Happy Birthday, Gemini

This film was funny and touching at times. I thought the actors and actresses captured the essence of the ethnic characters they were portraying and the social condition they were living in very well. It captured the difficulty that many people face when opening up and talking about really personal emotions because there is that fear that the other person will change how they feel about you. It showed that beneath the shallow appearance of everyday life, deeper themes are at work. In a way, this film is in the early stages of a trend that picked up pace dramatically through the 1990s and so one can look back on it as one of the precursor "coming out" films that undoubtedly inspired some people in a positive way.

Where to start? Did the actors even read the script first? How could they imagine this could be any good? They make up for the lack of a good script with VOLUME.

THe few jokes revolve around bad stereotypes. Almost every line of this movie is annoying and offensive.

The acting isn't any better. The actors ended up trying way too hard trying to make up for the bad script. It just made it all worse.

You feel compelled to see this through because of the reputation of the cast. It just gets more and more painful before it even gets to the lame and dated point of the film.

Skip this. It is unbearable.

Dull, self-obsessed people voice their self-obsession in this movie version of Albert Innaurato's Off-Broadway hit. The cast, including Madeline Kahn, and Rita Moreno try to make up for their inherent slovenliness by loudness.

If you were to make a burlesque of what people imagine to be an Off-Broadway play, you couldn't do better than this, with its annoying ethnic portrayals, and Alan Rosenberg's uncertainty about his sexual identity, as he announces to his girlfriend, Sarah Holcomb, that he's gay. When I write "you couldn't do better", in many ways I mean you couldn't do worse, as Miss Kahn swans around in the world's largest beehive hairdo.

These are just the sort of characters and situations that Neil Simon could and did make interesting and funny. I suspect that the people involved in this movie thought they were doing that, but they didn't.

This film was groundbreaking in 1980, it's a poignant story about love and acceptance told through laughter. This is the film version of "Gemini" which ran on Broadway in the late 1970's. The cast is dynamic, with Madeline Kahn in an astounding performance as Bunny. Rita Moreno is also hilarious playing Italian. The characters are colorful or stereotypes, or both. Anyone who has ever brought home friends and cringed around their families will relate, but also to the love and support that family can give. A feel good movie with some memorable lines and a really sweet soul.

CC

This play had significant personal meaning for me in the early 80s and I only recently found a copy of this film adaptation. Like many stage comedies, the translation to film falls flat in most scenes partly due to the absence of theatrical elements (including the audience) but the biggest problem with this version is the casting. With ethnicity at the core of much of the humor, it was less than convincing to have Rita Moreno as an Italian widow, Madeline Kahn as an Irish floozy, and other characters trying to "play" an ethnicity that was not natural for them. But I really liked the ending on this filmed version, and the scene between Francis and his father at the end was very real and touching making this a nice "coming out" film for the whole family.