Dragged out of my icon-shattered house by movie buffs, I saw Something's Gotta Give, and, yes, something shoulda.
Two hours is too long for a romantic/morality tale/comedy.
Epiphany notwithstanding.
Loved Diane Keaton's house by the sea, shot in Malibu, I am sure. For a bit of fluff like me, it's ambiance was distracting, the California flavor rivaling Mia Farrow's New York city dweller's floor-though in Hannah and her Sisters, and Virginia Wolfe's thirties intellectual bedroom/study in a fairly morbid film, but the name is lost to me. And Nicole Kidman won the Academy Award for her role as Virginia Wolfe. too. Can you imagine such impairment of an avid moviegoer? As usual, riveted by camera angles: In a two-shot, Jack Nicholson is forever on the left--a huge old lion's head leering at a skimpy Diane Keaton, who is lucky to squeeze into frame. In some shots, it appears that she has been minimized on the right to the point where she is elongated into Popeye's girlfriend, Olive Oyle. Which we know is not the case with our pretty Diane. God only knows how they magnify one side of the shot, and minimize the other. In any case, Diane must have preferred the right side, for it provides her best camera angle. However, she finally ends up on the left in two shots with Keanu Reave, where she definitely looks her age, a little crepy in the neck and not a good nose. This was toward the end when they wanted to emphasize that she was really too old for Keanu, and that the old stray dog would soon be jumping her bones again and, this time, sans Viagra.
I am not being entirely fair to this movie. It is warm and entertaining, as opposed to our usual fare of teenage blood and mayhem. Also, it helps if one can hear the dialogue. I missed about half of the good throwaway lines for I am about half deaf. Besides that, the photography is beautiful--a walk on a sandy beach, her white hat against a pastel sea, his white shirt, open at the neck, adding a youthful touch. And for those of you that can never get enough of the standard female body, Diane does show up naked. Almost subliminal, but there it was.
Three possible endings indicated that they took a meeting on this one: Take your choice: In Paris, Jack all alone and in tears, standing on a bridge and staring down at the Seine,(favored by "the bastard got what he deserved" moralists); Jack kissing Diane when, she unexpectedly returns to him, lights of Paris twinkling bg. (Desperately fought for by Hollywood ending/box office/suits.) Or, Jack and Diane with her daughter, her daughter's husband, a grandchild and Jack, a man redeemed by love.(tapped by script readers who want endings tied in a pink ribbon, but hoha'd by tradionalists who stood their ground and quietly said, "We're not filming a saga here, people.")
4:43:50 PM
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