The Heartbreak Kid (1972) — A Truly Hilarious Take on Desire, Marriage and Self-Delusion
Sam: Where the hell have you been?!
Will: Days have passed. Then weeks. Months. A year.
Sam: We really dropped the ball. But we’re back. How have you been?
Will: Blimey, it’s hard to say. There was a relatively normal summer… and then lots of PS5 playing. And now I live with and cook for a vegan. And have a view of the sea. I still have the same hang-ups. I’ve learnt more songs on the melodeon.
Sam: We saw each other. Hung out for a few weeks. Watched a lot of movies that we didn’t review.
Will: We should have reviewed them, man. We screwed up. But I guess that would have taken valuable film watching time. What were your highlights from the twenty or so we watched?
Sam: For me, Body Heat — William Hurt getting sweaty with Kathleen Turner. Bird With the Crystal Plumage — some psychedelic Dario Argento slasher action.
Will: Being There — Peter Sellers in a satirical masterpiece. Mrs Miniver — a sentimental wartime drama that cut through my gnarled cynical media-watching instincts to make me weepy.
Sam: We have very different tastes. We did share the discovery of comic genius Jerry Lewis — Ladies Man and The Nutty Professor.
Will: Dear god. I will never forget the pain those films caused me.
Sam: He’s an acquired taste that I have no desire to acquire. Although here we are months later still talking about them.
Will: Better to feel something about a film, even complete baffled hate, than to have a sense of ‘meh’. Here’s looking at you, MARVEL.
Sam: Hot take. Anyway, we finally got around to watching something new. And we’re going to review…right now.
Will: Wait… now?
Sam: Go…
Will: Shit. Um, um… we watched The Heartbreak Kid, a black comedy from 1972 directed by a woman!
Sam: A female woman?
Will: Yeah, in the 1970s, a period of cinema that was a) excellent b) actually totally and unflinchingly misogynistic.
Sam: It was quite the boys’ club. And all very serious.
Will: Indeed. Elaine May managed to break through this and make brilliant, funny films.
Sam: Her first film, A New Leaf, is also great.
Will: So, what’s the deal with her famous creation, The Heartbreak Kid?
Sam: I can’t believe I hadn’t seen this before. I can’t believe no one had ever told me to watch it. Charles Grodin has just gotten married to Jeannie Berlin. They’ve never lived together before, and they’re driving from New York to Miami for their honeymoon. And let’s just say, Grodin begins having second thoughts.
Will: It’s amazing how the film shows his gradual realisation that she really annoys him. He’s still trying to play the role of ‘I am a happy newly married lovebird’, but you can see behind his eyes the thoughts of ‘Is she really like this?’
Sam: I can relate. Less the marriage part, but the experience of seeing something in someone that you can’t unsee.
Will: It’s always hilarious when you watch a character try to behave in a way that’s at odds with what you know they’re really feeling. It takes great writing and great acting. The sitcom Peep Show does it continuously using internal monologues, but in this case Charlie Grodin had to do it all with his eyes and moments of quiet, pained hesitance.
Sam: And he was really great. He was very relatable early on.
Will: They eventually get to Miami and he’s holding it all together just about… but then he meets Cybill Shepherd on the beach. She’s blonde. She’s beautiful. She’s a little flirtatious. And she hits our troubled newly-wed like a thunderbolt… though she barely says a word to him really.
Sam: She remains pretty uncommunicative throughout, but in Grodin’s mind, she’s the one. She’s going to save him from his hellish marriage… of two days.
Will: “I’ve been having doubts about the marriage since Virginia! And by Georgia I definitely knew!” he claims. And from then on he becomes comically single-minded in his mission to make this girl his new wife.
Sam: He acts horribly. But I kind of got him to an extent. I feel conflicted that I was kind of rooting for him until the end.
Will: Indeed. I mean, his wife isn’t terrible by any means; she’s sweet, but just wonderfully quietly irritating. Perhaps that’s why we don’t hate Charles Grodin for throwing her off so horribly. Many men, ourselves included, seem to have responded the same way — Charles Grodin said afterwards that loads of guys told him that they really related to his character, which he found flattering but troubling.
