The Heartbreak Kid

According to legend, Elaine May was contractually bound to respect every word of Neil Simon’s script for THE HEARTBREAK KID. If that was the case, then the resulting film is a tribute to the power of mise en scène, and of May’s precision-point work with actors – because, quite simply, this is the darkest, cruelest, most unrelenting version of a lightweight Simon comedy ever put on screen (just compare it to the Farrelly brothers’ gutless 2007 remake).
May mercilessly exaggerates every uncomfortable, embarrassing aspect of this tale: the complete delusion of the feckless hero Lenny (the sublime Charles Grodin, who died in 2021); the gap between his fantasy (fixed on the sunny blonde Kelly played by Cybill Shepherd) and the stark realities of his hopeless situation; differences in social class and between Jewish and non-Jewish cultures; and the frankly grotesque bodily facts of overeating and sunburn – as especially concentrated in the brave performance of May’s gifted daughter Jeannie Berlin. Far outrunning Simon’s intended tribute to THE GRADUATE, THE HEARTBREAK KID served appropriately enough as a clear influence on Fassbinder’s painful marital melodrama MARTHA, which was made a year later. (Adrian Martin)