California Suite (1978)

(On Cable TV, October 2022) If you find yourself contemplating California Suite’s showy dialogue, keep in mind that it’s from the pen of Neil Simon, a Broadway playwright who enjoyed crossover Hollywood success from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. Simon is clearly in his element in California Suite (for which he got a screenwriting Academy Awards nomination), as he delivers four stories, all taking place at Los Angeles’ fabled Beverly Hills Hotel over Oscars weekend. An actress and her gay husband are visitors from London, dealing ungracefully with the stress of being an awards nominee; two Chicago couples are lively and disaster-prone; a businessman from Philadelphia has to deal with a prostitute in his bed even as his wife suddenly arrives at the hotel; and finally, a visitor from New York turns out to be a workaholic writer bickering with her screenwriting ex-husband about the fate of their daughter. The dialogue (especially between the divorced couple) is showy, but very competent and almost always enjoyable to listen. It helps that a surprisingly good ensemble of actors in on hand to do it justice: Jane Fonda, Michael Caine, Walter Matthau, Maggie Smith, Alan Alda, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, Elaine May… and others. The film takes liberties with the source material, intertwining some (but not all) of the stories, taking them well outside the titular hotel suite, and probably playing up the physical comedy of the Chicago segment (with Cosby and Pryor, was there any other choice?)  It works rather well, and fans of Academy Awards trivia will be delighted to find out that Maggie Smith eventually won an Oscar for her portrayal of an actress that doesn’t win an Oscar. Call that one last laugh from a smarter-than-average comedy.