MovieChat Forums > Luv (1967) Discussion > A Truly Awful Movie...On Purpose?

A Truly Awful Movie...On Purpose?

posted 2 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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"Luv" is one of those movies that took me a few decades to see. The reviews were bad when it came out, it doesn't get shown much anymore on any sort of TV, given the true classics on the Jack Lemmon resume(Mr. Roberts, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Days of Wine and Roses, The Odd Couple, and yes, The Great Race), its not much spoken of .

But I finally watched it and ...hoo boy, is it BAD. Really awful.

But in a very special sort of way , I suppose.

The movie came with a fine pedigree: Mike Nichols (of Nichols and May) had directed it on Broadway as a play, and Elaine May(of Nichols and May) elected to take one of her first(and only) movie roles in it.

Nichols chose not to direct the movie of "Luv." He must have sensed how it just wasn't going to work on the Big Screen. And thus we missed "Mike Nichols directs Elaine May." Nichols -- hot from "Virginia Woolf," elected to direct a little ditty called "The Graduate" instead. I guess he made the right choice.

For the movie, the star was Jack Lemmon. Only his name goes above the title. Elaine May and the wonderfully unique Peter Falk (still in his supporting actor/character man days, pre-Columbo) have to settle for below the title. Though the three actors are pretty much the entire cast of the movie. Oh, its got a hot chick named Nina Wayne in it, and some other people, and even Harrison Ford for one brief punch-out of Lemmon, but...its the Lemmon-May-Falk show.

And it is just this side of horrifying to watch three major talents like Lemmon, Falk, and May just crash and burn in having to play awful people in awful scenes in an awful movie.

But maybe "Luv" was ...awful on purpose?

After all, "the play's the thing," and in the 1960s, evidently this Murray Schisgal guy(the playwright) was considered...what? Avant-garde? High art? Offbeat and eccentric?

The dialogue as delivered by Lemmon, Falk, and May is often such. And the lowpoint for me was a scene at Niagara Falls(on location, no process work, that's the mighty falls right behnid the actors) as newlywed Lemmon and May test each other's love of each other by beating on each other(yes, he beats her as much as she beats him) and doing other humliating things. In no way does this scene play as "real" -- so it MUST be art -- a particular kind of post-beatnik New York art that -- when done really WELL -- was the essence of Nichols and May but done really BADLY (here) is just embarrassing to look at.

I blame Jack Lemmon in part, here. Though he became more of a stage actor in his later career("The American Olivier," wrote some critic) when he made "Luv," he was very much a movie guy, and a top bankable star(this wouldn't last much longer) and just seemed to oversell everything about his crazy ,suicidal character.

"In the know" movie fans know that Jack Lemmon and Peter Falk came into "Luv" just two years after appearing in the "Mega Comedy" The Great Race, where Lemmon was the archvillain Professor Fate and Falk was his dopey henchman, "Max." That's one of the great "pop classics" of the 60's -- Lemmon later said he got more fan mail for Professor Fate than for any other character. And he was a the top of his stardom, and Falk was an "up and coming supporting actor." And the two of them played it that way -- lead and support, a "comedy team."

In "Luv," Falk(prematurelyl) is raised up to leading man alongside Lemmon, and it doesn't really work after The Great Race. Falk isn't ready for a lead yet(he'd need Columbo to become a bankable movie star himself) and Lemmon simply doesn't fit the material.

Oh, in a WAY he fits it, Lemmon opens the film mopey, catatonic and suicidal -- literally en route to commit suicide. Just as he would open the much bigger, much better "The Odd Couple" the very next year.

Lemmon fit THAT part all right. But what didn't fit was the fact that this "Luv" role was practically unplayable: a miserable, failed, unemployable(by choice) suicidal lump of a man who does weird things like sing an old college fight song with old college buddy Falk(one in yet another series of "comedy" scenes in this movie that not only aren't funny but are "anti-funny.")

Lemmon certainly does have a string of classics on his resume, and he certainly WAS a top ten star in the 60's(specialty: domestic comedies of marriage) but...I've always felt that his neurotic, whining, whimpering Felix Unger in The Odd Couple accidentally "set him for life" as that kind of character and - -who wanted to know THAT guy? I don't think women went for Lemmon after The Odd Couple. He switched to heavy drama because he simply wasn't that funny anymore, and because whatever sexual charisma he had once had(he WAS handsome, enough) was no longer there.

And ithe downfall of Lemmon's sex appeal and comic charisma is on display -- prematurely -- in "Luv."

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Though I will say this. Lemmon wasn't a heavy man, didn't gain weight until his old man roles in the 80s and 90s but he's INCREDIBLY skinny in "Luv," particularly in the face, and its a contradiction: never has Jack Lemmon been more handsome in a movie(he was the right age at the time -- early 40's) and never has he played such a repulsive character(though he would come close a few times.)

