Calfornia Suite

In honor of its 40^th year anniversary since its release, I thought that today I will review the comedy “California Suite.” A star-filled group comedy with quick one-liners where the idea stemmed from playwright Neil Simon’s famous Broadway show. On Broadway, Simon had four short plays, but in the movie it all became one set piece. The story is the same as Simon’s 1968 Broadway play “Plaza Suite,” which was made into a movie in 1978. “California Suite” is the West Coast version of “Plaza Suite.” Dennis Schwartz noted in his review, “It's awkwardly directed as a middle-class farce by Herbert Ross ("The Owl And The Pussycat"/"Play It Again, Sam"/"The Sunshine Boys"), who can't intercut seamlessly into another story.” The story is about four different guests at the high-class Beverly Hills Hotel, who book their rooms during a pre-Academy Awards weekend and has to face personal problems.

Careless, athletic dressed Hollywood screenwriter, the Californian Bill Warren (Alan Alda, who you might remember as Captain Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce from the famous show “MASH”), and the cynical satirical career woman, the New Yorker Hannah Warren (Jane Fonda), get back together after their divorce nine years ago and are at each other’s throats with humorous insults over the custody of their teenage daughter, who ran away from New York to be with her father. Bisexual antique dealer Sidney Cochran (Michael Caine) and his alcoholic jokester actress wife Diana Barrie (Maggie Smith) are a strange British couple with unusual sensual desires, who are staying at the hotel for the upcoming Academy Awards because Diana got an Oscar nomination. Philadelphian Marvin Michaels (Walter Matthau) is attending the Bar-Mitzvah of his brother’s (Herb Edelman) son, but has difficulty explaining how a tramp blonde prostitute (Denise Galik) wound up sleeping with him to his really young wife Millie (Elaine May). Finally, Chicago town visitors Dr. Chauncey Gump (Richard Pryor) and Dr. Willis Panama (Bill Cosby), along with their wives (Gloria Gifford and Sheila Frazier), have a worry-filled vacation that becomes a series of accidents.

Two out of the four stories actually succeed. Schwartz said, “Alda and Fonda's tragi-comedy piece becomes the film's centerpiece, and they put on the best performances and have the best material. While Maggie Smith is a scream as the hard-drinking actress, and her skit with Caine is easily the funniest and most touching. Unfortunately the low-comedy sit-com bedroom vignette with Matthau and May seemed strained; while clearly the worst skit was the glum Pryor and Cosby slapstick one, as their combative friend routine was hardly funny and when the black doctors start acting like savages it gives hints of being racist.”

As luck would have it, Maggie Smith won a second Supporting Oscar playing the role of the actress who doesn’t win the Oscar. There’s also a great jazz score by Claude Bolling.

Overall, it’s bickering with every critical with the characters having a bad effect and situations never flowing along as a whole. However, the four unrelated stores, despite irregular and becoming ruin, thankfully everything gives some funny moments for fans of the play.

This may not be a good comedy, but I still think this is one to check out. I still had a laughing time watching it a few years ago and I think anyone who is a fan of any of these actors will as well.

Stay tuned tomorrow for more “Disney Live-Action Month.”