Lenny Cantrow (Charles Grodin), the protagonist of The Heartbreak Kid, is a small-time, store-to-store salesman of sporting equipment in New York City. But he makes his rounds in a zippy little two-seater and at night he poses in the mirror holding a pipe, practicing the "suave" mojo he presents to young women in bars. In short progression we see Lenny pick up Lila Kolodny (Jeannie Berlin), date her, and try to make her on his couch. Horizontal but fending him off with her elbows, Lila makes it clear that although, as Lenny urges, "nobody" "waits" for marriage anymore, she's waiting.
So Lenny marries her, with the best will in the world, and the couple take off for a honeymoon in Florida in Lenny's sporty roadster. In a sequence that could serve as a cautionary video in favor of pre-marital sex, Lenny and Lila get to know each other as they drive south. We've seen their small-scale, lower-middle-class, Eastern European Jewish wedding, and it seems to express everything Lila could possibly want. She likes to look down the road 40 or 50 years, when they'll be just like their parents and grandparents, and affectionately tells Lenny he'd better get used to her — as she talks baby-talk, eats candy in bed, annoyingly paws his chest, orders double egg salad for lunch and chews with the crumbs on her lips and chin, and on and on. The daisies are pushing up over the marriage before the Cantrows reach Miami Beach.
The screenwriter Neil Simon (freely building on Bruce Jay Friedman's 1966 Esquire magazine story "A Change of Plan," reprinted in the enjoyable 1989 Penguin paperback No, But I Saw the Movie) and director Elaine May (also Berlin's mother) develop this set-up with classic revue-humor rhythms. Lila's repetition of "40 or 50 years," for instance, got escalating laughter from the audience I saw it with at the AFI Theatre in Silver Spring. (Berlin's delivery and timing are spectacular — idiosyncratic without disrupting the set rhythms of the material.)
And the pairing of Grodin and Berlin as a straight man and a woozy grotesque is great shtick (in the Burns-and-Allen vein) that still allows the actors to develop characters. Lenny and Lila aren't entirely reducible to what creates the friction between them. They want different things and getting married is the only way available to them to find that out. The "waiting for marriage" discussion is the key — culturally, Lenny and Lila are only inches away from each other and yet by 1972 a crevasse has opened in those few inches.
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Article comments
1 - Rodney Welch
The dinner table scene is one of my absolute favorites, where Lenny tries to impress Kelly's parents by blathering on about how "honest" the food. {"There's no lying in those potatoes. There's no deceit in that cauliflower.") Grodin, Albert, Lindley, Shepherd and especially Berlin are all perfectly cast, and the whole movie has a great screwball flair to it.
2 - Alan Dale
Thanks for the comment. That is a great scene; there are so many funny variations on awkward in the movie. I don't know why it isn't more popular.
3 - Rodney Welch
Did you ever see May's follow-up, Mikey and Nicky? One of my favorites Quite an enormous contrast in every way to Heartbreak Kid. You wouldn't know they came from the same director.
Hope to say more later on Heartbreak Kid rather than just the cursory comment. I need to see it again first.
4 - Rodney Welch
P.S. Except, come to think of it, both Heartbreak and Mikey and Nicky are stories told, very convincingly, from a male point of view. See, that was anothing thing about Mikey, that you wouldn't think it was directed by a woman because it seems to understand -- without being harshly judgmental in a feminist sense -- the male perspective. I guess in a way the same is true of Heartbreak. Both present somewhat unsavory males -- or maybe let's just say men behaving badly -- without some echoing snort of disapproval. A bit like Lena Wertmuller perhaps? (Just thinking aloud.)
5 - Alan Dale
I saw The Heartbreak Kid at the AFI Theatre, which showed all four of the movies May has directed. The mini-festival occurred during my mother's week-long visit, however, and Mikey and Nicky was one I just couldn't sell her on. It sounds a lot like a Cassavetes movie, which is a weak sell even to me. But since you recommend it so highly, it's next up on Netflix.