Peter Falk ended up with "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar nominations in his first two films -- Hollywood knew talent when they saw it -- and an Emmy, and came to "Luv" with that endearing voice and eccentric manner well in place for comedy. But HE didn't get a good part here, either. Funny thing: in how Falk engineers the hapless Lemmon into a crazy scheme, he's a bit of a forerunner of the nutcase CIA man who ruins Alan Arkin's life in The In Laws, but THAT writing isn't HERE. Still, one watches "Luv" with some confidence: don't worry, Falk -- you'll be playing Columbo next year (The TV movie Prescription: Murder in 1968.)

As of this writing (2022), Elaine May is still alive whereas Lemmon and Falk are long gone. And yet, for as long a life as she had, her career was a sporadic thing. She ended up directing only -- what? four films? Two were "normal-ish" successes : A New Leaf(with Walter Matthau and May herself in her most endearing and unforgettable performance) and The Heartbreak Kid(May isn't in it, but her lookalike daughter is.) Two were "cult" Mikey and Nicky(Falk again, with Cassavetes) and Ishtar (with Charles Grodin from The Heartbreak Kid along with two guys named Beatty and Hoffman.) May evidently did a lot of script-fixing during these years, and popped up outta nowhere in 2000 to be quite funny with Woody Allen in Small Time Crooks.

So here she is back in "Luv," looking pretty damn sexy(in that Jewish princess way) delivering her lines pretty damn funny and...stranded.

Except for two scenes centered on the same great joke.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The joke stems from the plot of "Luv."

The "plot" of "Luv" has Peter Falk -- on a chance re-meeting with old school chum Lemmon -- electing to foist Lemmon "at top speed and ASAP" on Falk's wife Elaine May. Falk's goal: divorce May, set her up with Lemmon as a husband to avoid alimony, and marry his own new hot chick.

Amazingly, the plan works. Lemmon marries May; Falk marries the hot chick.

And the joke:

When May is shown married to Falk ,she shows Falk a chart she has drawn up and reels off the facts and figures in a business like manner: "Per this chart, this blue line is how long we've been married(five years) and this red line is how often we (have sex.") The red line is pretty high at the top left(the beginning of the marriage), but plummets downward and off the chart.

Later, when May is married to LEMMON, she shows him the same chart made up for their three-WEEK marriage and she references the red line . Lemmon says: "Where's the red line?" May: "There isn't one." And she drops the chart on the floor.

Translation: Married to Falk, May had good sex for the first year and then it slowly reduced down to nothing. Married to Lemmon...there's been no sex at all.

Honestly this is the funniest joke in the movie -- told twice, two different ways -- and makes a point about how women maybe want it more than you'd think, and men don't. And May is delightfully deadpan telling the joke both times.

And that's it. That's the two funny parts in "Luv."

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

To the extent that "Luv" is worth seeing, I'd say its for Elaine May, above all. She was so RARELY on screen outside of Nichols and May on TV. There is novelty in seeing Lemmon and Falk reunited after The Great Race(which allowed Lemmon, I might add, to NOT play the usual whining milquetoast; Professor Fate was a badass), and in seeing Falk just before Columbo.

But its a bad movie, with bad dialogue and bad scenes and if this is a "time capsule" of the kind of avant garde Broadway writing we once had, well..

...we've come a long way, baby. Good riddance.

[–] christomacin (4655) 2 years ago

You know a film hasn't aged well if the tagline in the trailer is "I can't believe they finally made LUV!". I don't remember how or when I saw the trailer for this movie, and I can't find it on YouTube at the moment, but as I recall it was VERY late 60s in it's once-hip (now tame and lame) suggestiveness.

Reminds me of this Monty Python skit:
https://youtu.be/4Kwh3R0YjuQ
("Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Say no more, say no more. You now what I mean, Squire?").

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

You know a film hasn't aged well if the tagline in the trailer is "I can't believe they finally made LUV!".

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Ha. There ya go...

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I don't remember how or when I saw the trailer for this movie, and I can't find it on YouTube at the moment, but as I recall it was VERY late 60s in it's once-hip (now tame and lame) suggestiveness.

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Well, before the R rating officially arrived in late 1968, we had a few YEARS in the sixties of movies trying to "creep up" on sexual themes and dialogue , but often hitting the jokes so hard(and usually with middle-aged people saying them ) and...for the most part it didn't work. Though I DO think Elaine May's two scenes with the "sex data charts" are pretty funny. Mainly in her business-like line delivery.

The other problem with late 60's comedies -- if they weren't "hip" like The Graduate -- is that you had everyone from Bob Hope to David Niven to Debbie Reynolds put in story lines with "long haired hippies" having "love ins and be ins." It was massively embarrassing for the "old time stars" -- they looked desperate trying to look hip with these hippie characters. It was truly the beginning of the end for this generation of actors.

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Reminds me of this Monty Python skit:
https://youtu.be/4Kwh3R0YjuQ
("Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Say no more, say no more. You now what I mean, Squire?").

--

Ha...that's a been a catch phrase for decades now! And a good one, and a correct one.

I suppose its hard to make a hip comedy without looking like you are "trying too hard" to be hip. Or sexual. It can be done.

But it wasn't much done in the 60's. They weren't equipped for the job, writing wise.