Some movie stars endure for decades........others, for one reason or another, enjoy only a relatively brief time in the Hollywood sun.
Dudley Moore, diminutive but fiercely talented British comedian/musician/ composer, found himself the most unlikely of Hollywood superstars during the l980's. Hitting the box-office jackpot in Blake Edwards' "10", Moore went on to further comic glory as the filthy rich but lovably alcoholic wastrel in "Arthur". For a few golden years, he sat on the top of the A-List heap when it came to casting romantic leads in American comedies..........not an insignificant achievement for a five foot, two inch Brit.
Deteriorating health and less than successful films ultimately diminished and ended his period of superstardom, but while still in the glow of the spotlight, Moore pumped out movie after movie......
Unfaithfully Yours, a panting farce more frenetic than genuinely funny, played to Moore's strengths as a master of comic timing and physical shtick. A remake of a 1948 Preston Sturges comedy, the film gives the star the role of a world famous symphony conductor convulsed with fevered jealously......he's obsessed to the point of madness that his young voluptuous wife (Nastassja Kinski) might be carrying on an affair with the orchestra's star violinist (Armand Assante)
Massive misunderstandings and misconstrued behavior ensue, right on schedule. Amidst all the huffing and puffing, the movie has at least two things going for it........first, .a riotous, stunning violin duel between Moore and Assante, a showstopping competitive clash of the two male divas, driven by Moore's raging suspicions. Second, an extended sequence freely borrowed from the Michael Caine/Shirley McClain caper "Gambit"......in which Moore's diabolically plotted, perfectly executed murders of his wife and lover turn out a wishful daydream, followed by the actual event itself, a frantic collection of gags where Murphy's Law rules.
You might even smile, once or twice.....
Six Weeks is another animal altogether. It stands out as the oddest item in Moore's filmography......and a prime, uncomfortable example of what happens when movie stars shoehorn and miscast themselves into projects completely unsuited for them.
A blatant tearjerker whose only mission is to cynically reduce its audience to sobs, the movie unwisely casts Moore as a........wisecracking liberal California politician running for Congress.
Huh? Say what?
Obviously not written with Moore in mind, the revised script bends itself into pretzels describing how the snarky Enlishman with a ready supply of one liners somehow became a United States politician.
The film moves on to its main event....... Moore crossing opposites-attract paths with a wealthy CEO (Mary Tyler Moore) and her aggressively cute 13 year old daughter, a budding ballerina due to shortly expire from Leukemia. (We don't recall if the movie ever explains what happened to this kid's father, but nobody seems to care....so neither did we)
The doomed little dancer, for the benefit of us delicate viewers, suffers from that familiar malady, Movie Cancer......that peculiar form of the disease that allows its sufferers to appear robustly healthy until it's time for them to conveniently drop dead in the last fifteen minutes or so.....just in time for the film to wrap up and yank its viewers' tear ducts with the cold efficiency of a cow-milking machine......
To insure that all goes as planned, Dudley Moore, also functioning as the film's composer, generously and loudly scores the movie with a lachrymose piano and swelling strings that scream out to an audience, "You can start crying now, you pathetic suckers." It's the audio equivalent of a gallon of maple syrup poured over a stack of already pre-sweetened pancakes.
We can't even call it ironic that the movies that served as stepping stones to Moore's short reign of stardom were far better than the ones he made once he sat atop Hollywood's Mt.Olympus. That's just Hollywood, baby......standard operating procedure.
For "Unfaithfully Yours", 2 stars (**) ....and only that many for the violin duel. For "Six Weeks", 1/2 a star (1/2)......and the only reason we gave it that many.......well, it's close to Christmas......and the film's dying little diva gets to dance in "The Nutcracker" before she takes the dirt nap. We're suckers for "The Nutcracker"......and hope you're all enjoying the holidays!
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