Rhapsodies

This week I I decided to watch comedies (yes, comedies) about spouses trying to kill their spouses.

The first film on my list was Elaine May’s A New Leaf starring May and Walter Matthau. Matthau plays Henry Graham, a spoiled rich man who has no knowledge of how to live any other way. He is soon shocked to discover that over the years he has spent his entire inheritance. He decides the only way to maintain his expensive lifestyle is to marry into money.., and then kill his new bride. He soon meets the perfect candidate, a klutzy and wealthy botany Proffesor, Henrietta Lowell (May) He successfully woos and weds her and now all he has to do is carry out the rest of this plan.

This is a film with a wickedly dry sense of humor. Matthau is great playing against type as a pampered, entitled twit who gradually grow as a human being as maintaining his act as the perfect husband for Henrietta requires him to actually exert his brain and May is wonderful as the wonderfully flaky Henrietta.

The next film on my list Lawrence Kasdan’s I Love You To death starring Kevin Kline, Tracey Ullman, Joan Plowright, River Phoenix, William Hurt, and Keanu Reeves. Klein plays Joey Boca who runs a pizzeria with his wife, Rosalie (Ullman) He’s an affable guy and a relatively good father. Regrettably, he’s also cheering on Rosalie with multiple women. Rosalie finds out, and since she’s a good Catholic who wouldn’t dream of divorcing her husband, plans his murder with her mother (Plowright)

Loosely based on an actual attempted murder in 1983, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, this is a fun comedy of errors with a hilarious ensemble of incompetent accomplices (For anybody who thought that Ted “Theodore” Logan was Keanu Reeves’s dumbest and flakiest character, this film will prove them wrong.) Klein’s performance as Joey is pretty good even if it does come off cartoonishly stereotypical. But he and Ulman have good chemistry.

I still think the ending is a bit of a copout, though.