Sam: I found the situation of mistaken commitment very terrifying. It’s one of my worst nightmares. But then it gets worse. Shepherd is on holiday with her family, and Grodin tries to endear himself to her father. It was the best sort of cringe. It had us in hysterics.
Will: The father obviously thinks he’s an irritant and wants him gone. Grodin’s continual flow of polite, nonsensical conversation and friendly ‘nice to meet you, Sir’ style in the face of evident contempt is just fantastic. It’s cringe. It’s majestic. It’s just so funny. And it raises the question, was he just oblivious, or was he so desirous of Cybill Shepherd that he was willing to push through the negative signals with brute determination?
Sam: There’s a masterful scene in which Grodin “lays his cards on the table” and spills everything to the father. About his marriage, about his love for his daughter. His willingness to divorce his wife (of two days) in order to make it work. Meanwhile, Shepherd and her mother are on the other side of the table nodding along. The framing. The performance. The dialogue. It killed me.
Will: I just loved how little Cybill Shepherd gave away. She just doesn’t seem hugely bothered either way — yey or ney. Yet Grodin is projecting everything he’s ever dreamed of onto her. It’s hilarious because we all have a propensity to do this… I know I’ve briefly met someone and then decided in my mind that we’re total soulmates. Normally you shake it off, or reality brushes it aside for you… this film is almost an experiment in what happens when that fantasy stays firmly rooted.
Sam: And the film runs with it and takes it to its logical (or illogical) conclusion.
Will: The second half went in a direction I wasn’t expecting. And I enjoyed that a great deal. I really didn’t know where it was going.
Sam: It surprised me too. But I loved that it was willing to deviate from what worked so well in the first half. So what’s your takeaway?
Will: Honestly, my main thought is that the film portrays an accurate insight into the male psyche… that when push comes to shove, many men only really want to win over a glowingly beautiful woman. Hobbies, career, accomplishments… all just distractions or means of accomplishing that goal. I think the reason so many male viewers liked Grodin’s character is that they themselves would wish to do the same thing, but (quite reasonably) have never done so.
Sam: Was Cybill Shepherd into him? We never really know.
Will: It’s a good advert for the value of persistence!
Sam: Not knowing when to quit is tight!
Will: Um.
Sam: …
Will: What’s your takeaway?
Sam: That self-awareness is highly underrated. But it also kind of scared me. I already said the situation is my worst nightmare! I know how it feels to desperately want something, but then find that after you get it your feelings change in a way you could never have predicted beforehand. When that thing is another human being with feelings and emotions. What do you do? The final shot in The Graduate perfectly captures this.
Will: It’s an uncomfortable truth. We never really ‘see’ each other. I communicate with a version of you that is partly comprised of your reality, but also some of my own internal stuff. And you’re doing the same to me. When it comes to romantic relationships it’s even more complicated. What’s real? What’s projected? Some people never actually ‘meet’ their partners for decades, and then one day they see the truth and it all comes crashing down. It is scary! I was once proposed to by someone I was in love with, and I said no… largely because of this fear.
Sam: Um.
Will: Don’t worry, you don’t have to respond to that.
Sam: …
Will: So in conclusion…
Sam: It was a goddamn brilliant film!
Will: Hooray! See you in 12 months?
Sam: We’ve already watched another film! We’re overachievers!
Will: We’re a lot of things Sam… but not that.
Sam: And that’s the note we end on.
Films Referenced
A New Leaf (Elaine May, 1971)
Being There (Hal Ashby, 1979)
Bird With the Crystal Plumage (Dario Argento, 1970)
Body Heat (Lawrence Kasda, 1981)
Mrs Miniver (William Wyler, 1942)
The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967)
The Heartbreak Kid (Elaine May, 1972)
The Ladies Man (Jerry Lewis, 1961)
The Nutty Professor (Jerry Lewis, 1963)
The Next Film: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Russ Meyer, 1965)
