#1 Cheap The Loved One Reviews
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The Loved One is a rare instance in which a film surpasses the novel on which it was based. Evelyn Waugh's original novella was a sharp but spare social satire. The screenplay, written by Waugh's old friend Christopher Isherwood (Berlin Stories, I Am a Camera) and Terry Southern (Candy, Dr. Strangelove, The Magic Christian, etc.) is a rich, snappy mockery of Hollywood, the British in Hollywood, and the American Way of Death. Jonathan Winters gives a tour de force performance as the siblings Harry and Wilbur Glenworthy, one a studio hustler down on his luck and the other a cynical and megalomaniacal CEO of a bizarre mortuary/cemetary. Rod Steiger is superb as an effete embalmer, Robert Morse is an excellent casting choice as the bemused young British poet accidentally thrust into the bizarre world-within-world of the upper crust mortuary Whispering Glades. Numerous smaller roles and cameos by John Gielgud, Robert Morley, Liberace, James Coburn, Tab Hunter, Milton Berle enrich the film enormously. It's unpredictable, intelligent, hilarious, and devoid of jokes about bowel movements, a genre that seems to form the exoskeleton of all current comedies.
The Loved One Overview
The funeral business gets a giant raspberry in this wickedly wacky, resplendently ridiculous farce based on Evelyn Waugh's macabre comic masterpiece and directed with inspired verve by Tony Richardson (Tom Jones). But the American way of death isn't the film's only target: sex, greed, religion and mother love are also in the crosshairs of its satirical shots. Robert Morse plays a bemused would-be poet who gets entangled with an unctuous cemetery entrepreneur (Jonathan Winters), a mom-obsessed mortician (Rod Steiger) and other bizarre characters played by such adept farceurs as John Gielgud, Robert Morley, Tab Hunter, Milton Berle, James Coburn and Liberace. If The Loved One doesn't make you laugh, call the undertaker!
DVD Features:
Featurette:Trying to Offend Everyone
Theatrical Trailer
Slow and plodding... - L. Massaar - Vancouver, WA
Probably sacrilege, but this 1965 movie doesn't hold up too well in today's age. Just my opinion.
Yes, it is dark (with which I'm okay) and somewhat amusing in a biting, satirical kind of way. But it's very VERY slow and plodding...
(** SPOILERS AHEAD **))
Robert Morse plays a British poet who falls in love with the lady cosmetician while making arrangements for his uncle's funeral at a posh, upscale Burbank funeral home (only dead WASPs need apply). At least that's the concept but GETTING there is probably described as meandering at best.
Around half the movie is spent getting the hapless hero TO the funeral parlor... we first start with his venture into LAX... where he promptly gets easily lost... and by the time he presents himself to his Uncle at a Hollywood Studio (looking for a place to stay), we are subjected to a pretty snobby elite of ex-pats who toast pictures of the Queen and swear allegiance to old Blighty while letting the new chap know what's-what.
So by the time his Uncle dies (a suicide following a Studio reshuffle), the nephew makes funeral arrangements at the ostentatious funeral home run by a big boss and staffed by the likes of Liberace. It is THEN that he falls in love...
I won't give it all away but needless to say, he falls hard enough to overcome her objections... then she gets promoted... then there's some sort of misunderstanding... then then... oh never mind.
if you're looking for a fun Ealing-type comedy, then this one ain't it. It is pure satire, a scathing (but fun) exaggeration of materialism and Hollywood and... well, you name it.
It was fun seeing SO many familiar faces... but of course, their 1965 B/W versions. Certainly an all-star cast. It differs from the book apparently but I never read the original "The Loved One" by Evelyn Waugh.
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