Others exercise like demons, wear those too-young fashions and anti-aging creams. They find that second adolescence, a world of personal ads, one last sports car, sex toys and flings.
In Boynton Beach Club, director Susan Seidelman toys with that "we're-not-codgers-yet" genre of comedy, playing around with expectations as the film follows several seniors through love, the last time round.
Seidelman uses Dyan Cannon the way she showcased Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan 20 years ago. Cannon plays a brazen, cute, flirty and tightly dressed tease in this too-meek/too-gentle romance. As Lois, the life force in the Boynton Beach Bereavement Club, she's about getting on with life. She comforts newly widowed Marilyn (Brenda Vaccaro) and also Jack (Len Cariou), and comes on to Donald (Michael Nouri). She's not worried about breaking a hip. She's rollerblading.
Joseph Bologna wants to be a "player," a 70-year-old with a Jeep and a thing for online chat rooms and personals ads. But he's not as playful as he thinks he is.
Seidelman shows us that the petty indignities of old age are writ large, even here in the Senior State. She samples the vexations of dealing with a lapsed drivers license, indiscrete pharmacists, learning to drive again, and coping with confusing insurance policies.
But Seidelman doesn't win much more than a grin from complications that include white lies about what one does for a living, chat-room pick-ups, the effects of gravity on the naked human body and finding your late husband's porn videos.
Delightful as it is to see these players take another turn at the plate, and any movie aimed at an audience that gave up on movies after Driving Miss Daisy, Boynton Beach Club never aims to be much more than sweet. If only it had hit that mark a little more often.
This is cache, read story here
