I don't recall having ever heard of this movie before, but when a source I trust recommend it as one of the funniest movies they'd seen in the last year I gave it a go. After watching A New Leaf I couldn't help but wonder why isn't this movie better known. A critical darling at the time it came out, Gene Siskel had it at #2 on his list of best movies that year, A New Leaf did mediocre business then, but has become something of a cult classic, though a lesser know one, with time.
The film stars Walter Matthau as Henry Graham, a trust fund baby now around 40, who is shocked to find that he has mishandled his inheritance and spent all his money. Lacking skills and terrified of loaming poverty, he embarks on a quest to find a bride upon whose money he can live. He finds one in Henrietta Lowell, played by Elaine May, who also wrote the screenplay and directed the film, very unusual for the time. Henrietta is a botany professor specializing in ferns, and herself the lone inheritor of her family fortune. Henrietta is shy, awkward, and extremely clumsy, and Henry thinks her a perfect mark for his plans, and she is, but he doesn't anticipate the complications that are to follow.
A very dry comedy Walter Matthau is perfect in this, cast against type as a high born eastern seaboard elite, he develops a character that is both very funny and very different from anything else I've seen him do. If all you watched of this movie was Matthau's facial expressions throughout, you'd be thoroughly entertained. May does a great job in her various roles in front and behind the camera, and the supporting cast is suitably off kilter. In many ways this feels like the sort of film that Hal Ashby would make, though a little cleaner. I may have to get my own copy of this one. ****
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment