Good Neighbor Sam
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VHS Tape Cover Information
Actor: Barbara Bouchet, Edward Andrews, Mike Connors, Tom Anthony, Tristram CoffinPrimary Contributor: Jack Lemmon
Primary Contributor: Romy Schneider
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Color, NTSC
Running Time: 130 minutes
Release Date: 1996-08-06
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: Sony Pictures
Studio: Sony Pictures
VHS Movie Reviews of Good Neighbor Sam
Movie Review: Provine for President
Summary: 5 Stars
GOOD NEIGHBOR Sam is a strangely neglected American sex comedy of the 1960s, with Jack Lemmon, an actor I otherwise can do without, but here he strikes me as an accomplished farceur with more bite to him than most male stars of his day. He has attitude; he might have appeared in ZOOLANDER with that edge. Here he was a fairly good part as a sculptor who works during the day way down the ladder at a San Francisco ad agency--it's a very MAD MEN office, but more authentic in some ways, and the scenes of the admen exchanging dispirited glances at their busty, uninterested secretarial staff has the MAD MEN motif down pat. I suppose casting Lemmon in this part must have been a calculated move on the parts of the producers to recall his work in Billy Wilder's famous film of THE APARTMENT, but kick me out of cineaste heaven, for I have to say I prefer this flop to the celebrated APARTMENT. In fact GOOD NEIGHBOR SAM seems superior to all but the very best of Wilder's work and I wonder why David Swift isn't better known?
Swift surrounds Lemmon with a cast of perhaps too-familiar TV and movie faces who are all enough to make one sick, starting with Louis Nye and including ultra-weird sissy Edward Andrews--oh, and Robert Q. Lewis as a suburban neighbor voyeur. Everyone's watching everyone else in this ummanageable plot, which involves two crazy impersonations--maybe one more than a conventional movie structure will allow. In the first plot, add boss Andrews awards hapless Lemmon the coveted account manager position for Nurdlinger Foods because Nurdlinger (Edward G. Robinson, oddly tanned as if suffering from jaundice) has hired detectives who have proved that every single other man at the agency is living an adulterous life. Lemmon, being a pure, devoted husband, gets a giant raise, but it comes just at the exact time when his own libidinous interests in his wife's best friend are tempting him to join the crowd of cheaters. Why not, if everyone else is doing it? Okay, that part is fairly ludicrous and probably turned off a lot of original moviegoers: it makes THE APARTMENT seem like a masterpiece of neo-realismo.
The second plot involves Sam's wife (Dorothy Provine) whose best friend Janet has recently been divorced and whose uncle has left her a fortune of $15,000,000 provided that she is happily married at the time of the will's disposition. Oddly enough Janet has also moved into the empty house next door in Sam's little suburban Wisteria Lane. I guess she had to, otherwise the story would never work out. Suspicious relatives have hired a private eye to make sure that Janet is living with a husband, and Provine allows Janet to "borrow her husband," a move which leads to unexpected pain and poignancy, but you knew that going in when you saw that Janet was going to be played by Austrian glumbette Romy Schneider, whose little face always looked like it was pressed against a glass window hungrily eyeing the lives of happy others.
It's Provine who's the revelation here, as Minerva "Min" Bissel, the wife who accidentally gives away her husband over a series of expertly directed and acted sex maneuvers. Provine has an astonishing resemblance to Nicole Kidman, and it looks almost as if Kidman has been inserted into an older movie, opposite all dead people, through CGI effects. Specifically she resembles Kidman in Kubrick's EYES WIDE SHUT, and she should, in my opinion, have won the Oscar for Best Actress in this part. Can't believe she walked away from the movies to marry some dud! She should have gone on to glorious things and still be acting today. Maybe it's time for a comeback, she's still only 71!
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