Plaza Suite

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 ****

Walter Matthau plays 3 different characters,each convincing it's a different person. My favorite segment is the one with Barbara Harris though. Great chemistry those two had in that scene! Maureen Stapleton was kinda funny too,but by the third act I got bored and turned it off. Maybe I'll finish it soon.

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 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.

Matthau scores in all three vignettes from Neil Simon's long running triumph about different people who stay at a particular room in the posh New York hotel. His three ladies Stapelton, Harris and Grant are also wonderful. This is among the best of Simon's works to be adapted for the screen.