Against the Crowd Blogathon 2019: A Guest Post from Joel

Today is Day 2 of Against the Crowd Blogathon 2019! Thanks to those who kept us afloat yesterday with their unpopular opinions. Today is probably my favorite day of this event because I get to let super reader Joel take over the blog with his entry. He does not have his own blog, but he has been a reader for a number of years now, and has guest posted quite a few times. Before my gushing over him gets creepy, I'll just let him have his space.

In other words, his thoughts start after this sentence.

I could so easily express my feelings about this awful waste of celluloid by simply stating….Hated him! Hated her! Hated them together! Hated the situations presented! Hated IT!!

While that succinctly encapsulates my opinion I feel I should give a bit more.

Our “hero” Melvin Udall is an insufferable jackass-a bigot who demeans and insults everyone he sees or meets with some of the worst invective imaginable and who is such an anal compulsive he must do everything the exact same way every day including eating the same meal in the same restaurant (with his own plastic silverware no less!).

Only one waitress, Carol Connelly (Helen Hunt) will wait on him because he’s such a bastard. Why? Because she likes him? She does not. Because he treats her well? He most certainly does not. Because the script says she must? Bingo!

So with this thin sauce of a premise we progress to find out that Melvin has a neighbor, Simon Bishop (Greg Kinnear-an actor I really like but whose performance here is mushy), a gay artist who Melvin takes every opportunity to malign and degrade. When during a robbery Simon is badly beaten and hospitalized for a long period Melvin must take care of his little dog for no other reason than a script contrivance. Unsurprisingly he dislikes the dog as much as he does people….until miracle of miracles the dog melts his heart and he becomes infinitesimally less of an asshole! Somehow this makes Carol fall for him despite the fact that they share zero chemistry and he still more or less treats her like something stuck to the bottom of his shoe. Ugh! Cut me a break!!!!

How this exercise in scrutinizing an almost thoroughly selfish, annoying and worthless pile of cow plop and the people foolish and/or stupid enough to put up with his odious mean spirited behavior was tapped for a flock of awards (7 Oscar nominations-including all the big ones-Picture, Screenplay, Actor, Actress and Supporting Actor!!) will always remain one of the mysteries of life. And the damn thing is endless!!! Nicholson gives one of his lazy noxious latter day “Just Jack” performances and Hunt is arch, brittle and unlikable-and they both won!! Saints preserve us!

Rarely has a title promised so much and delivered so very, very little!

Dr. Harry Wolper (Peter O’Toole) is an extraordinarily brilliant scientist, a Nobel Prize winner, at a prestigious medical research university in California. Head of his department he is revered, respected even beloved. He is also widely eccentric, notoriously so and some of his colleagues fear for the school’s funding and want him replaced. Oh and there’s one other small thing, 30 years ago Harry lost his wife Lucy (it’s never plainly stated but it was apparently during childbirth and the baby was lost as well), and he’s never completely let go. Being a scientist he extracted some of Lucy’s cells and has been quietly trying to clone her all this time in his backyard laboratory!

Suddenly into his life two people enter his sphere and radically change what up until now had been an unconventional but steady life. The first, young pre-med student Boris Lafkin (Vincent Spano) Harry snags away from his university rival Dr. Sid Kuhlenbeck (David Ogden Stiers), an excellent doctor but a conceited blowhard, to be his personal assistant by telling him he knows the name of the co-ed (a very young Virginia Madsen) Boris had followed into Harry’s lab. Rejecting all the courses Boris has signed up for as unnecessary Harry proceeds to school him in “The Big Picture”, Harry’s conception of life and what’s important.

The other is a young woman new to town, Meli (Mariel Hemingway) a brash, outspoken free spirit who Harry helps out of a jam. It happens that Harry is at a critical point towards his goal of bringing Lucy back but needs an egg to move forward. Meli out of gratitude agrees to be his source but in the interim falls for him and presses him for marriage. Harry still tied emotionally to the long gone Lucy is reluctant but for the first time in decades is drawn to someone new.

While the two of them play out their battle of wills Boris becomes acquainted with the object of his affection, Barbara Spencer who he had originally followed into the lab and after a brief period where they are platonic roommates they fall deeply in love. All looks rosy until the young couple must face a challenge that mirrors Harry’s tragedy of years before and which forces a reckoning for all.

Funny, poignant, quirky and evocative are all words that work for this and while it is often tonally uneven it is a wonderfully touching film with plenty of humor that the pragmatic and cold hearted critics savaged.

As much as I love the film I’ll be the first to admit it has some flaws. Mariel Hemingway being the biggest one, she has some scenes where she is very good but an almost equal number where she is incredibly awkward….and wait until you get a load of the caterpillars that have taken up residence over her eyes!! Full eyebrows are one thing but these babies are competing with Eugene Levy’s!!! It’s very distracting.

Then there are some of the artistic licenses taken by the screenwriter and the leaps of faith he asks the audience to take. But none of it matters because lording over and compensating for any small missteps is a positively masterful and compelling performance by the genius that was Peter O’Toole. It’s hard to put into words just how deeply he inhabits Harry, his smallest gesture tell you more about the life this man has lead than reams of dialog ever could.

Sure it’s imperfect but it’s also very human and with Peter O’Toole as your companion you really won’t need more.

There is still time to enter the Against the Crowd Blogathon 2019.

Click here to find out how!