THE SUNSHINE BOYS (1975)

In good plays & bad, Neil Simon wrote all his characters with the underlying cadence of vaudeville: set-up and comeback.  The rhythm as ubiquitous to ‘Doc’ Simon as iambic pentameter to Shakespeare.   So whaddaya do when your characters are vaudevillians?  An ODD COUPLE variation about a long estranged comedy team reviving their double act after 11 years of silence for a one-shot tv special, surprisingly, Simon doesn’t push the rhythm much more than he does in his other plays.  More surprising, just how sturdy it still is.  As the cantankerous half of the team, Walter Matthau plays twenty years older than he was at the time, pressing harder than he has to, but still getting his laughs.  (On stage, Jack Albertson was sadder, slower, meaner.)  And as the obstinately sane half, George Burns (reviving his screen career after 36 years*) shows off his near supernatural comic timing.  (On stage, Sam Levene was stronger, less loopy, equally funny.)  Check out Burns’ first scene playing sans toupée against Richard Benjamin in the thankless role of Matthau’s agent/nephew for a masterclass in how to trigger laughs with quietly bravura agogic comic timing.  Director Herbert Ross keeps up the pace and shows off past choreographic skills in multiplane staging and long takes with the boys making a geezers’ gavotte out placing the furniture ‘just so’ for a rehearsal.  But Simon ultimately sets himself up to fail in a comic climax he can’t begin to pull off when the boys try to perform the old act.  A culmination unable to meet expectations of something valuable/something hilarious being lost.  Even Chaplin fell into this particular trap in THE CIRCUS/’28 and LIMELIGHT/’52.  And the old ‘Doctor’s Sketch’ routine makes for a considerable stumble.*  Yet elsewhere, the film earns some pretty big laughs and has aged nearly as gracefully as the eighty (going on to 100) yr-old Burns.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Jack Benny originally had the role, but when he became too ill, showed his typical generosity personally suggesting Burns take over.

DOUBLE-BILL:  THE ODD COUPLE/’68 should make a perfect pairing, but the film is yet another cinematic botch by stage director Gene Saks.  The tie between the two plays must have been at its strongest when Tony Randall and Jack Klugman revived SUNSHINE BOYS on B’way for a half-yr run in ‘97.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Perhaps the old act is supposed to be this bad, this unfunny.  As if that was the point of contention driving them apart underneath the incompatible character traits.