Movie: 'The Lonely Guy' (1984)

(Replacing 'LA Story' which I just couldn't write about, even if it did have a magical street sign reincarnated from some bagpipes.)

What an odd movie, and an oddly endearing one too. How can something so odd, and so potentially depressing, be so good? True it has some major flaws, and I'm the cynical person to point them out, but it's also nice. Very, very nice.

Steve Martin is (or was, if you prefer) in that bracket of performers who are so intrinsically and basically funny that they shouldn't be given funny things to do. They do normal things in a funny way. Anything determinedly funny pushes them over the hill into pantomime land. And this really is a movie where Martin can exploit that to the hilt in his most brilliant straight-faced way. I'm not even a fan of the man but he could play it straight and simultaneously funny better than anyone alive.

At the core, this movie is a balm to all the lonely people, or people who have been lonely, and for whom life seems hopeless and grey without companionship and colour in their lives. Martin plays a greeting card writer called Larry who's dumped by his nymphomaniac ballerina girlfriend, falls into deepest solitary dudgeon with only the companionship of new friend and veteran lonely guy Warren (played masterfully by Charles Grodin). It's all played for laughs and yet is somehow very reassuring. Being lonely is a horrible thing. I've been lonely for long stretches of my life, am lonely now, and may well be so in periods of the future but it's not so bad really. Warren and Larry are winding themselves up into knots of anxiety where none need to exist. Thanks to the movie for helping those desperately lonely people know that they're not alone in being lonely, and I'm saying that with a straight face.

So, to the plot, Larry is dumped, meets Warren, tries some desperate things to meet women, finally meets a woman called Iris and losing her phone number, before an erratic relationship begins that he almost kills himself over during one of the troughs, and the eventual happy ending. Warren almost jumps off a bridge too in depression but fortunately they're the leads and don't join the legions of lonely guys who are dropping dead in this movie. Black humour roars bleakly in purple batches of brilliance, but the romantic subplot threatens to sink the whole thing in the final thirty minutes as it makes no sense whatsoever and was probably added to make up the running time for the movie. Martin is excellent as Larry, playing it straight wherever possible. Grodin is wonderful as Warren, once you get over the initial shock of how depressed and miserable the character is, and everyone else is solid in support.

I should quickly mention narration, the unsteadiest moments of the whole film are in the opening narration before Martin takes it over as Larry. I could imagine some people never making it past that. It gets better!

I like it. You need not be lonely if you watch 'The Lonely Guy', and please remember that fake sweat does not do the job.

O.


Postscript:
On a related note
It's kind of sad that in this era of incredible interconnectedness people seem far less able to stand being along than in previous decades. Even I, with my rebellious independence, lean heavily on e-mail at times and this blog itself is an act of self-expression. Still, I think everyone can learn from some solitary time without phones and Internet, armed with only some sticks and a cauldron.