Excellent but underrated film

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Blistering performances.

Various guests arrive at The Beverly Hills Hotel. Hannah (Jane Fonda) and Bill Warren (Alan Alda) are a troubled couple getting a divorce. Chauncey Gump (Richard Pryor) and Willis Panama (Bill Cosby) are bickering Chicago doctors vacationing with their wives. London actress Diana Barrie (Maggie Smith) travels with her closeted husband Sidney Cochran (Michael Caine) for her Oscar nomination. Marvin Michaels (Walter Matthau) is surprised by the call girl sent by his sleazy brother Harry and then his wife arrives.The four stories have varying effectiveness. I most wanted to see this movie for Pryor. His and Cosby's section has the foursome in quirky slapstick comedy. It's odd. Pryor is more known in slapstick with usual partner Gene Wilder. Cosby's present day troubles is problematic. Matthau's section has one main scene. It suffers a little due to the fact that he's not an innocent. It would be infinitely funnier if none of it is his fault. Imagine him finding the hooker naked in bed and immediately his wife arrives. That way he does nothing wrong and is left with all the blame. That would be infinitely funnier. The Fonda Alda coupling is rather forgettable and it could have been more. Maybe if their children joins them and they have to deal with them. Smith and Caine have the best part. In fact, Maggie gets an Oscar which is ironic for this story. They do great work and have room to do the work.

Many IMDb reviewers have expressed fondness for this movie, most with a few caveats. It's not surprising to me that others like it and I don't. What's surprising is that those who do like it seem to care about the same things I do - script, acting, story, emotional impact - yet come to the exact opposite conclusion that I do in evaluating each element.I didn't see this movie when it came out, and that may be a key point. I'm old enough to remember still loving Alan Alda and everything he did at the time California Suite was made. Maybe if I had seen it then, I would have been impressed by the verbal back-and-forth between Alda and Jane Fonda, or by the inclusion of Cosby and Pryor as unexpected African American professionals, or maybe even by the near coming-to-grips with queer politics in the Maggie Smith/Michael Caine scenes. At the age I was then, I also found Walter Matthau almost irresistibly funny.But here's the thing. I'm also old enough to remember when I began to find Alan Alda characters, both as they were written and as he played them, excruciatingly self-indulgent, insufferably self-righteous, and generally in love with the sound of their own voice, with the net effect that they couldn't genuinely connect with anyone around them and didn't seem to care. Where could you find the quintessential, I'm-so-sensitive Alan Alda character of the 70's and 80's? Staking out the moral high ground, while snidely pointing out how no one else was joining him.That's the case here. He chews through Neil Simon's contrived and repetitive dialog with an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink smugness as if he's actually rendering astute, bullet point observations about Jane Fonda's character, or about the mature life choices he's made, and the epiphanies he's had. He's not. And neither is anyone else in this movie.Nevertheless, Jane picks up her flint, sharpens the edge and away we go, because that's what you do in a Neil Simon comedy. Except that no one goes anywhere. The script is so lacking in insight that waiting for these two to finish a scene, put down their tools, and go collect their checks takes a numbing eternity. With so many salvos fired, there should be some colorful bursts, but every one is a dud.Neither actor manages to pitch their lines with a single, convincing feeling, let alone build toward an emotional climax. The script simply doesn't provide one. So jarring in fact, is the why-not-here/how-about-there raising of their voices, that it brings to mind wartime speeches read aloud by captives. A few awkward cadences and over-emphasized words lets the home folks know they don't mean it. A rich irony indeed for Jane Fonda. Walter Matthau, I'm sorry to say, is just irritating. Even he can't redeem a trite, horrifying attempt at sexual comedy, without the sex, that would have been unworthy of a two-minute sketch on the Carole Burnett show. He deserved better. The late seventies were his salad days, when his gruff, call-my-bluff-if-you-dare persona usually generated laughs. Yet here is, downsized to a cloying, simpering imitation of someone funny that 1978 audiences no doubt expected to hit it out of the park. He tries everything but registering a complaint. I would have forgiven him for saying look, I'm usually good at this stuff, you know I am, but I got nothing to work with here.And don't get me started on Cosby and Pryor. From an inspired decision to write them as doctors, to a miserable, when-will-it-end insult to the audience, these two wasted talents are reduced to stumbling around in a dance macabre that the Three Stooges would have lent more dignity. It's as if the audience is being asked to laugh at a nasty, open secret: see, we let them play against race as urban sophisticates, but it's obvious what they're best at. Except it's not.Smith and Caine? Maggie manages what no one else does in this film, which is to draw us in, swinging deftly between rage and vulnerability. She occupies the only breathing space in the whole film. She's given little to do really, but succeeds well enough to be awarded that Hollywood staple, the make-up Oscar for having been ignored in the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Michael Caine plays her bored, gay husband with as much restraint as possible, but even he can't overcome the cluttered, too-clever-by-half lines Simon has written.All in all, California Suite is an obnoxious experience, fatally lacking in wit. Bloated scene after bloated scene simply collapses under too many lines with too little substance. Almost everyone involved should have known better, and has done much better on other projects. For Neil Simon, it's as if he knew none of it was sticking, so he just kept throwing more spaghetti at the wall.

