On paper, I should like a lot of this movie. It’s irreverent and silly. Dudley Moore really goes to town with his role, reveling in how awful he can be. It’s a slightly higher-minded movie than the 80s sex comedies that would follow, yet it still indulged in a lot of the same titillation. It even has some awareness of the problems of the characters. It’s rubbing Moore’s nose in all of his mistakes and hypocrisy.
However, I found Dudley Moore to be so deeply unlikable that it tanked the rest of the movie. I see the intent with him. He pulled it off with aplomb just 2 years later with Arthur. For 10 to work, it’s key that the audience think of Moore as a cad: someone who remains fundamentally likable regardless of how awful his character is. It just doesn’t work for me here. Moore is just an asshole who gets away with all of his bad actions. The balance is off. He’s mostly a jerk and barely charming. To be fair, some of that is generational. This movie was a huge hit at the time and much about this movie was very specific to the mindset at the time. This kind of comedy has trouble aging well, in the same way that some of my favorites from the mid-2000s already look bad even though I still love them.
I supposed there’s enough in the movie to make it still worth watching. It’s nice to get the context of that famous beach scene. This is a mode of Julie Andrews I’m not used to seeing. This also helps to explain why audiences were so ready to make Arthur a hit with Dudley Moore a couple years later. Bo Derek isn’t bad to look at either. And she gives a better performance than you’d think. I always thought this was a sex kitten role; an excuse for Blake Edwards to leer at her and nothing more. That’s certainly part of it, but she also does a great job exposing the difference between Moore’s stated enlightenment and his actual views on sex and relationships. None of this is enough to make me like the movie, but they are the reasons I can’t entirely dismiss it.
Verdict: Strongly Don’t Recommend
No comments:
Post a Comment