BUFF - The Heartbreak Kid (1972)
The screwball comedy from hell - rarely screened, from a new 16mm scan Scripted by Neil Simon and wittily directed by May, this darkly funny film about a likeable schmuck (Charles Grodin) who ditches his galling but well-meaning wife (Jeannie Berlin, May’s daughter) after becoming infatuated with a perky mid-Western college girl (Cybill Shepherd) while on his honeymoon is one of the great American comedies. Through barbed humour that oscillates between hilarious parody and painful discomfort, May takes swipes at Jewish identity, male egotism and the unattainable American Dream. "Grodin gives one of the great comic performances as Lenny--a man drowning in his own hubris. It's even funnier because May does the very tricky thing of humanizing him *and* making him seem like a serial murderer in waiting." Willow Maclay Letterboxd "It’s a comedy, but there’s more in it than that; it’s a movie about the ways we pursue, possess, and consume each other as sad commodities." Roger Ebert The Chicago Sun-Times Similar: The Graduate, The King of Comedy, SplitsvillePT1H45MM2026-05-15Elaine May
BUFF - The Heartbreak Kid (1972)"BUFF - The Heartbreak Kid (1972)"Showtimes
May 15, 6:00 pm
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