#18 All of Me

All of Me (1984)

directed by

Carl Reiner

written by

Phil Alden Robinson 

This is the movie that made Steve Martin palatable for me. I found his seventies standup unfunny, and his first, slapstick movies irritating (I've since come around to liking most of them). Martin has said he considers this the start of his more "serious" film career, and I can't disagree.

Roger Cobb (Martin) is an unhappy lawyer - he's got an overbearing fiancee and wants to be a musician - who gets sent to work with an obnoxious, rich client, Edwina Cutwater (Lily Tomlin). She's been sickly her whole life. To escape her impending death, she's brought a Tibetan mystic, the hilarious Richard Libertini, who will transfer her soul into the body of a beautiful woman, Terry Hoskins (Victoria Tennant) and that woman's out into some higher dimension.

It's an old-fashioned screwball comedy with plenty of shenanigans. When they kick in, Cobb ends up with Edwina's spirit piggybacking in his body. There's plenty of good physical comedy from Martin playing female with one half of his body and male with the other. Even better is the constant back and forth between Martin and Tomlin. It's not as sharp as anything from the thirties, but it's better than most of its contemporaries. The growing affection between the two is done well and legitimately very sweet.

Martin isn't much of an actor. The character he plays here is pretty much the one he plays in most of his movies: witty, fairly urbane, and reserved - until events force him to blow a gasket at which point he can go nuts. Still, this is the first time he really plays it so that's fine by me.

Tomlin was someone who wasn't on my radar at all. While I liked her in The Late Show (1977, dir Robert Benton), I hated her on Laugh-In. Here, she's great as a woman insulated by wealth and illness from almost every aspect of life. She has no idea how the world works and how men work. Edwina is introduced as a condescending, obnoxious woman, but gradually she's revealed as a lonely, sad woman. Mostly, though, she's just quite funny. Her reaction when Cobb tries to sleep with Terry is hilarious.

As mentioned, Libertini is terrific, as are Selman Diamond and Dana Elcar. It's definitely worth finding (it's only been released as crappy DVDs).

Verdict: So, yeah, it's a solid keeper.

Steven Martin, Lily Tomlin, and Judy Nagy