Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Powerful

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The film begins with Lenny (Charles Grodin) marrying Lila (Jeannie Berlin). On the honeymoon it is obvious that his new wife can be very annoying and she eats like a pig...though he surely must have known all this as they had been dating. After all, it wasn't like the marriage was one of those arranged ones!! So on one hand, you can understand Lenny becoming disenchanted with her...but he knew who he was marrying! To make it much worse, he starts looking at other women and begins dating while he's STILL on his honeymoon!!! Clearly, Lenny is a super-jerk and Kelly (Cybill Shepherd) inexplicably wants him....even though she knows he just got married. Not surprisingly, her father (Eddie Albert) wants to kill Lenny...and who would blame him?! So what's next? See the film.If you had to sum up this movie in one word, AWKWARD would be pretty accurate! There are many moments where the viewer will likely feel awkward and squirm a bit as they watch that weasel Lenny! I like comedy like this...the more awkward the better. But my wife hates stuff like this and so I am glad I didn't watch the movie with her. So, if films like "The King of Comedy" or the Veal Prince Orloff episode of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" make you cringe, skip this film!I think the other reason I really enjoyed this movie was Eddie Albert and his wonderful character. Again and again, I found myself laughing whenever he spoke...and it's among his best performances. It's no surprise, then, that he was Oscar-nominated for this. He was incredibly blunt, funny and hard to dislike! And, he seemed to be the only one outraged at Lenny's god-awful actions and the inane blather that came out of Lenny's mouth!Overall, a wonderful film and I have no idea why they would bother remaking it...but that's Hollywood for you.By the way, the music to this film is awful...but representative of the times. I lived through this era and hated hearing the likes of "Close to You" again and again! Somehow I managed to tune it all out, thank goodness!

For years, all I knew of this movie was who was involved in it: director Elaine May, screenwriter Neil Simon, author Bruce Jay Friedman (I was previously familiar with two of his '80s comedies I remember enjoying-Stir Crazy and Splash) and stars Charles Grodin, Cybill Shepherd, and Eddie Albert. Oh, and also another player-Jeannie Berlin-is Ms. May's daughter. I also knew of the premise-Grodin marries Ms. Berlin, finds out she's not very appealing, dumps her after meeting Ms. Shepherd during their honeymoon, tries to get Ms. Shepherd's father-played by Albert-to approve of him for her and then...Well, I'll just say that this was both funny and a little painful to watch but it was mostly quite an enjoyable one to finally see for myself just how well put this was. So on that note, I highly recommend The Heartbreak Kid. Oh, and I just remembered that Audra Lindley-years before playing Helen Roper in "Three's Company"-is in this, too! Also, Doris Roberts-a couple of decades before her Emmy-wining role in "Everybody Loves Raymond"-plays Grodin's mother during the first-wedding sequence.

The movie's a comedy, I think, though it produces as many cringes as laughs. It's hard not to laugh at poor Lila (Berlin) as she flubs her honeymoon with sunburn crème blotches, oozing egg sandwiches, and ill-timed bathroom breaks. But then she's so emotionally needy, it's hard not to laugh and cry at the same time. On the other hand, husband Lenny's (Grodin) got all the empathy of a ham sandwich, as he chases after blonde goddess Kelly (Shepherd), piling one absence excuse on Lila after another. This is the honeymoon from heck, especially after the goddess-struck Lenny sues for divorce. But then he does grant Lila "the luggage".The humor's in the character set-ups, and Lenny's special brand of chutzpah. A little fast- talking, he thinks, gets him out of any situation. That is, until he runs into Kelly's humorless dad (Albert). Seems like the proverbial irresistible force has run into the immovable object. But has it. Grodin's appropriately obnoxious when Lenny needs to be; Berlin's vulnerable when Lila needs to be; Shepherd's gorgeous without trying; while Albert's stony mug belongs on Mt. Rushmore. And catch that contemplative ending, not what I expected, but probably appropriate for what's gone before.All in all, the movie's something of a guilty pleasure and certainly one of a kind. I do, however, miss Grodin's smirking brand of put-on.

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!