Rien en commun

David Basner (Tom Hanks) is a lovable cocky successful Chicago ad exec who just got promoted returning from vacation. He wants his boss Charlie Gargas (Hector Elizondo) to make him partner. Then his mother (Eva Marie Saint) leaves his father (Jackie Gleason). He must shuttle between his stubborn crass father, and his mother who is happy with her new found freedom. Donna Mildred Martin (Bess Armstrong) is his best friend and high school sweethearts. He is trying to land a big airline account and uses his charm on the owner Andrew Woolridge (Barry Corbin). He sleeps with the media director Cheryl Ann Wayne (Sela Ward) who turns out to be Woolridge's daughter. His father does nothing but complains and is struggling. Then he gets fired from his salesman job.

This movie tries too hard to be jokey. Director Garry Marshall is allowing Hanks to clown around a little too much. The broad comedy doesn't quite fit seeing how he's suppose to be a professional sweet talking the client. He is playing strictly as a wild creative ad exec who jokes around. The broad jokes don't fit either when the movie tries to move into more serious territories. The serious stuff has a bit more heft and that's due to genius of Jackie Gleason. He and Hanks have pretty good chemistry. I also have a minor problem with the over-use of montages to drive the story forward. It's lazy writing.

This is a great movie. It combines several emotional aspects of the human condition. Classic Tom Hanks humor, emotionally touching realism as well as some serious drama.

Over the years since it was released I have watched this dozen's of times. I never get tired of it. I am moved as David Basner is forced to face the reality of his parents divorce and tries to build an individual relationship with each of his parents.

I think this is much better than Splash, probably on par with BIG. Of course, just about anything with Tom Hanks is great simply because he is able to carry the load.

The story line is pretty straight forward, and the production was good, especially considering the 80's style of movie making. But Tom carries the movie, with his now-classic mix of rapier wit, sarcasm, and charming humor.

Tom play David Basner, a talented, slightly arrogant Chicago ad-exec whose parents just split after 50+ years of marriage. Though he has left "the nest" and views his parents as a necessary evil to be dealt with as little as possible, he finds himself providing ever-increasing support to each parent, all the while discovering the frailty and human side of each of them, and discovering what his priorities should be.

A definite watch

NOTHING IN COMMON was a smart and sentimental comedy drama that offered a pre-Oscar'ed Tom Hanks one of his best earlier roles. Hanks plays David Basner, an advertising executive whose lightning-quick advancement at his company becomes hampered when has to start taking care of his father (Jackie Gleason, in his final film role)who has become completely helpless after his wife (Eva Maria Saint) has left him. This comedy takes some pointed and effective jabs at the advertising industry and still manages to be a warm family story as well. Hanks beautifully walks a fine line between comedy and drama in one of his better and nearly forgotten performances. Gleason is abrasive as the dad, but Saint is lovely as the mom. Sela Ward, Bess Armstrong, and Barry Corbin are also effective in supporting roles and the ending has been known to produce a few tears. An intelligent and heartwarming look at the choices that we sometimes have to make regarding career and family.

The film begins with a barrage of wit from Tom Hanks as an adman whose business is creativity. And indeed why should he not be witty? But then we meet his father, who is on his way to dying the death of a salesman, and his father is just as brilliantly witty. The lines just aren't lines that ordinary people could come up with. Everyone is a little too quick with the comedy, and when the comedy pauses, everyone is a little too quick to come up with the deep but gracefully phrased emotional revelations. And yet the movie is long; though most of the large cast of characters is quite undeveloped, still the script has a mighty load of relationships: Hanks with his father, Hanks with his mother (not so much), Hanks with two different girlfriends, the father with the mother, Hanks with his boss, and Hanks with the big client. The big client is perhaps the worst: the stereotype of the big blowhard who is charmed when you call him a big blowhard to his face.

I think there were two movies here: the one about the workplace, with a little subplot about the father; and the one about the father, with a little subplot about the workplace. I suspect, with no huge evidence, that someone had an emotional investment in not leaving material out. Some of the details have the ring of autobiography.

Several big talents appear in the movie: not only Jackie Gleason, Tom Hanks, and Eva Marie Saint but also Hector Elizondo and, in a tiny role, Dan Castellaneta. Nobody does anything here that he hasn't done better elsewhere, but still it's good to see them all.