SCENES FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN BEVERLY HILLS
A film review by Miriam Nadel
Copyright 1989 Miriam Nadel
I went to see this SCENES FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN BEVERLY HILLS for pretty much the same reason that everyone else who's seen it did -- I thought Paul Bartel's EATING RAOUL was hysterically funny and was looking forward to more of the same. Unfortunately, the operative word in the title is "scenes." Some individual scenes are very funny but the movie as a whole would have benefited from judicious editing -- including the removal of at least two of the numerous subplots.
The plot is basically one of everyone trying to sleep with everyone else. Frank is trying to seduce the recently widowed Claire (played with surprising humor by Jacqueline Bisset) in order to win a bet he has made with Juan; if he wins the bet he gets Juan for a night. In the meantime, he's also carrying on an affair with Claire's daughter. Meanwhile, Juan, who happens to be Claire's houseboy, is trying to seduce Frank's employer -- usually referred to as "the divorcee" -- so he can win the bet and get the money he needs to pay a gambling debt. Now, the divorcee's ex-husband (Wallace Shawn overdoing the pathetic whiny part in the most disappointing performance of the movie) also shows up only to discover that the woman he had run away with is now married to his ex-wife's brother, a playwright who gets into the act by entering the competition for Claire. Rounding out the cast are a diet doctor (played by Bartel), the divorcee's crippled son who has the hots for Claire's daughter but is willing to settle for his new aunt, an Aztec housekeeper, with a penchant for dire predictions involving jaguars tearing people apart, and the ghost of Claire's husband who is trying to keep his marriage alive, even if he isn't.
Now this has a fair amount of potential for comedy. However, Bartel seems to have had trouble remembering that comedy is most effective when it is unpredictable. He's certainly capable of great moments -- the opening sequence is one of the funniest I've ever seen -- but the middle of the movie lapses into predictable "musical bedrooms" and, with one exception, the ending is obvious.
Overall I'd give it 2 stars. Wait for a bargain matinee or, even better, a videotape so you can fast-forward over the parts which plod.
Miriam Nadel
mhnadel@gryphon.COM
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews