Neil Simon meets WAITING FOR GODOT in this Road Pic about four New York Jews over one long day*, carpooling from the Promised Land of Manhattan to a pre-gentrified Old World Brooklyn for a Memorial to mutual pal Leslie Braverman after his unexpected death at 41. If they only knew which Funeral Home it was at. (So many to choose from!) Director Sidney Lumet was still a few films away from finding his feature film form, and those stagy/tv-ready Filmways Studios sets aren’t much help. But lenser Boris Kaufman blooms out on location, with more grain & less color saturation to set an urban tone, while tv sketch writer Herb Sargent (THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS; SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE) on his sole film script, loads on every Jew-centric male bonding sketch idea he ever had. And what a cast for comic harmonizing on life’s lack of fairness, tsuris, and the best ‘30s movies (they’re all experts). With George Segal (Paul Rudd’s dad?; or does he just look it); Jack Warden & Sorrell Booke as the more secular/Reform Jews, and Joseph Wiseman (unhappy riding in a Volkswagen) the more observant Conservative. Other actors only get single scenes, and Sargent isn’t exactly generous toward the ladies. But cabbie Godfrey Cambridge & Rabbi Alan King, given something to chew on, aren’t shy about pulling focus. Messy, but memorable.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Simonized Samuel Beckett not as unlikely as it sounds. Simon would adapt Anton Chekhov’s THE GOOD DOCTOR for B’way just five years after this. And as for casting GODOT with this crew: Warden/Estragon; Wiseman/Vladimir; Segal/Lucky; Sorrell/Pozzo.
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