Our (Almost Completely True) Love Story

A very enjoyable almost completely comic (that turns dramatic) film about an aging Mariette Hartley who decides to try computer dating and after a few duds meets Jerry Sroka (also an actor). Apparently it's loosely based on their own lives and they play themselves, as do most of the characters in the film.

Hartley plays an actress still plugging along in Hollywood but pretty must at the end of her career, while Sroka plays a small-part actor who's never really made it, gets a job here and there. They are totally mismatched and totally destined for one another (and married in real life).

A few others show up as themselves. Morgan Fairchild and Tess Harper show up for an audition. Bernie Kopell is a friend as are Don Scardino (who directs the film) and Lloyd Bremseth (who now owns a bird store). The story takes a sharp turns after Hartley experiences a medical emergency.

Written by Hartley and Sroka. Very enjoyable.

My wife and I, as we always do, were looking for an easy, pleasant movie to watch after our usual Saturday steak and wine dinner. We found this one streaming on Prime and it fit the bill very nicely.

It is about a man and a woman in their 50s meeting and finding love, but played by the two in their 70s and 80s. Had this same story been about Ralph, the butcher, and Lucy, the retired schoolteacher, it likely would have been boring. What makes this one unique and more entertaining is that the couple are veterans of Hollywood TV and movies and they play themselves, telling their essentially true story.

The couple are Mariette Hartley and Jerry Sroka and they co-wrote the script. As the IMDb shows, she was divorced from her former husband in 1996, she and Jerry were married in 2005. So the time period for this movie would have been the late 1990s and early 2000s. Hartley was 80 or 81 during filming, Sroka 74 or 75. She is tall for a woman, he is short for a man. They make an interesting couple.

Again, much of the fun is seeing all the old actors we watched mostly during the 1970s and 1980s, and most of them just playing themselves.

I'd been watching these reality shows that feature people with serious and/or grotesque conditions that ordinary doctors couldn't fix. Though they had mostly "happy" endings, I decided I'd watch a movie that was not only happy but fun and entertaining too.

I chose "Our (Almost Completely True) Love Story. I still don't know how much of it was true, or not, but while it wasn't a great film, it was quite appealing with some humorous lines that made me chuckle.

I was a little taken aback when the protagonist had her own medical issue as I'd intended to get away from that, but being of a certain age myself, I realize medical issues are almost inescapable.

Lately, thinking a lot about relationships and love for older people, the movie was apropos, in addition to the medical stuff. Yes, it contained some stereotypical themes but hey, they're based on reality, right?

I recommend this movie if you're up for "light" entertainment with moments of both heaviness and humor.

I have mixed feelings about this movie. When it first started I wasn't sure I was going to like it. I thought the female actors were decent. But the male actors were pretty annoying. The constant banter drove me crazy. It was just one line-liner after another. A bit like a Marx Brothers or early Woody Allen movie. Only not quite as funny.

But then the movie started to gel. At first there didn't seem to be any plot at all. Then things improved. I really enjoyed Mariette Hartley. She was absolutely wonderful. Her deadpan delivery was just great.

However, I thought Jerry was really obnoxious. He wasn't funny at all and his voices were really grating.

But in the end, I thought the film was worth watching. Not great, but decent.

If you enjoyed this review, look for MovieJunkieMark.

Just like the sign on the amusement park ride says about height, you really have to lived enough to appreciate this marvelous love story. It also helps to know the old films, so you can appreciate Jerry Sroka's constant impersonations of Groucho Marx, George Burns, Cary Grant, and Woody Allen.

I loved the bit where Hartley, at the urging of her friend, is signing up on the "Jew Date" website because, she says, "I hear Jewish men make good husbands." Also, instead of listing her age, she types in, "Mother must be dead," thus stepping around her age and making an sly joke about Jewish mothers-in-law at the same time.

Younger viewers may not be as amused as us oldsters are about all the jokes by and for those of us who have lived passed our sell-by date, but I'm sure some of the jokes will resonate with them. We "wrinklies" will chuckle to ourselves at the plight of aging actresses meeting each other at an audition where Mariette Hartley jokes about the director's assistant, "What is she, 12?" That same assistant has no clue who Hartley or Morgan Fairchild, or Tess Harper are.

It is also, at its heart, a love story, and a (mostly) true one. It's not a bring your Kleenex style Nicholas Sparks style movie, rather one that alternately reminds you of courtship and, at almost the same time, devotion of the "in sickness and in health" variety.

What you've got to ask yourself is, "Do you feel old enough? Well, do ya', Punk?"