Derek Winnert

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California Suite *** (1978, Michael Caine, Maggie Smith, Walter Matthau, Elaine May, Alan Alda, Jane Fonda, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, Herb Edelman) – Classic Movie Review 4021

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Director Herbert Ross’s 1978 comedy California Suite presents four fairly sharp, mostly funny playlets linked only by their setting at the Beverly Hills Hotel, in Los Angeles, and by coming from a stage play by Neil Simon, based on his Broadway hit. Simon writes his own screenplay.

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In the most endearing of the stories, Maggie Smith is on Best Supporting Actress Oscar-winning form as an English theatre star nominated for an Oscar and fighting with her gay husband (Michael Caine) after they have come over from England for the Academy Awards.

But Walter Matthau and Elaine May score strongly too in their comedy about a hung-over husband who wakes up to find a passed-out hooker (Denise Galik), whom he has now got to remove pretty darned quick before his wife (May) arrives that day. Matthau’s brother (Herb Edelman) has sent the hooker to his room where he has arrived a day before his wife for his nephew’s Bar Mitzvah.

In the considerably less successful also-ran tales, ex-marrieds Jane Fonda and Alan Alda fight after Fonda comes from New York and meets California-based Alda, and doctors Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby do battle when they find there is only one room vacant after they have come with their wives to the hotel to relax and play tennis.

Uneven though it may be, overall the result is bright and entertaining.

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It is Smith’s second Oscar after her Best Actress win for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. There were two other Oscar nominations – for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (Neil Simon) and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Albert Brenner, Marvin March).

Matthau and Edelman are also in Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple. Matthau and May also star together in A New Leaf.

The late great Neil Simon.

The legendary Pulitzer-prize-winning playwright Neil Simon was born on 4 in The Bronx and died on 26 aged 91. He was nominated for four Oscars but surprisingly never won. California Suite is the last of the four, following The Odd Couple (1968), The Sunshine Boys (1975) and The Goodbye Girl (1977).

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© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4021

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

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