The Heartbreak Kid Reviews

(OK) Two secuences are a masterpiece, one openly comic being dramatic, the other opnely dramatic being comic. Grodin, in great acting, tires to convince Eddie Albert (superb) he is serious about Cybill and is going to abandon his recent wife. Next great secuence: Grodin tell the wife (bigger and lousier than like Jeannie Berlin) he is going to leave her.....

Surprisingly hectic comedy starring Charles Grodin as a man who marries too soon on a pretense of getting laid, only to discover his new bride is irritating and coarse. He then meets Cybil Shepherd’s glamourous Kelly on his honeymoon and instantly falls in love.

Grodin is manic and detestably likeable as he gets into full Steve-Martin-mode, fawning haplessly around Kelly and her stern father, and shunning his new bride with lie after lie. Having only previously seen Grodin as the bad guy in movies, it made a nice change to see him as a romantic lead, albeit an unlikely one, and his frenzied state is a delight to watch. Shepherd is suitably cool and flirty as the young Kelly, who is a convoluted character who plays Grodin against his wife, then shuns him when he leaves her.

The first half of the film is a joy, watching Grodin’s emotions turn from happiness to despair to hope in equal measure, his wooing of Kelly and his destruction of Lila (his wife) are guaranteed to make you cringe. However, the film goes way off track once he leaves Lila to pursue Kelly in her home town, as the subsequent love story is overlong and much duller than the events preceding it. The final scene of the movie does elevate the disappointment though – Grodin sits at his second wedding, ignoring his second wife, clearly unhappy and uncertain about his future. An apt end to such a flawed character, but this doesn’t make up for the stodgy second act.