Plaza Suite

I expected this 1971 film to be a bright comedy. Instead I was presented with the filming of a very deep three-part stage play about the dark side of human relationships; only the last of the three stories could really be called funny.

A bride-to-be locks herself in the bathroom and her parents go through all kinds of hilarious slapstick agony trying to persuade her to come out. It is free of the darker undertones of the first two vignettes and has a cute surprise ending with a happy message. The other two, while being wry and witty in places, are really commentaries on the nature of man's unfaithfulness and exploitation of women, and women's culpability in allowing that state of affairs to develop and continue.

Walter Matthau plays the lead in each of the three stories, which take place in the same suite, 719, of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. He has different leading ladies in each one: Maureen Stapleton, Barbara Harris and Lee Grant. There are a few incidental characters but the stories revolve around the two main characters in each story. The dialogue is quite true to real life, even appearing to be repetitive and meaningless in places as real life conversations can be, but the playwright is taking us in each case to a specific understanding of the characters. There is nothing extraneous even though at first it appears to be cluttered with incidentals.

In the first story, a husband and wife check into the Plaza Hotel for their anniversary - and then things begin to fall apart. Maureen Stapleton as the seemingly scatterbrained wife is brilliant in playing both the tragic and comic aspects of this complicated role. As the story unfolds we realize things are not as they appear on the surface.

In the second story, a sleazy Hollywood businessman calls up various names in his little black book so that he can have some woman - any woman - come to his suite for sex from 2 to 4 between meetings. The woman from his past whom he persuades to show up is both afraid of the possible seduction and hoping he will talk her into it. This is all too painful and familiar a scenario and anyone will relate to the awkward dance between two individuals who have to try to save face while getting their needs met.

If you are looking for a light and fluffy comedy this is not the one to choose. It will disturb you and make you think about the tragic aspects of love, sex and marriage, long after it is over.

Not very funny or interesting. All three of the skits are pretty boring. I could hardly keep myself awake during the second one, I only watched the third one because i heard it was the best of the three, It was just as bad as the first two. Walter Matthau is a fine actor but not in here.

Neil Simon's Broadway success, brought to the screen in a dung-colored transfer. Walter Matthau plays three different men who check into suite 719 at the Plaza Hotel in New York City at different times. In the opener, he's a neglectful husband to needy, chatty Maureen Stapleton; in the second, he's a movie producer from Hollywood who phones up old flame Barbara Harris for a tryst; and for the finale, Matthau is married to Lee Grant and suffering the wedding catastrophe blues after his daughter gets cold feet before her ceremony. Simon, despite having penned the adaptation himself, was reportedly not happy with the picture; George C. Scott and Maureen Stapleton had played all the central parts on stage, though Simon felt Matthau's take on the three male characters didn't work on film. He was partly right (Matthau is most ill-at-ease in the second episode), but the main problem with the film is the first installment. Portraying a long-suffering married couple on the brink of imploding, Matthau and Stapleton are busily beleaguered and convincingly antagonistic...it might have helped if they were funnier. Matthau's incarnation of the callous (and cheating) hubby is, unfortunately, so unfeeling towards his spouse--in a story which is not satisfactorily resolved--that it leaves a sour residue from which the rest of "Plaza Suite" never recovers. Some of the flip talk is cheeky and amusing, Lee Grant gets some colorful bits of business, but this is still a depressing experience. The Plaza Hotel must have been infuriated with the art direction: this picture makes the posh resort look like a Burger King. ** from ****

Neil Simon's three playlet show Plaza Suite turns into a tour de force for Walter Matthau as he stars in all three which become funnier as the film progresses.

The first one pairs Matthau with Maureen Stapleton, the two have rented a suite at the Plaza for their 23rd or is it their 24th anniversary. They have differing views on that and more than they realize. Matthau's such a romantic he's brought some of his work with him. When Louise Sorel from the office brings him some revisions it's apparent it's not just his work that needs revising. This one had some laughs, but strictly of the ironic nature.

Matthau is opposite Barbara Harris in the next one. He plays a man from Tenafly, New Jersey who has sought fame and fortune in the west as Horace Greeley advised. West in the 20th century meant Hollywood and now he's a hot producer with all the perogatives of that breed.

Harris is a girl he left behind and one gets the impression back in the day she would not have given him the time of day. But now Matthau has mastered the skill of the casting couch and he lays out a campaign to win this now married New Jersey housewife. As for Harris it's amazing when you attach a celebrity status to someone how your view might change.

Best of the three by far is the last with Matthau and Lee Grant as the parents of a girl having her wedding at the Plaza Hotel. The bride to be their daughter Mimsy is having wedding jitters and locks herself in the bathroom. Grant tries and fails to talk her out and then sends for daddy.

Matthau is gradually seeing bankruptcy as the bills for a wedding at the Plaza pile up and things don't go quite according to plan. But when this crisis occurs Matthau pulls all the stops out with one of the funniest performances in his career. He does one of the greatest bits of overacting in a role that had to have it. With all he tries and all the indignities he suffers in his attempts to get Mimsy out from the john you have to see what does it in the end.

On stage Plaza Suite had Don Porter and Maureen Stapleton playing all of the main roles in the three playlets. This film is a must for Walter Matthau fans. You will never see him funnier, not in The Odd Couple, not in The Fortune Cookie, not in anything.

3 wonderful short stories are fused together in this 1971 film.

The first story, which is the best, stars Walter Matthau and Maureen Stapleton as a couple whose marriage is failing and is spending their 23rd or 24th wedding anniversary there. Stapleton is terrific here as always. She shows great depth in going from a ditsy housewife to a woman hurt by the affair her husband has been having with his secretary.

In the typical tradition of Simon, Stapleton wonders why her husband couldn't be more original since all men have affairs with their secretaries.

Matthau stars in the second story as well but this time with Barbara Harris. As a Hollywood producer, he has come to N.Y. on business but has other things on his mind such as the seduction of Harris, a housewife from N.J. that he knew years ago when he lived in Tenafly. Matthau is quite funny here with his attempt to be suave and slick. While constantly changing her times of departure, Harris is hilarious while becoming quite inebriated from the liquor that Matthau serves up. Yet, this is the weakest of the 3 stories since you can't await for that bedroom scene that invariably takes place. Guess that Harris' marriage to Larry isn't as great as she made it out to be after all.

In the 3rd segment, Matthau and Lee Grant star as a couple whose daughter is about to be married at the hotel. Trouble is she has wedding jitters so she locks herself in the bathroom. A very funny routine is establish by Matthau and Grant attempting to get her to come out and get married. It is only when her husband-to-be is summoned, he solves everything by telling her to "cool it." So, here we see the generation gap is action.

The common link in the film is room 719 where the 3 stories take place. If only the walls could talk, they'd tell you not to miss this film.