Uneven hodge-podge

Press, 18 June 1979, Page 14

Uneven hodge-podge

‘'Something old, something new, some borrowed, something blue" nicely describes ;the mixture presented in ’"California Suite” (Westend), which consists of four interwoven stories set at the ' Beverly Hills Hotel. Based on four of Neil; |Simons one-act plays, the; Ifilm presents an uneven :hodge-podge ranging in style from wit to slapstick, sophisticated to silly and deli-,-cate to dense. “California Suite,” how->

ever, has one over-all saving feature—the first class star cast of Alan Alda, Michael Caine, Bill Cosby, Jane Fonda, Walter Matthau. Elaine May, Richard Prior and Maggie Smith. • When one the film’s visitors to Hollywood says he wants to see all the stars, he is told that they only come out at night. That may be true in general but certainly does not apply to the “California Suite,” in which they shine splendidly all the time. Ironically (or was it more than chance), Maggie Smith won a best supporting actress Academy Award for her performance as an Oscar-nominated actress who does not win. (Miss Smith won her first Oscar for her excellent performance in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.”) She gives a sensitive, sometimes funny performance in this film and is beautifully offset by Michael Caine's delicate, low-key role.

Although these two actors have never worked together before, they make a perfect match here, with Miss Smith as a hard-drink-ing, hard-talking actress, alternately buoyant and defeated; and Caine as her loving husband, who nevertheless has a predilection for sex with men.

Somehow, the couple prove that a marriage of convenience can be a dynamic emotional affair.

There may be a few doubts about whether Miss Smith deserved the Academy Award for this performance, and many may much prefer Jane Fonda, if only for her gratuitous bikini appearance in the beach scene.

Miss Fonda plays a sophisticated, acid-tongued magazine editor who has flown to California to fight with her former husband (Alan Alda) over the custody of their daughter. Atlhough this part has quite a few of Simon’s good throw-away lines, the overall story is too serious for such a light pastiche as this film is supposed to be, and finally bogs down in an unnecessary dose of sentimentality.

Alda also seems more at home when he is horsing around with his M.A.S.H. team than when trying to keep up with Miss Fonda.

It has become apparent by now that we are not just dealing with another light, babbly bedroom farce in a hotel setting, but a film that also likes to lash out a fewdollops of homosexuality and marital stress for good measure. However, all is not lost. There is a brighter, funny! side to the goings on in this particular establishment. Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor arrive with their wives as two Chicago doc-! tors on holiday who somehow manage to have vir-l tualiy every mishap imagi- i nable happen to them — the' car is wrecked, clothes are j torn, toilets overflow, and soI on. All this gives Cosby the ! chance to play a little tennis and Pryor to say a few funny lines. Otherwise, it is just a slapstick shambles completely out of character with the rest of the film. The film’s comic high points belong to Walter Matthau, who manages to shamble as superbly through “California Suite” as he has through two earlier Simon comedies — “The Odd Couple” and “The Sunshine Boys.” Matthau plays a husband who wakes up to find his bed being shared by a whore who is sleeping off the effects of a bottle of tequilla. To make matters worse, his wife (Elaine May) arrives on the scene. Matthau hilariously handles this old chestnut of a comic situation. All in all, the serious, comic offerings of “California Suite” are the kind that could have gone just as well under the name of Noel Cowards “Bitter Suite.”