Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Micitype Pretty Good

Aiden Melton The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

ShadeGrenade Charles Grodin strangely never seems to have attained stardom despite having given a number of excellent performances, such as the one in this film. 'The Heartbreak Kid' ( 1972 ) casts him as 'Lenny Cantrow', an ex-army man who falls for and marries over-affectionate Jewish girl Lila ( Jeannie Berlin ). On their Miami honeymoon, she comes to irritate him. Asking him whether he loves her at every opportunity, and making a a pig of herself by eating egg salad in a restaurant.When she gets a bad case of sunburn, he leaves her in their room while he goes to the beach alone. Here he meets beautiful college student 'Kelly Corcoran' ( Cybill Shepherd ). They get friendly, and he gradually realises he made a big mistake marrying Lila. After a quickie divorce, he goes off in search of Kelly. But there is an obstacle in his way - her cantankerous ( and rich ) father Dwayne ( Edward Albert )...This is a wonderfully witty comedy, superbly directed by Elaine May ( also responsible for the 1971 Walter Matthau film - in which she also acted - 'A New Leaf' ). The performances are uniformly excellent, particularly Grodin and Berlin ( okay, so she's May's daughter, but so what? Why has she not had as good an acting role as this since? ), and Albert is suitably fearsome as Kelly''s dad ( if this had been made thirty years before the role probably would have been played by Spencer Tracy ). He gets most of the best lines. On hearing Lenny's pretentious comments about dinner, for instance, he remarks: "No deceit in the cauliflower? Where do you get ideas like that?". It should come as no surprise that this is the work of the great Neil Simon. He has sometimes come a cropper writing directly for the big screen ( 'The Cheap Detective', for instance ), but his work here is top-notch. Shepherd looks good enough to eat as 'Kelly'. The ambiguous ending suggests that Lenny is more interested in the chase than in the ( for wont of a better word ) kill. Perhaps he and Kelly broke up after only a few months of married life, and he went after some other girl.Funniest moment - Lenny and Lila are in a restaurant. He is trying in a roundabout way to tell Lila that he wants out of the marriage. She misunderstands, and thinks he is dying!

Petri Pelkonen Lenny Cantrow and Lila Kolodny are a newlywed Jewish couple.During their honeymoon in Florida he meets this tall blonde, Kelly, and realizes he's made a terrible mistake.Now he wants to have an instant divorce and get together with this attractive gentile.Another problem is the girl's father who can't stand this guy.Elaine May, the former sidekick of Mike Nichols is the director of The Heartbreak Kid (1972).Its writers are Bruce Jay Friedman (story) and Neil Simon (screenplay).What a wonderful and funny comedy this is! Charles Grodin does a performance of a lifetime as Lenny.Same thing with Jeannie Berlin as Lila, who's Elaine May's daughter.Cybill Shepherd portrays Kelly Corcoran in a memorable way.And so does Eddie Albert as her father.Audra Lindley is wonderful as her mother.Doris Roberts does a small role as Mrs.Cantrow.Grodin's character is somewhat likable even though he acts like a real jerk.You can't help but feel sorry for this man.I mean, this gorgeous college girl wants him! But still, what he does is wrong.Leaving his wife, his beautiful and sweet wife like that is just wrong.But in the last image of the film you can see some kind of regret on the man's face.He's just married Kelly and he starts humming Close To You, that was played on his wedding with Lila.This movie made me laugh several times.Like the time Lenny lays out all his cards for Kelly's dad wanting to marry his daughter.Guess twice how the old man feels about that.The Heartbreak Kid is a real treat.Everybody should see it.

moonspinner55 Charles Grodin plays a Jewish New Yorker who takes his earthy new bride to Miami for their honeymoon, but becomes increasingly disillusioned with her on the trip--most especially because of a flirty, leggy blonde from Minnesota whom he meets on the beach. With Neil Simon writing this screenplay, one is almost instantly aware not of the class issue (it doesn't matter to Simon who has more money than who) but of the Jewish angle. Simon makes the bride gross and vulgar, and Jeannie Berlin has been encouraged to play these non-attributes to the hilt, while Cybill Shepherd's Protestant sex-goddess is the epitome of sarcastic poise. Simon wins points against the new wife by playing up her Jewishness in all its stereotypical brashness; it's as if the volume is up too loud. "The Heartbreak Kid" has many things going for it--the excellent performances and some very humorous asides to name two--but the intentional lewdness behind Grodin's marital predicament, and the queasy way he ingratiates himself into Shepherd's family, isn't so much hilarious as it is cringe-inducing. Shepherd's no-nonsense father, wonderfully played in an I've-seen-everything-now way by Eddie Albert, reacts accordingly to Grodin's new proposals with anger and confusion, and in these instances the film touches on something much deeper than the modern Jewish man's internal struggle. Unfortunately, this is mainly what Simon has on his plate, and it wears the audience down--and seems very dated now, anyway. Elaine May's direction is fashionably ragged and somewhat detached, and her ending is thoughtful (if, in retrospect, uneventful). The story certainly needed a modern tweaking, as this version is just a little bit undernourished (more mean-spirited than funny), however a 2007 remake fared even worse. **1/2 from ****

naglec-1 An artful mixture of deft, laugh-out-loud comedy, interspersed with touching poignant moments, makes this film special and unforgettable. Elaine May's direction was delicate yet purposeful, allowing for the superb development of characters ( in particular Eddie Albert's curmudgeonly businessman/father) without impeding the flow of the plot.In this social portrayal of the Peter Principle, the glib, shallow Lenny somehow talks himself to dizzying social and economic heights all without the benefit of a pedigree or occupational skill set. Albert's father figure takes no time at all to see through all of this; but he is outnumbered by his wife and daughter who succumb to Lenny's charms. You can't help but feel this man's helpless pain in having to watch his lovely, impressionable daughter lured into a clearly doomed marriage.Cybil Shephard, Eddie Albert and Charles Grondin all turned in career performances. This show was one of those rare times when everything (directing, writing and acting) came together to create something greater than the sum of its parts - it's a real treasure.