A bland quartet of tales via Neil Simon all set at the Beverly Hills Hotel is a West coast version of Simon's Plaza Suite. The film directed by Herbert Ross entwines the four stories that were presented separately on stage thus the film has no real climax, conclusion or resolution:it just ends. This film like so many others wastes Richard Pryor's genius, and the segment Pryor shares with Bill Cosby is an embarrassment. The scenes between Jane Fonda and Alan Alda couldn't be less interesting, in fact, the only interesting thing is that the late Dana Plato plays their daughter. Michael Caine and Maggie Smith are watchable as a couple in a third skit, though hardly worthy of the Oscar Smith received. For me, the film belongs to Walter Mathhau and Elaine May. Particularly funny is a scene of Matthau trying to put stockings on a passed out hooker. And this is one of the rare instances where Elaine May's distinctive comedic style has been put to good use on film, but 1 out of 4 does not make a worthwhile movie. Fonda fared better in Simon's Barefoot in the Park(67) as did director Ross with Simon's The Goodbye Girl(77). Say goodbye to this one.

I'm biased - I'm a Neil Simon fan who loves the concept of the "Suite" plays (on stage, each act is a one-act play using the same set, with the actors playing different roles each act). Obviously, because the stories are intertwined in the film, they couldn't do that (they didn't do in "London Suite" either).But, here's my complaint: the intertwining is sloppy. We'll sometimes spend twenty or so minutes with a plot, then get a quick cutaway with another (Walter Matthau's plot doesn't really kick in until an hour's passed; Alan Alda disappears after forty-five minutes).Despite this balancing flaw, there are goodies to be found: Visitors From New York: Alda and Jane Fonda have great chemistry (and, of course, she looks great!): one can really believe they were a couple. That being said, he's pretty weak, letting her get in a lot of bitchy lines, and barely sticking up for himself. Three stars.Visitors From London: A lot of people think this is the best segment, and I'm one of them. Once again, Maggie Smith and Michael Caine give excellent performances (but there's a touch of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" throughout the whole scenario) - she deserved her Oscar (and I love that they filmed at an actual Oscars ceremony). Four stars.Visitors From Philadelphia: First of all, Elaine May was reminding me so much of Louise Lasser. That being said, I could totally buy her and Matthau together, and I love how calm she was upon her discovery (she gets a great line regarding what she's gonna do). Three and a half stars.Visitors From Chicago: Unfairly criticized. Sure, it's slapstick in the extreme (it gives us an idea how "The Out of Towners" may have looked if confined to "Plaza Suite," which it was intended for), but there's something quite cool about two very different masters of stand up, Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby, going up against one another ("clean" vs. "dirty"?). And, you just know that a few weeks later, the characters got together and had a good laugh about it. Three and a quarter stars.Throw in a nice credit sequence, with David Hockney paintings, and you have a fine way to spend two hours.