For the holidays this year I was given a book of 501 must see movies, I have been casually looking through it and adding movies to my Netflix as I find ones that appeal to me. This ones page in the book had a photo of Barbara Streisand in a bathtub filled with bubbles and her hair up...how could I resist.
Now before I get to the story, I'm going to admit right now, I only rented this because of Barbara Streisand's nose. I like girls with interesting noses, and no one can really deny that hers is up there. She might not be a great sight now, but in her day, right up my alley.
Howard Bannister is heading to San Francisco with his fiance to try and get a grant to fund his research about cave men making music with rocks. He is a forgetful man with strange tendencies and a pretty pushy fiance (Eunice) In the hotel he meets another woman, one he doesn't exactly find charming (Judy) He does his best to stay away from her, but she for some reason has latched onto him. As all this is going on there are a few other people coming into the hotel, many of which have the same over night bag which is the basis for the comedy in this. One bag is filled with expensive jewelry, one is filled with top secret documents, and of course one is filled with rocks. Along with the cases comes the people who want to steal them. So there are a bunch of these bags being mixed up and misplaced as they get more and more confused.
The man who is supposed to give out the grant to Howard, or another scientist really takes to Judy when she pretends to be Eunice to get closer to Howard. And as all these mix ups occur they begin to fall for one another.
Its 2 parts screwball comedy and 1 part wry sense of humor. The physical gags are thrown out quickly, but what was making me laugh was the one liners that they were throwing out and then doing it again. They talked so fast and were putting so many little quips into each conversation it would be easy to miss a lot of it. Even just the absurd conversations that didn't even make sense because of the delivery made them hilarious. Example: A woman comes into the hotel and says hi to the man behind the counter and calls him Hans, he says his name is Fritz. She asks what happened to Hans and when he tells her there is no Hans only Fritz she responds with "Oh what a shame"
Why is that a shame? Who cares its funny. The actors were all very funny and I just loved Streisand, why couldn't she have just stayed young, she is a modern hipsters dream in this. Why it took Howard a while to warm up to her is beyond me, she was adorable.
It was a very enjoyable movie, not for everyone, they don't really make comedies like this anymore, its a bit out of style. Even so that doesn't mean that its no longer funny. 8/10 stars.
Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Starring: Barbara Strisand, Ryan O'Neal, Madeline Kahn, Kenneth Mars, Austin Pendleton
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