Divorce American Style (1967)
What a great cast, what a lame movie.
Produced by Norman Lear, who co-wrote the story & screenplay with Robert Kaufman, and directed by Bud Yorkin, this disappointing comedy serves as yet another example of movie-makers’ inability to fully realize the many talents of Dick Van Dyke who, with only a couple of exceptions, appeared in bad movies throughout his film career. Thankfully, television producers were able to utilize this unique (physical) comedic actor's abilities over several decades! Lear & Kaufman did receive their only recognition from the Academy with an Oscar nomination for their Writing, but their insights and material come across as very dated today. In fact, except for the first 20 minutes or so, it's hardly funny, or even entertaining, at all (unless you didn't read the opening credits, in which case Van Johnson's appearance may come as a brief, pleasant surprise). In addition to Johnson, the cast includes Debbie Reynolds playing Van Dyke's "suddenly" unhappy wife, leading to the titled divorce; Jason Robards plays Jean Simmons's impoverished ex-husband (in the days when the wife got everything in the post marital proceedings) - he befriends Van Dyke, then she dates him. Joe Flynn plays a business associate of Van Dyke's character; Lee Grant appears briefly as a call girl. Emmaline Henry plays Flynn's wife, a friend of Reynolds’s; Martin Gabel plays a marriage counselor. Tom Bosley plays a date for Reynolds’s character, Tim Matheson plays one of the couple's two sons, and Eileen Brennan appears late in the film as Robards’s pregnant fiancée. We aren't even spared a predictable ending.
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