Willie & Phil

I very much enjoyed this unusual movie about love and friendship between 3 people (2 men and a woman) in 1970s America. The story is interesting, unusual. Also unusual, the way the narrator leads through the story. It's a funny, emotional, and dramatic story. Although it's a 70s movie with a threesome theme, it's not primarily about sex, drugs, and open relationships (although all three are featured in the movie). It's really about friendship and different forms of love between men and men, and men and women, as well as about finding oneself.

How do two modern heterosexual men become acquaintances and then lifelong friends? Writer-director Paul Mazursky would love to believe they simply meet at showings of François Truffaut's "Jules et Jim"...and lives--as they say in films like this--are changed forever. Staging perhaps the first straight-guy pick-up in movies, Ray Sharkey's fashion photog begins a chat with Michael Ontkean's schoolteacher after a showing of the picture in New York, 1970--nonchalantly quick to mention he just broke up with a gorgeous woman (cue the audience: "Relax, he likes girls."). Truffaut's 1962 film, about two male friends and their carefree love for the same woman, was the filmmaker's starting point here, but Mazursky also needed a finisher. He's inspired for about three scenes. Sharkey and Ontkean squire Kentucky stranger Margot Kidder about town, but the wild abandonment of the Vietnam period seems to elude them--both the characters and the milieu are merely a writer's pretensions (this could take place in 1980 and nobody would notice a difference). Mazursky's narrator (as well as Kidder's Jeannette) echo the same sentiment: these lives are destined to be forever entwined; but that is a precious notion which doesn't convince, mainly because the three principals do not behave like working New Yorkers, nor Bohemians, nor sexually free, giddy, grown-up children. They're so blasé about each other and their decisions, there's nothing at stake when Jeannette meets Willie's Jewish family or when Jeannette tells Willie, "Let's make a baby" (she actually makes most of the decisions and the guys are tag-alongs). In the second-half, after the setting has changed from New York to Malibu, the characters have apparently gone through enormous changes, though seemingly not much hardship, and their conversations are the same but in a slicker venue. Mazursky truly wants to emulate Truffaut, but he mistakes a light, airy excursion with wafer-thin romantic connections offering nothing in the way of consequence (much less actual romance). After Jeannette announces that perhaps everyone should go their separate ways, there isn't much more to the picture. The woman has spoken, and Mazursky proves to be a tag-along, too. *1/2 from ****

After seeing this movie in 1980 when it was released, I watched it again recently, 25 years later. I wanted to enjoy it as much as I have always enjoyed Paul Mazursky's "An Unmarried Woman" and "Next Stop, Greenwich Village." But it is not as good as those films. It is interesting as a sort of time capsule: it starts in 1970. But it is ultimately unfulfilling. Perhaps that's because it is a sort of remake of "Jules and Jim." Mazursky did his own version of Fellini's "8 1/2" called "Alex in Wonderland," which was about his fears of not being able to top the success of "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice." "Alex..." is a disappointing film also, but it is more visually interesting than "Willie and Phil." Seems to me Mazursky was better with original material, instead of trying to pay homage to another director.

Somehow Jeannette (the Margot Kidder character) is not very interesting. And you think there's going to be some kind of pay-off regarding her mother's smoking, and her sister's relationship with Phil, but neither pay-off ever happens. Kidder's overly thick Southern accent is a little annoying also.

Still, there is something endearing and nostalgic about the movie in its depiction of liberated young people in the immediate pre-AIDS movie. This was the end of the party, folks.

I enjoyed the fact that the beginning of the movie takes place at the old Bleecker Street Cinema. Later the threesome try to enjoy some scenes in that theatre while watching "Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls!" The movie also winds up at that location.

It's also worth pointing out that Jan Miner is good in the movie, as always, and it's loads of fun to see Helen Hanft as a car saleswoman. Hanft, an Off Broadway muse at one time, was also in "Next Stop, Greenwich Village" and several Woody Allen movies, most memorably "Stardust Memories." She and Ms. Miner pretty much steal the movie, along with the woman who plays Phil's mother. And, by the way, I think this is the only movie I ever saw Ray Sharkey in, and he's very likable. You do keep waiting for him and Ontkean to cement their relationship in a physical manner, but this is Hollywood, and they keep reminding you that the 2 men are strictly heterosexual, and homosexuals are mocked as flaming pansies. Shame on you, Mr. Mazursky.

The moment I remembered the most from my first viewing is the spotting of the famous movie star on Malibu Beach. The moment isn't nearly as interesting as I had remembered it, but it's still sort of lovely.

I saw this movie over six years ago, and I still think about it from time to time. If you are in a "new" realationship this film is a must see. If you are not, then see it anyway, although a little hard to find. The humor is top notch and for people with a brain. If you like humor with smarts then you will enjoy this movie.

Not a complete remake of Jules et Jim, Willia & Phil stands on its own as a unique love story. Almost a half a century later, Willie & Phil has become a forgotten time capsale of a world that no longer exists. A sad truth that this movie holds is how the characters of the story reflect the actors that had portrayed them. Ray Sharkey and Margot Kidder perfectly protray their character since much of their motivation in their performance was taken from personal experience. Both Actors died too soon and from sad consequences to the lives they both lived. Some of the dialogue spoken by them shares their own story when it comes to love and life. True fans of these two talents will agree that a study of Willie & Phil is worth the watch.