“You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”
Blake Edwards has had a long career of quirky comedies. A lot like Mel Brooks, Edwards had a style that would be character-centered, and he made a lot of money off of the human condition. He was most famous for the series of Pink Panther films that starred Peter Sellers as an awkward French detective who mostly bumbled himself to the correct solution to the murders. He focused on the performance, and it was box office gold. One of the more “charming” actors during the 1980’s was Dudley Moore. He had smash hits with 10 and Arthur. He was one of the most bankable stars of the time. Blake Edwards was also the director of 10. So we have an unbeatable collaboration here that put together another quirky comedy about a “charming” bigamist, and how could it miss? Micki & Maude turned out to be one of the lesser-known films for both Edwards and Moore. But it’s a part of that 80’s scene, so Mill Creek has decided to give everyone another look at the film with their Retro-VHS series on Blu-ray in high definition.
“And it’s have your cake and eat it too. To have your cake, anyone can do. To eat it and still have some left, that’s the trick.”
Dudley Moore is Rob Salinger. He’s a well known local television magazine journalist. His wife Micki is played by Ann Reinking. She has been a great help to the state’s newly-elected Governor, and it’s opened doors for her. She has been offered a Superior Court judgeship. The problem is Rob wants badly to start a family. She’s not willing to do this with her career on the rise, and she doesn’t really have much time for him these days. When she blows off a planned date night, he ends up going to see a cellist he met that day on the job. He was somewhat enchanted by Maude, played by Amy Irving, and they start to get too close. When she ends up pregnant, Rob decides he’s going to divorce Micki and marry Maude. Just as he’s about to tell his wife, she has a surprise for him. She is also pregnant and appears to have had a revelation that she’s been neglecting him and now wants to do the family thing just like Rob wanted. Now what does he do? He decides to marry Maude and stay married to Micki. And this is where all the hijinx are supposed to start.
The problem is that it never quite comes together. The film makes a lot out of crazy coincidences like both wives getting their sonograms at the same time in the same office. A nosy nurse adds to the jeopardy, but it’s all so over-the-top laughable that it’s not really funny. You’re required to take some huge leaps of imagination in order to make this work. Edwards knew he had a problem when he first saw the script, and he tried to solve it. How do you make Dudley Moore’s character at all likable in this situation. What he’s doing is not what nice guys do. He made some changes, but they’re too obvious, and not enough. In the script Rob doesn’t really try to do the “right” thing, so Edwards rewrote the character so now we go out of our way to see that he really tried to do the right thing. But it’s too dang convenient. We know this house of cards is going to collapse, and the fun should be watching that happen. Instead the movie comes off as a kind of sitcom pace and quality that belied the talents of both director and actor. Moore gets to do a scene where he does his famous drunk-guy routine, but thankfully we’re spared that trip down memory lane for this film.
“Eat your cake, have your cake, who cares? You’re about to get a plate of sauteed brains thrown into your face, your entire career is in the toilet, and you’re correcting my grammar?”
There are some nice supporting cast members here. George Gaynes is famous for his Police Academy character Lassard, and he plays one of the wives’ doctors here who become somewhat befuddled when both wives go in labor at the same time in the same hospital. Then it’s a game of running in and out of rooms. The Stooges mastered that one in the 1930’s. Richard Mulligan is probably the strongest supporting actor here as Rob’s boss and close friend. Leo is in on the secret and tries his best to help out. Lu Leonard is pretty good as the nurse who knows too much, and Wallace Shawn is his crazy best as the other doctor who has a thing for the nurse.
Ann Reinking doesn’t really work here. She shares no chemistry with Moore, and I found it wasn’t very credible that these two would have ever been together in the first place. Amy Irving is always captivating. Her eyes alone are enough to enchant, and she shares much better chemistry with Moore. Perhaps that’s a flaw of the script. You see, when we first meet Micki and Rob, they have already been married, while we get to see the Rob and Maude characters meet and fall for each other, so it makes sense that we would find that a more credible relationship.
It’s not a total wreck, but it’s quite long at just shy of two hours. The first 40 minutes drags as it provides mostly setup for Rob and Micki, which was never as compelling as Rob and Maude. Edwards usually wrote the films he directed and only does a rewrite here. It was likely the bottom for both director and actor. I found my attention wandering, and that’s never a good sign. “At the risk of sounding like an inconsiderate nag.”
