SnoopyStyle Gilbert Rolfe (Ron Silver) is a pushover at work. His mother Estelle (Anne Bancroft) is an opinionated crusader who frustrates him. His wife Lisa (Carrie Fisher) tries to get him to work for her parents but he refuses. Jane Mortimer (Catherine Hicks) is his flirtatious co-worker. His father Walter (Steven Hill) divorced Estelle long ago after tiring of her relentlessness. Then she's told by the doctor that she has 4 to 6 months to live. She's a Greta Garbo fan and wishes to meet her. He decides to do all he can to talk to the reclusive Garbo.This is set up for a fun comedy. I can see the movie is trying to do a comedy. However it soon becomes obvious that the comedy isn't hitting right. I think Anne Bancroft tries her best but Ron Silver is no comedian. He can't make it work. It also isn't much of a drama. It's obvious from the start that Gilbert will learn from his experience and stop being a pushover. Everything in between falls flat except for Bancroft. She's great.

jzappa Here is a cute, under-the-top little small-fry could be the minorest of Lumet's minor works, but in some way like 84 Charing Cross Road, which this film's star would tackle a few years later, it is its benign slightness that is its own charm. Anne Bancroft is so good as the anarchically rational Estelle Rolfe in this movie, that there are literally moments when nothing else matters to us, or the film, but what she's saying or doing, how she's saying it and how she's doing it. Estelle isn't afraid to spend time in the clink over grocery prices, makes a scene at one point embarrassing construction workers by scolding them for jeering passing women, and won't go to her dutiful son Gilbert's wedding if it means being a protest scab. She also worships films starring Greta Garbo, whose move from silent films to her first talkie made lots of racket in advertisements with the eponymous slogan. When Estelle discovers she has a brain tumor and six months left of life, which she lives ebulliently, she concludes that she must meet Garbo. Ron Silver plays Gilbert, a Manhattan accountant Estelle even named for Garbo's frequent co-star, feels compelled to satisfy his mother's last hope in spite of Garbo's famous devotion to privacy.Lumet benefits from the sharpening of his comic touch a decade earlier with Murder on the Orient Express. Thusly, he employs unusual color schemes for comic effect. Similar to that earlier film, a major element is evoking a nostalgia for the past. This later film is merely a more straightforward version of the pining for magic and theatrics of the 1920s and '30s in which his 1974 Agatha Christie adaptation is steeped.In an inspired serio-comic visual sequence of steps, Silver must laboriously forge his way through the flea market toward his darling mother's slippery dream, unable here to advance in a simple straight line but constrained ultimately to hazard consequences, to go around various stratums of humanity, to confront life's incessant chances and bolts from the blue instead of finding his footing in his habituated refuge.Somewhat considering Carrie Fisher an exception, the performances are all great. There are genuinely very funny scenes owing largely to performances. Ron Silver is perfectly understated in a way that adds a level of dry deadpan to the humor of a scene. After Kelly Preston's hilariously timed story of promiscuity in the elevator, Silver's reaction when they reach their floor, and especially the cut to the next scene in the cafeteria, where he latches on her every word and bite over lunch, is priceless.

debra (debra-13) Anne Bancroft has one of my favorite "renowned actress who really wants a great part" stories regarding this movie. She wanted the role, but Sidney Lumet wasn't going to give it to her. He'd just seen one of her husband's (Mel Brooks) lesser known, but still good movies, "To Be or Not To Be," and told her he was looking for someone older, less glamorous, less beautiful.And she said, "Look, in that movie, I was carefully photographed, I was lovingly lit, and I was sleeping with the producer!"So she got the part. And did such a good job.

Boyo-2 ..then this movie is for you. SPOILER ALERT-Anne Bancroft plays a politically correct mother who loves doing the right thing, sticking up for the small fry, her son Gilbert, and Greta Garbo. Her relationship with her meek son is believable and sometimes touching. When she is diagnosed with a disease that will cut her life short, she declares she wants to meet the elusive icon, and Gilbert is in charge of making her dream a reality. However, Gilbert is not the aggressive type; he is terrorized by his boss, his secretary and his wife (Carrie Fisher is hysterical as his princess bride). So, against his nature, he goes on a search for the actress most unlikely to give a damn about him or his dying mother. Suffice to say the end is bittersweet, and all the actors give it their best. Bancroft is allowed to let loose and has a ball; she is especially good at confronting a group of hardhats who had been verbally harassing a young woman on the street. She is also very good in the scene following her meeting Garbo. Ron Silver is terrific as Gilbert, a put-upon guy if there ever was one. He does find happiness, with a co-worker (Catherine Hicks) and even gets to impress her, when the normally silent Garbo talks to Gilbert long enough to say 'hello' in a chance meeting in Central Park, Hicks is naturally curious and thrilled (by now he's left the selfish Carrie Fisher).The movie is very good, not great. Its extremely hard to believe Hicks would be able to afford her apartment on the salary she must make working in an office job. And as much as the mother/son relationship was touching, I can't help but wonder why such a dynamically strong womans' sensibilities did not rub off on her son, why he's such a dolt. She gave him love but maybe he needed more than that.