It's My Turn

Kate Gunzinger (Jill Clayburgh) is a math professor but her know-it-all student may be surpassing her. She moved in with boyfriend Homer (Charles Grodin) but she is still troubled by her spinsterhood. It doesn't help that her father (Steven Hill) is getting remarried. She is meeting her future family for the first time. Her new step-brother Ben Lewin (Michael Douglas) is a washed up baseball player. He saves her from an embarrassing situation and the two of them connect despite her boyfriend and his wife.

Like they say, there are too many people in their relationship. That may be the point of the movie but it makes it difficult to root for them to make it. It would help if Homer is a stiff. He needs to have no personality and no chemistry with Kate. There are two ways to take this relationship movie. It's either modern and edgy or it's convoluted modern gobbledygook. Homer is a perfectly good guy and that's a problem. For the climatic talk between them to work, it needs to be setup much better in the earlier interaction. The script got a Razzie nomination although I don't think it deserves it. There are some issues but they are not fatal. There is also a common complaint about the movie's feminism. Let's just say that some boys have very thin skin. Maybe she didn't show enough T&A.

Jill Clayburgh plays yet another one of those wannabe liberated women in this feminist fantasy/comedy. She's a math professor at the University of Chicago and living with a guy (Charles Grodin) but she feels she wants more ... maybe. On a trip to New York for her widowed father's wedding, she meets a brash man (Michael Douglas) and something happens.

The trouble with this film is that the feminist view is scuttled in favor of formula storytelling. Clayburgh hit the mark in AN UNMARRIED WOMAN because the character fulfilled her promise. In this film, she falls for the same of song and dance and basically gives up any sort of fulfillment for the usual relationship with a man.

The ultimate fulfillment is still to be found in a man. The real irony here is that this film was written by a woman and directed by a woman and they still come up with "a man is the answer," whereas AN UNMARRIED WOMAN was written and directed by a man.

Feminist politics aside, Clayburgh, Douglas, and Grodin are easy to watch even though there are a few wayward scenes that go nowhere or seem to have come out of nowhere. Steven Hill plays the marrying father, and although he's in bad health and popping heart pills, nothing comes of that arc. Beverly Garland is quite good as the new bride. There's also Dianne Wiest, Charles Kimbrough,, and Daniel Stern as a brilliant student.

Clayburgh's teaching career and new job in New York tack a back seat as soon as Douglas enters the story. Director Claudia Weill, who showed such a sure hand in GIRLFRIENDS just goes by the numbers here. There's never a moment's doubt what the conclusion will be, despite the film's title.

The final chapter in Jill Clayburgh's unplanned "independent woman" trilogy (the first two were "An Unmarried Woman" and "Starting Over"). This one is from the same writer as "Dirty Dancing," which probably explains why the main character in each is a Jewish woman who is very much "daddy's little girl."

Here, the protagonist is perhaps the most glamorous mathematics professor ever (she wears stilettos to class, but earthy gal that she is, removes them while solving equations at the blackboard). She's got relationship issues with her widowed dad who's remarrying, and with her divorced live-in boyfriend, plus she's conflicted about whether to take a new job in a new city that pays much more, but won't allow her to continue her research. She breezily describes her various complications as "modern problems," which tells you that the creators here felt they were at the very cutting edge of portraying the quintessential "liberated" woman. Laura Linney's character in "You Can Count On Me" had a similarly complicated life, but that film didn't feel the need for its characters to be so self-aware.

Michael Douglas enters the picture to help her figure out where/how to get the healthy, giving relationship that everyone around her seems to have, and that therefore is "her turn" to get (get it?)

This is a decent movie that actually doesn't feel particularly dated, (save for Clayburgh's Oscar-bait "big scene" towards the end) despite its obvious 70's era feminist overtones. But perhaps because of its agenda, the romance doesn't exactly sweep you off your feet.

As with most movies from the 80s, part of the fun is seeing what stars/faces of the future show up. Here, we get a young Daniel Stern, almost unrecognizable as Clayburgh's star pupil, and future "Law and Order" District Attorneys Steven Hill and Dianne Wiest.

I changed my mind when I noticed there were very few other reviews. I found the movie to be okay. It was a bit slow, and lacking in real substance. The character development could have been so much better. It did have a reasonable ending, and I am glad of that. I admit, I thought the main actress was trying to be Diane Keaton. So I'm uncertain if she is any good in her own right at acting.

It seems that a lot of people consider the main character to be a feminist, and I'm not sure I agree. She seems like she tries to create her life to satisfy males that aren't really emotionally available to her, and comes off as desperate and naive in the process. I am glad that, unlike many typical romantic comedies, she doesn't end up giving up her life for a man. Unfortunately, it seems more situational from the men's lives, as opposed to her own character growth that keeps her from making the mistakes. Hence why I'm not sure I'd call her character a feminist. But I'm still glad it turned out alright in the end. She does end up showing the signs of growth at the very end as a result of the other events, and so that's something good.

The movie didn't make me angry at any point. It made me a bit bored, but not angry. A lot of movies have made me angry for various reasons lately. Since this movie, although a bit of a mediocre film, didn't elicit any strong negative emotions, I gave it a five instead of a four. The acting could have been better, although that was likely a poor script issue. It could have had way more depth, and been pretty good potentially. But, it was alright, and I don't feel it was a complete waste of time.

This film essentially begins with a mathematics professor in Chicago by the name of "Kate Gunzinger" (Jill Clayburgh) facing a difficult decision on whether to go to a job interview in New York City and while there attending his father's wedding to a woman she doesn't particularly like. Equally distressing is the fact that if she is offered a new job there it will cause stress in her current relationship with her live-in boyfriend "Homer" (Charles Grodin) which-even though it lacks passion and intimacy-still gives her some degree of comfort and stability. What she doesn't anticipate, however, is meeting a former baseball player named "Ben Lewin" (Michael Douglas) who awakens emotions she thought had long since ceased to exist. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a mediocre romantic-drama suffers from a slow pace, uninspired script and lack of chemistry between Jill Clayburgh and Michael Douglas. Even so, Jill Clayburgh performed adequately enough and since this film managed to pass the time I have rated it accordingly. An average film all around.