6 - Alan Dale
I agree with your take on the non-feminist clear-sightedness of May's treatment of ironic male protagonists. Wertmüller strikes me as different, for a couple of reasons. One, she's more didactic, and cruder. May works her material up from improvisational, observational comedy routines. She turns shtick into something resembling naturalism. Wertmüller starts with left-wing attitudes and turns political conflicts into something resembling cartoons. Second, Wertmüller is on the side of her male protagonists. Giannini, in any case, as the earthy prole as opposed to Mariangela Melato's bitchy bourgeoise in Swept Away, and even as the pimp internee as opposed to Shirley Stoler's obese Nazi commandant in Seven Beauties. Wertmüller takes a much harsher view of women than May: who ever heard of a female commandant of a Nazi concentration camp?
7 - Rodney Welch
They are totally different in a broad sense, but alike in that they can project or approximate male experience at a raw, visceral level.
8 - Rodney Welch
(Although raw isn't really the word for Heartbreak -- let's say penetrating, empathetic. Both can credibly inhabit a certain kind of male perspective.)
9 - john
How clearly and deeply you investigated "Heartbreak Kid"! It's a film I've long appreciated - I watch it several times a year - and I'm excited to see it's specialness celebrated and to have my perceptions of it sharpened. (By the way, Jeannie Berlin seems to feel as kindly toward Cybill Shepherd as Lila might have Kelly; I met Berlin last year and, dazzled and delighted, asked her to sign my "HK" DVD, the one with Grodin and Shepherd on the cover: "You want me to sign a picture of Cybill Shepherd?!?!" she gasped. The conversation was barely salvaged) ......What are your thoughts on May's "A New Leaf"?......Also, I thought your "52 pickup" metaphor in reference to "Mikey and Nicky" was both funny and apt......As far as I can tell, you are the most interesting guy writing about films online. I'll keep reading, I'm sure.
10 - Alan Dale
Thanks for the praise, John. Tell all your friends! The anecdote about Berlin is hilarious. I'm glad The Heartbreak Kid has such a devoted fan. It deserves more.
As for A New Leaf, May herself is good, doing slapstick clumsiness slower and with more feminine sweetness than usual. And some of the scenes are brilliant, e.g., Matthau in his lawyer's office. But generally I couldn't get past the almost universal miscasting. All those Jewish and Italian comics as Wall Street and Park Avenue old-money types. A bizarre kind of cognitive dissonance.
11 - john
"doing slapstick clumsiness slower and with more feminine sweetness than usual" - more often than not, slapstick clumsiness slops over into the manic. May makes Henrietta paradoxically graceful...You've got to love the moment when Beckett the lawyer decides that "You have no money" sums up Henry's situation as well as any other turn of phrase... Your remarks about the casting ring true; personally, I have a hard time buying James Coco (born 1930) as Walter Matthau's (born 1920) imperious uncle.
12 - Pratt
What struck me about Lenny was his inability to learn from his mistakes. He goes through life rushing headlong into things and in his haste he often comes so close to ruining his life. He rushed into the army and in a scene with Kelly admitted it was a mistake and it took him 3 years to be discharged. He then dove into his marriage with Lila without taking the time to become familiar with her annoying traits. You'd think by now the jerk would have learned his lesson but what did he do? He again plowed full throttle into another marriage, allowing himself to be swept up by Kelly's beauty without taking the time to pick up on her quirks. This was evident when Lenny told Kelly's father "one good look did it". Kelly's not an overly bright character and I'll bet a girl of her type would eventually grate on Lenny's nerves just like Lila did. After a while Kelly's beauty would become commonplace to Lenny and then what appeal would she have for him?
How long do you all think such a marriage would last? I'd give it a year.
This a movie every young person should see BEFORE they get married. There's a very important lesson to be learned. Get to know your future mate before you tie the knot!
Midnight Cowboy and HK are my two favorite movies of all time.
13 - Alan Dale
Dear Pratt, Thanks for the comment. I agree about Lenny's inability to learn from mistakes, or perhaps to learn only from mistakes. That's why I identify with him.
I'm interested to know how you reconcile liking The Heartbreak Kid and Midnight Cowboy so much?