That's Life! (1986)

This is a movie about life! The title fits perfectly. The wife is doing her best (as most do) to keep things on an even keel, balancing home, and work while going through a scary medical crises, alone. She cannot tell her husband, because he is selfishly going through his own "age" crisis. He is a hypochondriac who refuses to believe there is nothing wrong with him, and he feels he is a failure in every part of his life. They have children who have lives and careers of their own, and are not very close personally. I get the feeling he was never close to his children, and his wife always had to run interference between him and them. I feel she would have liked to have had a much closer relationship with her children, but, with such a self centered husband, that was impossible. This movie is funny, sad, pathetic, and very,very realistic.

An interesting misfire. Director and co-writer Blake Edwards tries for an autobiographical touch in this family-laden drama, and was rightly accused of narcissism by the critics (who probably wouldn't have pounced so hard had the picture been made with a bit more flavor). 60-year-old architect in Southern California expounds on life's woes while his too-patient spouse deals privately with her own agonies. Although Jack Lemmon does get to spout off with some well-written (if familiar) tyrannies, and Julie Andrews is allowed to put in her much-needed two-cents near the finish, I felt Edwards' film was far removed from reality. It seems to exist in a poor-sports netherworld in which only the wealthy are unhappy. Perhaps it's time for Edwards to get away from the beach-front condos of Malibu and see how the other half lives. *1/2 from ****

what on earth is this derelict excuse for a movie? Lemmon is usually such a great actor, but this movie brings out his worst. i saw this in the video store, saw it was directed by the guy who made 'breakfast at tiffany's' and 'the pink panther' and thought, hey, okay, let's try this out. but then i failed to remember the same guy made all the other pink panther movies as well. I gave the box to the guy at the counter and he gave me a tape in return. I would have had more fun bringing the empty box home and staring at that for an hour and a half. what a waste of two bucks fifty. I should have put down a hundred at Wal Mart for a Remington and shot myself after this movie finished. grumpy old men was better than this, and nothing is worse than grumpy old men except grumpier old men and out to sea. i was expecting an amazing team up here from two classic great actors and a classic director but they should have shared the price of a Remington and a box of cartridges and done themselves in. I'm flogging a dead horse. i just have nothing positive to say about this, except i like Lemmon usually but here he should have been called 'jack lemon'. ha ha. funny right. my joke was as funny as this movie was good.

The part of Gillian, which Julie Andrews portrayed in "That's Life," gave me a queasy feeling: here was a character who was suffering from a possible career-threatening throat ailment. The film was made in 1986.In real life, ten years later, Andrews would be experiencing a like situation, and two years thereafter awaiting results of a throat operation with parallel consequences.This was not unlike a similar feeling I got when Elizabeth Taylor underwent her well-publicized brain operation in 1997. I vividly recalled her 1959 role of Catherine in "Suddenly Last Summer," in which the crux of that script was built around Catherine's receiving a brain operation.As fine as both of those performances were, the art vs. life aspects were equally as impressive, and unnerving.