DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
The golden age of the Hollywood screwball comedy had long since passed when Peter Bogdonovich signed on young megastars Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal, along with a writing team led by Buck Henry to try to recreate some of the magic of the wild romantic capers of the ’30s. Bogdonovich was fresh off the success of the stark, melancholy The Last Picture Show, and apparently was looking to change gears completely with this romantic comedy. In classic genre setup, the plot centers on four people who check into a hotel at the same time who happen to have the same luggage. Various cases of mistaken baggage identity ensue, complicated by the fact that, of course, one bag houses a bunch of jewels, and another sensitive government documents.
Few directors have managed to effectively mimic the breezy, slightly unnatural, yet completely entertaining feel of the classic screwballs, but Bogdonovich managed it with apparent ease. The chemistry between O’Neal and Streisand — an essential aspect of the genre — fires on all cylinders, and Henry’s script contains some real gems, particularly in the end when O’Neal acknowledges the most ridiculous line of his smash hit Love Story from two years before; when Streisand delivers a line that both he and Ally McGraw delivered in that movie back to him (“Love means never having to say you’re sorry”), he fires back with a retort that really deserves to be more of a classic than the line that it mocks.
View the trailer.
Out on the lawn at the Hillwood Museum on Saturday evening. The grounds will be open and refreshment stands open from 6:30, with the movie starting at 8:30. $15 public and members, $10 college students and youths aged 6–18.
