Divorce American Style (1967)

What happened to Debbie Reynold's face? I didn't think it would be possible to make Debbie Reynolds look scary but I was wrong. Did she have plastic surgery the day before this film started shooting? Or did this production hire the makeup man from the Batman TV show? And her hairline. I've seen aging sportscasters with hair plugs that looked more realistic. This is such a painful try-hard movie with zero realistic scenes. The bowling alley where Jason Robards sidles up to Dick Van Dyke? I would have called the lawyer and got a restraining order. By the time we're let in on why he's so persistent we've cringed out way to premature wrinkles. Credit where it's due, however -- Jean Simmons was a fine lady. She is so far above this dreck it's alarming. I felt embarrassed for all involved.

I'm amazed I made it past the first half hour of this, beyond the scene where Lee Grant plays a prostitute (paid mistress, if you prefer) as if she was Joe Flynn's temperamental, demanding fiancée.The plot is preposterous—an abrupt divorce, contrived for no real reason, railroaded by opportunistic acquaintances and lawyers. What's even more contrived is the legal system, as pointed out in the IMDb review by "trudyr". This movie is one of those where the theme (divorce) suddenly redefines the entire world. Everybody's divorced- - oh, and by the way, the kids are just fine with it. In one scene, a mishmash of men and women—1st husbands, 2nd husbands, ex wives, current wives, and all the combined children— leave a group picnic. It attempts Keystone Cops-style mayhem, and if that isn't funny enough (it isn't), wait for the punch line: they leave one kid behind because nobody is sure who's responsible for it.The sad thing is that the four principals—Van Dyke, Reynolds, Robards, and Simmons—all do fine work. It's the only thing that raises this movie about the level of total disaster

This movie is extremely dated and was undoubtedly unrealistic upon release, no matter how hip the filmmakers thought they were being. Husbands impoverished by alimony and child support while their ex-wives live in the lap of luxury? Please. Post-divorce, women were (and are) the ones most likely to have financial struggles, due to the continuing inequities in society, but they have also proved themselves much less dependent than the women in this movie, going to heroic heights in trying to support themselves and their children. Of course, this movie never acknowledges that maybe a divorced woman could get a job! Actually, for all its melodrama (which is enjoyable in itself), 1945's Mildred Pierce is more realistic in this regard--after Mildred and her husband split up, she goes to work as a waitress and then (you go, girl!) opens her own restaurant. At least filmmakers Lear and Yorkin dealt more intelligently with social issues a few years later in All in the Family. This movie does have an excellent cast, down to the supporting players, but they deserve better. Sitcom great Dick Van Dyke never had much luck with movies, and Jean Simmons, a wonderful actress, made few films that were worthy of her talents. Debbie Reynolds and Jason Robards, happily, were in many better movies.

Norman Lear-written divorce-comedy has bickering, bored married couple Dick Van Dyke and Debbie Reynolds splitting up, re-entering the bewildering dating scene. Begins well, with amusing, satirical jabs at suburban married life, but it runs out of gas early on. Conrad Hall's evocative cinematography is a plus, and some of the dialogue has snap, but Lear's ideas get bogged down in sitcomville. The introduction of a second couple (Jason Robards and Jean Simmons) doesn't work at all, perhaps because neither actor seems to realize this is supposed to be a comedy, and a segue to "Hip Hypnotist" Pat Collins is simply desperate. Van Dyke and Reynolds are both fair. ** from ****