Funny About Love (1990)

The Worst Film Ever

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Funny About Love (1990) BOMB (out of 4)Duffy Bergman (Gene Wilder) is a cartoonist who has pretty much lived his life alone just the way he likes it. This all changes when he meets Meg (Christine Lahti) and quickly falls in love. The two are married and plan on having a kid but that proves to be complicated, which leads to a series of dramatic events.FUNNY ABOUT LOVE is a film that I've heard a lot about and none of it was good. It wasn't a success at the box office, it had some pre-release editing done to it and it ended up on most critic's worst of the year list. No matter what you read about this film there's really nothing that can prepare you for how truly awful it is. This film was directed by Leonard Nimoy and it features a terrific cast but everything just goes horrendously wrong and in the end its clearly one of the worst films of the decade if not one of the worst comedies of all time.The film apparently had an entire subplot that was cut out of the film, which had Farrah Fawcett as a love interest. It's pretty clear to see that something is missing from the film as the entire movie just feels like bits and pieces are missing. The movie will be going in one direction and the next thing you know something complete different is going on. I was a little confused at what the movie was trying to do, trying to say and I was wondering if the filmmakers knew what was going on.The film starts off as a romantic comedy and then out of nowhere we get some of the most out-of-touch drama I've ever seen. Just take a look at an early sequence where Wilder's mother attacks the couple for not having children. Throughout the film there are strange bits of dialogue, a really bizarre subplot dealing with Wilder and a much younger woman (Mary Stuart Masterson) and then there's the ending, which is just downright embarrassing. The entire movie was just so poorly made and so poorly written that you couldn't help but feel a bit depressed watching it.Normally Wilder could make just about anything work but that's not the case here. He's all over the map and it's clear he didn't get too much direction. Lahti tries to do what she can but her character isn't given any favors. Out of the cast it would be Mary Stuart Masterson who comes off the best but that's not saying too much. Robert Prosky, Susan Ruttan and David Margulies are all wasted in their parts. It makes you wonder what Fawcett would have done in the film.FUNNY ABOUT LOVE is a romantic comedy that has no laugh and certainly no romance. I really don't know what went so horribly wrong with this movie but it's certainly a misfire from the word go.

Several years after directing "Funny About Love", director Leonard Nimoy admitted that making this movie was a mistake, and put the blame on the script. To a degree, Nimoy was correct. The writing found in this movie is truly bizarre at times. Throughout, characters spout out deranged dialogue that no human being with a reasonable amount of intelligence would say. Also, big chunks of time seem to be missing. For example, when Wilder's character and his wife have their first argument, in the next scene she is packing her bags and planning divorce - huh? I don't know if that's how it was written, or if the editing removed some scenes, but the movie is missing important information.While most of the blame is with the script (and possibly with the editing), Nimoy has to share some blame for the performances of his actors. More often than not, Nimoy has his cast acting in a very broad manner that makes the deranged dialogue they speak even worse-sounding.As I indicated in the summary line, this movie is more strange than funny.

...littered with the corpses of competency, credibility and reason. I completely agree with the majority of comments already posted here; this is a very bad movie in every possible way, but I'll skip past the shockingly subpar directing since it's not the worst aspect of the production. (Spock, after all, helmed the best STAR TREK movie I've seen. Okay, THE VOYAGE HOME is the *only* STAR TREK movie I've seen, but it remains the highest-grosser in the series, which must mean Trekkies approved of it.)*SPOILERS*Let's instead consider the writing. The oddest thing about FAL is that nobody seems to notice that Gene Wilder's character is a deranged nutcase. Here's a guy who contorts his face during every conversation; makes tasteless, inappropriate, glib comments about his mother shortly after her death; cradles his girlfriend in his arms like a child with a scraped knee; and, during perhaps the strangest scene in a movie chock-full of them (this one at a fertility clinic), has apparently never masturbated before and hasn't a clue as to how to do it now. He also has a bizarre, unexplained obsession with cappuccino, which I guess is supposed to make him colorful but in reality makes him a weirdo. All of these factors makes him incapable of relating to others in any recognizable human manner, and as a result he has no romantic chemistry with either woman in his life.Which is odd in itself, because both females also exhibit alien behavior. Christine Lahti falls for this nutball for no reason outside their shared previous failed marriages. Like, two dates and Bam! She's moving in with the guy. (Why did the movie have them live together before marriage when the ceremony directly followed the domestic cohabitation? Doesn't anyone wait until marriage before sharing a bed anymore?) She just as quickly dumps the guy, for the unpardonable sin of really, really wanting a child. These neurotics clearly deserve each other, if for no other reason than to keep these freaks out of the dating pool.The pixieish Mary Stuart Masterson also resembles a humanoid. This is a girl who drags her boyfriend into the locker room at Madison Square Garden to have an NBA star tell him she's pregnant. Who, immediately after miscarrying, drops her boyfriend (who's twice her age) and moves across the country for some job that's presumably been waiting for her all this time. (Must be nice to be so needed in your profession right out of college.) Really, what planet are these people from? Maybe all of this is some kind of Vulcan mating ritual the director imposed on the script, for I have no other explanation.One boring yet incomprehensible scene follows another. There are no laughs to be found, nor any real depiction of human love. Not one moment of true interaction between upscale New Yorkers. The last scene of this debacle is the phoniest of all, which had me literally groaning and rubbing my eyes. Out of nowhere a "happy" ending arrives, which is so contrived, and so poorly edited, I was, frankly, dumbfounded. In it, Wilder barges into Lahti's restaurant proclaiming his newfound outlook on having a child. He doesn't want one anymore. But, ta-da! Lahti has already adopted a baby, which is conveniently resting in a bassinet in the kitchen. Never mind the questionable practice of keeping a baby in a bustling room full of hot food and busy servers. What happens next? Group hug before Lahti takes them out to the dining room to announce to a room full with patrons, "This is my family," which is met with delighted applause. Check, please.FUNNY ABOUT LOVE is an total embarrassment from beginning to end for everyone involved, especially Wilder. There is no reason for it to be seen other than as a study of abnormal human behavior.p.s. If Gene was still mourning Gilda's death, why did he agree to star in a "romantic" "comedy"? A dramatic supporting role would have been more suitable.

This movie should not have been made. It is the only thing that I have seen Christine Lahti in that failed to entertain me. All I kept thinking of while viewing it was that it would eventually get to the good part. Mary Stuart Masterson was cute and Lahti was her usual beautiful self but nothing could save this disaster. I will give it 2/10 for effort.