" was written by Neil Simon and, as with most films for which he acted as scriptwriter, it is based on one of his stage plays. The main idea is similar to that in his earlier "Plaza Suite", namely that of following the adventures of different guests staying in the same hotel, in this case in Los Angeles. It is a "portmanteau film" with four separate stories and the hotel providing the one point of contact between them. (An earlier film with a similar premise was "The VIPs", based around several groups of travellers passing through Heathrow Airport). Hannah, a New Yorker, has flown out to California to meet her former husband Bill and to discuss the future of their teenage daughter. Diana Barrie, a British actress, and her husband Sidney are in town because she has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Two doctors from Chicago (with the unlikely names of Dr. Chauncey Gump and Dr. Willis Panama) are on vacation with their wives. And Marvin, a Jewish businessman from Philadelphia, and his wife Millie have come out for their nephew's Bar Mitzvah. The "Visitors from Chicago" story, by far the weakest of the four, is little more than a not-very-amusing slapstick comedy based around the idea that the four characters, especially the two men, cannot move a hand or a foot without breaking something or injuring themselves. I wondered if the American Medical Association were considering suing Simon for the libellous insinuation that they would grant a licence to practise medicine to two such idiots. The Marvin story is a farce based around Marvin's increasingly desperate attempts to hide from his wife that there is another woman in his hotel room, with whom he spent the previous night. (They were unable to travel together and she flew out a night later to join him). Farce can often be desperately unfunny on screen; the cinema version of "No Sex Please, We're British", for example, gives little hint that it was based on one of the most successful West End stage plays of the seventies. Walter Matthau, however, plays Marvin so well (with good support from Elaine May as his wife) that this segment becomes highly entertaining. Simon, of course, is from New York and most of his plays are set in his home city, but here he makes a rare foray to the West Coast. As his fellow New Yorker Woody Allen had done in "Annie Hall" the previous year, Simon takes the opportunity for some comments on the culture wars between America's Atlantic and Pacific seaboards. Hannah and Bill can be taken as representing the East and West Coast respectively. She is a driven, sharp-tongued, neurotic and workaholic New Yorker, he is a gentler, more laid-back Californian (although possibly an adopted rather than a native son of the Golden State). Jane Fonda (looking even more stunning at the age of 40 than she had done ten years earlier in "Barbarella", especially when she gets to frolic on the beach in a bikini) and Alan Alda both play their parts to perfection; she in particular gets to deliver some of Simon's most barbed lines, like "I don't have a lifestyle. I have a life." and "You're the sort of person who'd solve the world hunger problem by having them all eat out. Preferably in a good Chinese restaurant!" I could certainly imagine Allen writing lines like that. The fourth story is a bit more serious. Maggie Smith won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Diana, thus going one better than her character, who loses out, and I must say it was well deserved, although she might have faced some stiff competition had Fonda been nominated. (This was the year when Fonda won "Best Actress" for "Coming Home", so I don't suppose she minded too much). This is the most serious of the four stories. Sidney is gay, and he and Diana are in a "lavender marriage", possibly a more daring plot line in 1978 than it would be today. Although they love one another in a non- sexual way, Diana has entered into this arrangement because her image as a happily married woman is good for public relations, but Sidney's indiscreet behaviour, however, has started to put this image at risk. Even though she has had a successful stage career, Diana's failure to win the Oscar is a blow to her rather fragile self-esteem, and despite her curious relationship with Sidney she finds herself relying on him for emotional support. Given his normal screen image as a red-blooded ladies' man, Michael Caine might seem an odd choice to play Sidney, but in fact he is very good. Simon's plays can vary in quality when transferred to the screen. For example, "Barefoot in the Park" (which also starred Fonda, not nearly as good as she is here) today comes across as horribly mannered and dated. "California Suite", however, is one of the better ones. One of the weaknesses of the portmanteau form is that it does not allow for the depth of plot and character development which is possible in a film based around a single story. It also has its strengths, however, one of which is its ability to combine various moods in a single film. "California Suite" is normally categorised as a comedy, and for three- quarters of the time it is, although the tone of the comedy varies from slapstick to farce to verbal wit. In the fourth story, however, it becomes a more serious character study. It enables director Herbert Ross to demonstrate several contrasting styles of film-making, featuring contrasting styles of acting, without the contrasts ever seeming jarring. 7/10, which would have been higher had the "Visitors from Chicago" story been of similar quality to the others.
brefane
A bland quartet of tales via Neil Simon all set at the Beverly Hills Hotel is a West coast version of Simon's Plaza Suite. The film directed by Herbert Ross entwines the four stories that were presented separately on stage thus the film has no real climax, conclusion or resolution:it just ends. This film like so many others wastes Richard Pryor's genius, and the segment Pryor shares with Bill Cosby is an embarrassment. The scenes between Jane Fonda and Alan Alda couldn't be less interesting, in fact, the only interesting thing is that the late Dana Plato plays their daughter. Michael Caine and Maggie Smith are watchable as a couple in a third skit, though hardly worthy of the Oscar Smith received. For me, the film belongs to Walter Mathhau and Elaine May. Particularly funny is a scene of Matthau trying to put stockings on a passed out hooker. And this is one of the rare instances where Elaine May's distinctive comedic style has been put to good use on film, but 1 out of 4 does not make a worthwhile movie. Fonda fared better in Simon's Barefoot in the Park(67) as did director Ross with Simon's The Goodbye Girl(77). Say goodbye to this one.
