From 1980, this evening’s bedtime movie.
Concerning the hijinks of a middle-aged married couple and their younger lovers, also previously a ‘loving couple’, this one flopped hard at the box office in October 1980.
The failure of Loving Couples could be viewed as a prelude to the December 1980 box office failure of A Change Of Seasons…
…which was Loving Couples star Shirley MacLaine’s second adultery-themed comedy of that year. Each film was distributed by 20th Century Fox.
Lucky studio.
I recently tried to sit through A Change Of Seasons, via Amazon Prime, and found it unwatchable, due to that film’s male characters being such unlikeable, selfish jerks and there being an utter lack of chemistry between the principal cast members.
Anthony Hopkins, playing Seasons‘ cheating husband, once said Shirley MacLaine was “the most obnoxious actress I’ve ever worked with”, so little wonder they shared such a lack of onscreen charm.
Hopkins announces to wife MacLaine he’s having an affair with one of his students. First chance she gets, MacLaine starts her own extramarital affair with a young carpenter hired by Hopkins to work on their cabin. Hopkins seems more upset about his wife’s affair than she was about his. Both couples end up sharing the cabin together for a getaway weekend. Then their college-student daughter shows up at the cabin with her boyfriend. Everyone’s bickering and unhappy, all in one remote location.
Bo Derek, as Hopkins’ coed girlfriend, was present…and, obviously, looked nice, that’s why she was cast…but that’s about the extent of her contribution, while the actor playing MacLaine’s younger lover, Michael Brandon, was quite bland and uninteresting; having MacLaine jump into bed with him about five minutes after they meet just made her look like a desperate opportunist. Hopkins’ humorless character just seemed arrogant and snobby.
The characters, their behavior, the plot contrivance of having them all share the same cabin for the weekend, was simply not plausible, nor entertainingly depicted, just awkward and depressing, with an air of artificiality that stood in the way of my own suspension of disbelief. I didn’t like these characters and had a hard time staying focused on the movie, so, after about forty-five minutes, I just gave up and shut the movie off.
Loving Couples, on the other hand, was suprisingly entertaining and charming, in spite of its characters and their foolish decisions. The characters, as written and performed, seemed much more human than the caricatures in A Change Of Seasons. The cast, led by old pros MacLaine and James Coburn as married L.A. physicians, shared a great chemistry with one another, along with a terrific sense of comedic timing.
The movie’s approach to its subject matter– more about May-September romance than infidelity, really– is much more humorous and light-hearted as opposed to the darker and bitter tone of A Change Of Seasons. You also get the sense that the principal cast members got along really well with each other.
Unlike A Change Of Seasons, the only character in Loving Couples who comes off badly is the young yuppie ladies’ man, played by Stephen Collins. MacLaine starts her affair with Collins because she’s unhappy and frustrated with Coburn taking her for granted; Collins breaks up with girlfriend Susan Sarandon and begins his fling with MacLaine because he’s hot to trot and full of himself…which is exactly why he later cheats on MacLaine with one of his real estate clients. He’s a shallow prettyboy coasting through life on his looks and charm and proves himself untrustworthy by story’s end.
Each betrayed by their respective partners, Coburn and Sarandon begin their own fling together, but it winds up unsatisfying for both and they end up parting ways, with a repentant Coburn courting MacLaine and Sarandon politely rejecting the untrustworthy Collins’ efforts at the same.
Some reviewers dismissed Loving Couples as dopey ‘TV movie’-grade material, but, having suffered through a ton of dopey TV movies growing up, I thought Loving Couples was well written and directed. In short, I thought it was a lot of fun. Having read those reviews and knowing the movie’s box office history, I was expecting little more than a semi-interesting trainwreck of a film– sort of like A Change Of Seasons turned out to be– but, I have to say, I was pleasantly suprised that the movie worked as well as it did.
It all just goes to show that you can’t always go by other peoples’ reviews. Sometimes you have to go with your gut and take a chance.
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