1978 black comedy Rating: 5/10
Plot: Sonny, a high-living philanderer, is informed that he has less than a year to live by one of the landlords from Three’s Company. He decides to take his life instead and says his goodbyes to his ex-wife, his lover, and his daughter. Unfortunately, he’s not very good at killing himself and ends up in an asylum instead, where he meets a schizophrenic named Marlon, who decides to help him with his goal of ending his life.
This is another one that I have fond childhood memories of, and it’s more than likely the first dark comedy I ever saw. I thought it was hilarious when I saw it as a seven year old. Then again, I thought suicide was hilarious back then, probably because of that episode of the Bozo show where Wizzo kept trying to hang himself but couldn’t because he couldn’t properly tie a knot and kept falling into a plastic swimming pool full of pudding instead.
I saw this with my stepdad and mom in a motel with peeling wallpaper, and in the middle of the movie, I had to defecate. My step-dad commented on how long I spent in the restroom and how the sound of my fecal matter hitting the toilet water “didn’t sound much like a man’s” fecal matter. I’m not sure I ever recovered from that, and I still try to avoid situations where somebody might hear me defecate.
Burt Reynolds directed and starred in this. The premise alone is pretty funny, and Dom DeLuise, once he finally makes his way into the movie, is almost brilliant. It was probably a good idea not to have DeLuise in the first two-thirds of this, because too much Dom would have been a bad thing here. Reynolds himself overdoes things a little bit. He screams a lot, apparently because screaming is funny, but does get a few really funny lines, including “When I think about killing myself, I get a hard-on.”
Overall, this movie doesn’t seem well written, though. Norman Fell makes an appearance as a doctor, but my favorite character might be Robby Benson’s father, Dave Benson. Oh, and since this is a 1970’s Burt Reynolds movie, cute-as-a-freakin’-button Sally Field is also in this, sometimes not wearing pants, and I, for one, am all for that. There was a lot of potential humor in this, and I would not mind seeing a remake, preferably one that doesn’t have Vince Vaughn in it.
Note: That episode of the Bozo show does not really exist. I am making that up.