Light comedies look like the easiest things to make when they work, but when they don't, it's more like quantum physics on acid. Take this 1984 sex farce.
Teddy Pierce (Gene Wilder) is a happily married ad man in San Francisco who goes gaga when he catches a glimpse of a beautiful model (Kelly LeBrock) in racy undies. With the help of some friends, Teddy works around the suspicions of his wife (Judith Ivey) and the anger of a spurned co-worker (Gilda Radner) to arrange a furtive rendezvous with the object of his desire.
Best remembered today for the film debut of the bodacious LeBrock and a soundtrack that featured Stevie Wonder's hit song "I Just Called To Say I Love You," this is a movie that aims low and still misses. Wilder, who wrote and directed, presents a comedy that is not only not funny, but so tonally off as to become uncomfortable to watch.
Take the scenes with Radner. One of the great comedic talents of her time, Radner's wasted here as the butt of humor as mean as it is nonsensical. We see her as a love-starved crone being duped by bad luck into thinking Teddy wants to get romantic with her, only to find he doesn't. This drives her to inflict vengeance on him and his helpless car. Why does Teddy put up with this, rather than take it up with her or with HR?
You might answer that it's because this is a farce, but elsewhere "The Woman In Red" is played much more dramatically, too much so. Two of Teddy's male friends undergo crises involving romantic partners that are played very seriously, and developed in a heavy- handed way by Wilder that threatens his largely jokeless comedy. Or was I supposed to be laughing when Joseph Bologna has a nervous breakdown after discovering his wife and kids left him?
Wilder is only a little more successful working on Teddy's home life, as when Teddy discovers his wife keeps a revolver around the house and admits to being easily jealous.
"You realize you might have shot me?" he tells her after her gun accidentally goes off.
"I would never do that," she answers. "Not without a reason."
There are also little side bits that never make any sense, like a daughter's boyfriend who sports an aggressive Mohawk hairdo and makes clumsy passes at Teddy's wife, or a destructive and pointless gag Teddy's friends play at a fancy restaurant. These don't connect to the main story, and they aren't funny on their own.
At one point, we discover Teddy's wife hosts a diet clinic in their home for reasons that are never explained. The entire purpose of this seems to be to provide Wilder with an excuse for some physical humor, walking through a thick crowd of people in his character's living room while an instructor drones on about something called "the Alphabet diet:" "You have to watch yourself carefully because by the time you get to 'P,' you might put on all the weight you lost on 'K,'" she tells them.
And what of LeBrock's character, Charlotte? As male fantasy object, she certainly works for me. Yet except for one scene in an elevator with Charles Grodin (playing one of Teddy's friends), she never breaks out of that to develop any comic identity or dramatic interest.
Wilder's performance alternates between goofy and wan; he was in an odd period in his career after some fantastic comedic performances over the prior 15 years apparently left him with no more mountains to climb. He seems tired and disengaged here, adding to the weight of a very labored film.
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