Product Description

Four separate stories brought into one, the various occupants of the suite in the Beverly Hills Hotel reveal parts of their lives. Non-stop dialogue and comedy action.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: PG
Release Date: 7-DEC-2004
Media Type: DVD

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19499 in DVD
• Brand: FONDA,JANE
• Released on: 2002-01-02
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Cantonese, Chinese, English, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 103 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
The West Coast answer to Neil Simon's Plaza Suite, this film (written by Simon and directed by Herbert Ross) has a high Hollywood gloss. Instead of the omnibus form of the film of the New York version, this film (set at the Beverly Hills Hotel) intertwines the stories (à la Grand Hotel) of several different sets of guests, including Alan Alda and Jane Fonda and Walter Matthau and Elaine May, on one particularly eventful weekend. The story that works best involves Maggie Smith and Michael Caine as an Oscar-nominated actress and her straying, gay husband who come to an understanding (Smith won the Oscar for this film). The least effective is a slapsticky battle between well-to-do but competitive doctors played by Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor. --Marshall Fine

Customer Reviews

One of the best adaptations of a Neil Simon play.
Clever direction means that this doesn't seem too play-like and the hotel rooms never seem claustrophobic. A very strong cast is assembled here, with Caine cast against type as a closet case preparing to receive an Oscar with his bitter and scathing wife Maggie Smith. Alan Alda turns in a moving performance as Billy, and Pryor and Cosby, both usually associated with other actors, show us what a good double-act they could have been. It seems to be four plays in one, with the tone of the comedy varying from piece to piece. Alda's section is touching comedy, Walter Matthau's is farce, Caine's is wry observation while Cosby's is farce again. The brevity of the individual pieces means that the film moves along at a cracking pace, leaving you wanting more. If you do want more, I suggest Neil Simon's Plaza Suite.

fantastic!
It's worth a look just for the cast (Prior, Cosby, Alda, Fonda, Smith, Caine, Matthau, etc.), but trust me, you won't be disappointed. Prior & Crosby had me in tears. It does get a bit dramatic towards the end, so I'd probably give this 4.5 stars, but I laughed so hard at points, it gets rounded up to 5 stars.

Tip-Top tragi-comedy par excellence
Jane fonder and Alan Alder are hysterical, claws are drawn at dawn as she muses to her one-time hubby about how very 'California' he is, all boyish charms and effervescence, as she...ever the sharp New Yorker...pops another ciggy in her cake-hole and manages the impossible, a verbal tirade while inhaling. (Reminded me of the blood letting dialogue delivered so deftly by Kate Hepburn in 'The Lion in Winter'). Walter Matthau is side splitting as he seeks to cheat on the good wife (Elaine May..she is so sweet most men would cheat with her not on her), of course for Walt it all goes Royally wrong. .
Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor play rich-man poor-man doctors et spouse on the vacation from hell in LA...and take competitiveness to interstellar levels. What totally ices this summer pudding though is Maggie smiths' awesome performance as an Englishwoman coping....just...with not getting the Oscar for which she's been nominated...for not having a clue how to dress in superficial, bitchy, hot LA...for not noticing her husband eyeing up every man under 30 (Michael Cain at sympathetic best), and not lobbing herself out the emergency escape hatch on the flight home..."Oh my God!...tell them I want to get off...darling tell them I want to get off..they're only playing my f-ing film". She did get that Oscar though. What a performance