Fortune
In the mid 1970s, no two actors were more popular or better known than Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty. Nicholson was one of the most entertaining performers to ever step in front of a camera and was prolific on top of that with three Oscar wins and a cornucopia of undisputed classics on his resume. Beatty’s legend on the other hand was built upon his almost enigmatic status, appearing in only 23 movies over a 55 year career and scoring more hits than misses while maintaining a reputation as being the greatest playboy which Hollywood has ever known, having had intimate relations with both famous and not so famous women reputed to be in the thousands. In 1975, these two would team up for a project that seemed to be a surefire success, with an Oscar winning director in Mike Nichols and a script by Oscar nominated screenwriter Carole Eastman who had written Nicholson’s big hit Five Easy Pieces just a few years before. Problems started when Eastman was asked to do a rewrite but instead refused, choosing to take her name off the movie and being credited under an alias. The movie appeared to be a light comedic farce set during the 1920s with elements of both The Sting and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels in its storyline, but it’s really more of a so called buddy movie combined with a romantic comedy (with Nicholson and Beatty squabbling over the same woman) before taking on a darker, edgier (and better) tone in the last 20 minutes. It wound up bombing at the box office and never made anyone’s list as being the best work of either Nicholson, Beatty or Nichols, but amazingly enough The Coen Brothers (Joel and Ethan) have both cited it as being among their favorite films of all time and anyone familiar with their work can find that understandable. The film’s plot concerns Beatty (a married man) deciding to run off with a heiress (Stockard Channing in her debut), but due to 1920s era laws forbidding a woman being taken across state lines for “immoral” purposes, takes her to a justice of the peace so that she can then be legally married off to his buddy (Nicholson). Apparently Nicholson owes Beatty a favor for helping him avoid going to prison which is why he agrees to take part in the scheme, all while being told that his newlywed bride Channing is off limits to him (cause she is Beatty’s girl after all) as the three move to California where Beatty masquerades as her brother while planning to have Nicholson divorce her when the time is right. Truth is, Beatty is just after her family’s money and plans to split it with Nicholson once she inherits it on her birthday. Of course, Nicholson has other ideas once he figures it out, deciding to move in on his legally married wife with the intention of having her fall for him instead only for real this time and maybe even bump Beatty out. The first half of the film (while not all that funny) does succeed in pointing out two basic truths that persist to this day: 1. That the concept of marriage under the law itself is nothing but a sham that only entitles types like divorce lawyers to line their pockets whenever such a thing falls apart simply because the man and woman signed a piece of paper when their union began while men and women living happily together without doing such a thing can just simply break up and go their separate ways without the seedy interference of lawyers (a key moment is when Nicholson reminds Channing when he’s moving in on her that they ARE together “in the eyes of God”) and 2. The disgusting, inglorious pursuit of money is really the only thing that ever seems to matter in this world over things like love, loyalty or respect which is emphasized when Channing declares to both men that when she inherits her money, she is going to give it all away to charity instead of allowing either of them to have it. The only reason at least some of this even works is because both Beatty and Nicholson allow themselves to be written and portrayed as two bumbling buffoons even as Beatty remains suave and debonair as he’s always been while leaving the other two in the house alone while he goes off to work (doing exactly what we’re never told) and always wearing a fancy suit in every scene. Nicholson (while not exactly in “Crazy Jack” mode) is more of a nattering idiot here, babbling away with his ideas and theories while Beatty can only listen on with his head in his hands. Let no mistake be made though that Beatty is the more dominant of the two, effectively playing Moe to Jack’s Curly when it comes to intimidating and ordering him around up to and including excessively bitching at Jack to go get a job of his own. When it gets to the point where Channing has decided that she is neither going to divorce Jack nor let either one of them have her money, the two of them finally mutually agree that the best solution would be to kill her and make it look like a suicide, thus enabling Jack as her husband to inherit the money and splitting it with Beatty. This is where the film finally hits its stride (if it ever had any) as their efforts wind up turning into a comedy of errors with one thing after another going completely wrong almost based entirely on coincidence (mostly by people walking up / driving up) at the most inopportune moments with the shot composition at times during these bits being perhaps the best thing about it and damn near genius in how they’re set up here. The funniest bit might be when the duo disguise themselves as Raja Indians (with Beatty wearing a turban and claiming to be a snake charmer with Nicholson acting as his assistant) looking to buy a rattlesnake from an old snake farmer (Dub Taylor) with Nicholson telling him that Beatty wants to use it in his snake charming act (when in reality they’re going to place it in Channing’s bed to bite her) and after buying the most sedate looking snake for a buck, Nicholson goes to hand the burlap sack to Beatty’s “snake charmer” only for Beatty to hilariously recoil in fear and yell at Nicholson to put it in the trunk. That plus the semi twist at the very end helps to redeem the movie somewhat from being a light little trifle and actually pick up some major laughs, but it’s interesting to see the dynamic between its two stars (along with Channing who tries to keep up with them but is not really able to) as Nicholson is usually the one being ordered around by Beatty but in many of their scenes Nicholson is actually the one doing most of the talking while Beatty just sits there and only responds when necessary, doing a lot of slow burns as part of his performance. It’s not exactly a magical teaming, but it is a good one, hampered in some ways by EXTREMELY old fashioned stilted dialogue that may or may not have been the way that people talked in the 1920s but still manages to take the bite out of the performances (especially Jack’s) when the option of profanity being used here is seemingly nonexistent (at times the movie despite its themes almost plays out as being a G rated kiddie picture). Still, the film’s skewering of conventional marriage as being little more than just an elaborate moneymaking scheme does hit the mark early and often with the implication that these type of “three way” marriages were quite common in that day and age when morality was much more of a legal issue than it is now as well as telling women not only what they can and cannot do with their bodies, but in telling them who was acceptable for them to have a relationship with and how, thus making the three way marriage arrangement itself downright radical for a story set in the 1920s and released in the mid 1970s. Whether this was intended to be a purely screwball farce or a deep seated statement about modern relationships disguised as a comedy is unknown, but making Beatty the one who keeps his wits about him while always staying cool headed and Nicholson as the one who panics at the first sign of trouble while having the two constantly play off each other for comedic effect (and only having Channing involved in the mix when absolutely necessary) is not too bad a thing to watch even as the potential for laughs is somewhat stifled by the rigidly scripted dialogue (you can tell there wasn’t exactly a lot of adlibbing going on here) but for a film that bombed back in the day (the same year that Nicholson did Cuckoo’s Nest) and is only now ripe for rediscovery by a new audience, you could do a heck of a lot worse considering the charisma and starpower that came together just one time only for this particular project…
7/10