By Richard Winters
My Rating: 0 out of 10
4-Word Review: College friends become writers.
Liz (Jacqueline Bisset) and Merry (Candice Bergen) meet while attending college and become best friends. After graduation Liz achieves accolades for writing a novel and Merry, despite being married and living in posh Malibu, becomes jealous. She strives to write her own novel based on real-life experiences of her rich southern California acquaintances where only the names are changed. One night while Liz is visiting Merry digs the first draft of her book out and reads it to her. Liz does not care for it, but promises the pleading Merry she’ll run it by her publisher (Steven Hill) convinced he won’t like it and nothing with come of it. To her surprise it does get published and becomes a best seller. Now she’s the one seething in jealousy since her writing career has crested from writer’s block. While this is going on Merry’s husband Doug (David Selby) begins to come-on to Liz behind-the-scenes and openly wanting to have an affair with her, which Liz finds tempting since the two had a fling during college.
This is a remake of Old Acquaintances, which came out in 1942 and starred Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins. Bisset spent 2 years working on the script and getting it funded as she was determined to play a ‘real person’ for once and not just the proverbial beauty. However, the movie, which was the last to be directed by legendary filmmaker George Cukor, bombed badly at the box office and it’s easy to see why. The storyline is out of touch with the decade that it’s in. What gets used as fashionable status symbol like having Merry stay at the Waldorf Astoria hotel might’ve been considered glitzy back in the 40’s, but for the 80’s generation would be looked upon as passe. Nothing is hip or trendy. The characters and their conflicts are of a soap opera variety, which is where this tepid storyline should’ve stayed.
My biggest beef was the whole friendship thing, which didn’t make a lot of sense. The two characters are about as different as you could get with Merry coming-off, particularly with her annoying southern twang, as dim-witted particularly when compared with Liz who’s clearly more sophisticated and articulate. Why these two opposites would bond is a complete mystery. There’s no backstory given, only a brief scene during their college days is shown, but nothing displaying what lead to the friendship blossoming, or what they had in common that they’d enjoy each other’s company. For the relationship to work it needs to be believable and organic, and the viewer able to buy into it, but instead it’s quite shallow and forced. Merry is incredibly annoying painfully insecure, emotionally needy, and grossly self centered. She’s the type of person most people would want to quickly dump as a friend and you wonder why Liz, who could easily find new friends more her intellectual equal, doesn’t do just that.
Merry’s marriage to Doug has the same issue. Why would he marry someone that had such a contrasting personality to his? The film fleetingly intimates that it was Liz he was truly after, he went to their same college, and only married Merry as an attempt to stay close to Liz, though the film relies on the viewer reading into this and should’ve instead fully confirmed it.
Merry’s ascent into the writing world is equally ridiculous. From the opening three paragraphs that she reads out loud to Liz gave more than enough reason that it was poorly written and should never see the light-of-day and yet somehow it becomes an immediate best-seller. In a better movie this might get used as satire showing how bad the American Public’s taste in literature is, but the film here has the audacity to show her winning awards for her writing, which just makes it all the more absurd and laughable. It also makes it seem like writing a book is easy and simply requires someone to sit down and throw some words on a page and walah it gets published when it reality it takes many drafts and polishing before it’s even potentially considered publish ready, but the movie glosses over this part completely.
I enjoyed Bisset who’s clearly the stronger actress, but Bergen makes an utter fool of herself particularly her attempt at a southern accent. Normally she’s good at playing the snarky type, which best reflects her personality. Trying to portray a simpleton isn’t her best suit and the film digresses every time she’s in it to the point her sporadic appearances start to seem almost like unintentional comic relief.
Had the film ended with some bitter, knockout cat fight I might’ve forgiven it and even gave it a few points. Not everyone is meant to get along and in real life these two would be a bad match. It’s one of those friendships that ultimately fizzles because the two just don’t have enough in common to keep it going and in a lot of ways ingrate on each other’s nerves. A nasty bitch session would’ve been just what the doctor ordered, and they do have a little bit of one, but then immediately make-up, which just cements the film’s profound shallowness.
My Rating: 0 out of 10
Released: September 23, 1981
Runtime: 1 Hour 57 Minutes
Rated R
Director: George Cukor
Studio: United Artists
Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube
Scopophilia 