California Suite

CinemaSerf

Neil Simon isn't really at his best with this rather hit or miss telling of four families who happen to stay at the world famous Beverly Hills Hotel. The divorced "Warren" family - Jane Fonda & Alan Alda are squabbling over the future of their teenage daughter. She has custody but the youngster wants to spend more time with her father and that's causing no end of self doubt and frustration with her mother. "Marvin" (Walter Matthau) comes on a day ahead of his wife "Millie" (Elaine May) and manages to find himself with an hooker who has no idea when it's a good time to wake up and leave. Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby are brothers travelling with their wives who find an hotel mishap leaves one couple in luxury, the other in a glorified bedsit. Finally, the best of the script falls to Maggie Smith and Michael Caine as the married couple in town because she's been nominated for an Oscar. Last minutes nerves, wobbles, loads of gin and a constant search for validation from her loving but not the most gushing of husbands provides us with much of the best sarcasm and wit contained here, and those scenes - sparing after the half way mark give us most of what's worth watching here. The Pryor/Cosby and Matthau/May scenarios are more contrived and don't work nearly so well and the initial melodrama really only offers Fonda a chance to deliver some lengthy monologues of, occasionally pithy, dialogue. It does poke fun at some of the more facile elements of life and fame, but the episodic nature of the storytelling I found to be a little disjointed and not really that funny.