Last Of The Red Hot Lovers

Very funny film
I'm not going to summarize the film because others already have. But I do want to rescue Last of the Red Hot Lovers (LRHL) from previous comment about this being a tepid, so-so movie. My wife and I have watched this movie on VHS off and on for years and it never fails to get us rolling. I love Neil Simon and this is one my favorite movies of his plays. Neil Simon is wonderful at drawing out the rediculous in common, real-life experiences, and the New York City sacastic Jewish humor is priceless.

Who can forget Barney Cashman's mid-life crisis prayers: "....I look today older than yesterday. A few years and it'll all be over. Please God, don't let it be over. Let something terrific happen today. Anything, just as long as it's something, Amen!" Or when cynical, sated, chains-smoking Elaine Navazio (Sally Kellerman) arrives in Cashman's mother's squeeky-clean, paper-thin walls, nothing-can-appear-out-of-place-when-we're-done apartment for a secret liason with Barney. Elaine:...

Awful movie... but one I had to own. Let me tell you why...
Some 40-plus years ago, my mother received a phone call from her mother (i.e. my grandmother) with some startling news -- she'd been cast as an "extra" in a "major motion picture" that was being filmed right in her neighborhood - in fact, in her apartment building! I never saw my mother laugh so hard as she did when Grandma told her that the name of the film was to be "The Last of the Red Hot Lovers."

The story ostensibly takes place in New York City, but for some reason (labor-related I think), some of it was actually filmed in Philadelphia. In particular, the apartment building scenes, where (in the story) Barney (Alan Arkin) takes a succession of bizarre "dates" for trysts that inevitably go awry. The apartment building is in fact 1810 Rittenhouse Square, and the apartment (Barney's mother's apartment) is identical in layout to my late grandmother's.

When the third and final date ("Jeanette") panics and runs out of the building, pursued by Arkin, they pass my...

Remember Fun??
Before we had to deal with all the bad stuff in our lives, all the stuff that seems to have seeped into the modern world, we used to watch simple funny love stories like this one.

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