Luv

Although I haven't seen this film in years, it remains one of my favorites. It was goofy, quirky and an odd-ball film. Jack Lemmon wearing a paper scrub hat and hollering at the TV doctors is priceless. Peter Falk's running gag of selling things is truly a genius at work. I would love to see it again, if I can ever find it!

Way before Woody Allen laid claim to the same people and the same territory, this 1967 film based on a 1964 play by Murray Schisgal, directed on Broadway by the young Mike Nichols (who had been Elaine May's partner in Chicago) may be the first Hollywood film ever to feature a group of highly neurotic, overly articulate, and –-although never named as such —apparently middle-class Jewish urban characters. Unfortunately, as funny and satirical as the film is at times, opening it up to the real world with naturalistic settings did not help support its weak story structure. When push comes to shove, the movie is no more than a series of sketches, the sort that Nichols & May did so brilliantly on records and stage. Irishman Jack Lemmon seems miscast; he does his best, however, to sustain the frenetic shtick, mugging outrageously at times. On the plus side, the brilliant and then beautiful Elaine May (future director and writer of many a film flop) may be the greatest crazy Jewish American Princess ever portrayed on film. Try as she might, Woody Allen's second wife, Louise Lasser, understudy in the original Broadway production, could never quite match Elaine May when it came to sheer J. A. P. nuttiness.

...and so is "Luv". What might've been a mod, madcap romantic comedy is just an exercise in shouting (you'll never forget that Jack Lemmon plays "Harry"--it's all you hear from the other performers). A suicidal man is brought down from a bridge-railing by an old school friend who has other plans for the guy: fix him up with his unhappy wife so he can marry a fitness enthusiast. The story certainly had satiric possibilities, few of which are realized. One is tempted to put the blame for this mess on Lemmon (who does some uncharacteristically sloppy slapstick here), but Clive Donner's direction should bear the brunt of it--he has no clue how to present this material. Based on the play, "Luv" has bright opening moments but soon sinks into theatrical clichés, the kind that creak and wheeze with age. Worse, it's a visual insult, with tatty color photography that only serves to expose the cheap production. What a shame! Lemmon and Peter Falk (so good together in the earlier "The Great Race") make no music together, and Elaine May struggles for dignity. I struggled through "Luv" and laughed maybe three times. *1/2 from ****

Back in 1967 when Luv came out in theaters I went to see it and it is one of the very few times I just could not get into the film and walked out before it was over. 45 years later I watched it and did sit through it finally seeing how it ended and my opinion was raised slightly, but not enough to raise it to make it a classic. It's not one of Jack Lemmon's better films.

But it certainly is one of the weirdest I've seen, not funny but just plain weird. Lemmon plays an ultimate neurotic in this one who we meet as he is trying to jump off the Manhattan Bridge. Back in 1967 the walkway was still open for foot traffic. Just as he's about to take a swan dive into the East River along comes an old college friend Peter Falk who is a junk dealer and prowls the streets at night looking for items that thoughtless people might have thrown away.

Falk is unhappily married himself to a neurotic played by Elaine May who won't divorce him. What to do, but put these two neurotics together and see what happens. He saves Lemmon and takes him home and let's nature take its course. In the meantime Falk can pursue the fitness instructor of his dreams Nina Wayne.

Luv was a big hit on Broadway running 901 performances for three years and starred Alan Arkin, Eli Wallach, and Anne Jackson in the Lemmon, Falk, and May roles. On stage it is only a three character play and maybe they should have paid author Murray Schisgal to expand the play for the screen which Columbia Pictures didn't. It must have got a lot of laughs on stage to have had a three year run. But my laughs were few and far between.

It's weird to watch a movie from the 1960s with 21st century lense. The comedy doesn't flow and at times you're not sure if what your watching is funny or bad writing.

Relaxing the mind a bit and letting go of the 21st century standards of speed we have for comedy, you may find the experience more enjoyable. A few chuckles here and there, even if just for how ludacris it must've been for these two humans to say these lines to each other, or participate in the physical stunts

Also, a good Harrison Ford catch from his early career. (He plays the angry driver in the white convertible that Ellen hits with her car.)