Roger Ebert Hated This Leonard Nimoy-Directed Movie That Cratered At The Box Office
by Joe Roberts · /FilmAdd SlashFilm on Google:
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He will always be remembered as Spock, but Leonard Nimoy had some great roles outside of "Star Trek" and even managed to direct a few solid features in his time. 1987's "Three Men and a Baby," for instance, was a major box office hit that earned decent reviews. Unfortunately, things sort of took a turn after that, with Nimoy helming several films that were so bad they sort of defy description. Or, they would, except Roger Ebert did a good job of describing his 1990 effort, "Funny About Love," by marveling at its "awesome alienation from any known norm of human behavior."
Ebert had previously eviscerated Nimoy's Liam Neeson-led drama "The Good Mother," and it was arguably justified, seeing as the movie appeared sympathetic to a character who reveals himself to a child. That Neeson and Diane Keaton-led disaster even caused "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" to be delayed, due to the fact Nimoy was busy directing his odd little picture, which he probably should have abandoned to return to the Enterprise.
Two years after "The Good Mother," Nimoy tried his hand at directing again, and he was surely hoping for a better reaction. Unfortunately, 1990's "Funny About Love" was a comparable failure, making just $8.1 million at the box office on a $12 million budget and earning a 0% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. Ebert was one of those critics who reviewed the film, and he was not happy.
Roger Ebert found nothing funny about Funny About Love
Celebrated though he remains, Roger Ebert was sometimes wrong about movies. Take the time Ebert had nothing but praise for the mediocre Samuel L. Jackson-led thriller "Lakeview Terrace" (or when he trashed David Lynch's neo-noir classic "Blue Velvet"). With "Funny About Love," however, he was spot on.
Leonard Nimoy's romantic comedy is, according to its own credits, based on the article "Convention of the Love Goddesses" by Bob Greene, which appeared in Esquire Magazine. But as Ebert put it in his review, "I am at a loss to understand how anything else in this movie could have been inspired by anything." It seems the article in question merely inspired a scene in which Gene Wilder's character gives a speech at a convention, and that's about it.
"Funny About Love" stars Wilder as Duffy Berman, a cartoonist who meets the gourmet chef Meg Lloyd (Christine Lahti) and falls totally in love. The film then chronicles the couple's attempts to have a baby. They struggle at first, but after Duffy's mother dies, he becomes even more resolute. Sadly, by this point, Meg is more focused on running her new restaurant, and the marriage starts to suffer. Soon, the pair break things off, and Duffy travels to Arizona to deliver the speech on which this entire film was supposedly based. While there, he meets Daphne Delillo (Mary Stuart Masterson), a much younger woman with whom he starts a new relationship. But things don't quite pan out there, either, and if you're starting to lose interest in this confused mess of a plot, you're not the only one. As Ebert writes in his review, "Never has the miracle of conception seemed like more of a thankless chore."
Gene Wilder rubbed Roger Ebert the wrong way in Funny About Love
Given his reaction to "The Good Mother" and "Funny About Love," you might think Roger Ebert wasn't a fan of Leonard Nimoy's directing career. But in his review for the latter, he makes sure to state that Nimoy is "usually competent and occasionally quite skilled." None of that was on display in "Funny About Love," however, as is more than attested to by Ebert's scathing review.
The movie itself might fail to deliver any laughs, but picture, if you will, esteemed critic Roger Ebert sitting in a Paramount screening room watching what he describes as "embarrassing sequences in which Wilder, seen only from the waist up, is apparently trying to teach himself how to masturbate." It's an amusing little vignette to imagine. Unfortunately, the film was pretty light on amusement — at least, according to Ebert, who decried what he described as "the most cloying, inane, and annoying dialogue I've heard in many a moon." Needless to say, "Funny About Love" is not one of the many movies Roger Ebert hated that are actually worth watching.
The critic couldn't seem to find anything to like about the movie, even taking Wilder to task for his "nonvocal mannerisms, in which he gasps for breath and rolls his eyes in inarticulate sincerity as words fail him." According to Ebert, it all culminates in an ending "so corrupt with phony and contrived sentiment that only good manners prevented me from making gagging noises in the screening room." No doubt, he also had to stifle a gag or two while being subjected to an impromptu Wilder jerk session, all of which makes the fact Ebert gave "Funny About Love" even half a star baffling.