I'm female and loved this movie. It's totally not my husband's cup of tea; he loves movies with any kind of action. Dramas, even dramedies like this one, with the characters mostly just sitting around and talking, bore him to no end.
For me, the conversational bonding scenes at the diner were my favorite parts. These are just the type of slightly meaningless, yet meaningful to us, conversations that me and my girlfriends often have. Conversations about music, movies, the opposite sex, etc.
There really wasn't one weak link in the cast, although Tim Daly's character was never really fully fleshed out for me. But heck, he sure did look good! Every character had his charms, even Kevin Bacon's Fenwick, who I found extremely annoying and bratty. I found myself pissed at Daniel Stern's Shrevie, and thought he was very mean to his wife, but I could tell he felt badly about their argument, and made it up to her later. To me, he was the prime example of a guy of the time who did what was expected of him (got married) because it was the thing to do for a guy his age, but never really grew up or matured because he still had his friends in his life, and they still did the same things.
I think I loved the character of Modell the best. He was Paul Reiser to a T, the nebbishy mooch who you liked anyway.
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Lucindaherself
11 years ago
I'm a woman who enjoys "male bonding" movies. I neither absolutely loved nor absolutely hated this one. Wouldn't call it a masterpiece, but there's a lot that's good here.
That said, the football test drove me up the wall (although, yes, I understood the filmmakers' point). When it was first mentioned, I imagined that the brie -to-be would be asked things like "What's a conversion? or "What exactly does a quarterback do?". Although I still wouldn't like the idea of having the wedding depend on the exercise, I wouldn't think it was asking too much for her to know those basic things about football because it meant so much to him.
But the questions? And the way all of his guy buddies were standing around while he was testing her? Then hearing the pleading for him to consider her performance "passing"? The whole thing made me almost angry. Besides that, I thought it went way over the top in showing that Shrevie was obviously not ready for marriage. Even given the time period, I found it unrealistic that everyone involved seemed to accept and participate in this testing ritual except for thinking that the questions were too hard.
As far as Shrevie went, I hated the way he treated his wife in the "keep-my records-organized" scene, but I thought that there was an important point there: people forget that spouses are like roommates in a sense and that "sharing your life with another person" involves far more than the symbolic. He should have liked the fact that his wife was playing the records because that meant that she was "getting into" his music a bit, but she should have put things back where she got them--a basic rule for living with someone.
We always see cliched scenes of marriage about the man not putting the toilet seat down, making a mess in a room the wife has just cleaned, or not putting the dishes in the sink/dishwasher, and a lot of us root for the wife instead of recognizing that the husband may be having a hard time adjusting to his wife's standards.
Great scene and great discussions among the men in the group about how they saw marriage throughout the film.
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shayneferry
11 years ago
Don't mind male bonding films but it was hard to enjoy this movie when nearly all the guys were pieces of *beep*. Eddie was an arrogant little twerp, I can't believe he'd find anyone to marry him! When he demanded his mum make him a sandwich I wanted to jump into the movie and smack the s--t through him.
Shrevie was happy to abuse his wife over the order of his records, I mean ok I get people have quirks but there's no need to abuse someone like that over it! Also like she said he never would have abused one of his friends like that.
Boogie was ready to cheat with his friends WIFE! Then Kevin Bacon's character was a drunk who obviously thought he was above having a job. Not many likeable characters apart from Billy!
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bradford-1
10 years ago
You have to think that all these characters grew up together, went to the same schools (and synagogues?) and have been hanging out in various places for at least 10 years before we see them in this particular week.
Much of this struck home, even though I'm several years younger than Levinson, am black and grew up in Pittsburgh. But there was a core of us who knew one another from Sunday School or elementary school and who hung out for years at the same two or three bars. Our equivalent of Shrevie got married young, but continued to act as if he were single. Because he and his bride lived close to a bus stop, the rest of us often showed up on their doorstep and invited ourselves in. The missus often found us draped on the couch or hugging the floor, yelling at some football game on TV, guzzling beer, roliing $$#@ or playing the boom box LOUD. In real life, this kind of behavior destroyed the marriage within three years!
"May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?"
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