Charles grodin and robert de niro movie9/12/2023 ![]() Thanks to the unlikely (but inspired) pairing of Grodin and Robert De Niro (who plays a snake-bitten cop-turned-bounty hunter tasked with collaring Mardukas and bringing him from New York to LA as the clock ticks), the movie is, in my estimation, the greatest buddy action comedy in a decade of great buddy action comedies. And he’s one of the few sunny spots (apart from Beatty and Hoffman’s opening volley of brilliantly terrible songs) in 1987’s fiscal trainwreck Ishtar.īut it was the next year when Grodin delivered what remains his greatest accomplish on the silver screen: the role of neurotic fugitive mob accountant Jonathan “The Duke” Mardukas in Martin Brest’s 1988 cross-country caper, Midnight Run. He injected the perfect dose of hangdog heartache alongside fellow loveless loser Steve Martin in the 1984 comedy The Lonely Guy. His cuckolded sourpuss act worked like a tractor beam in his scenes with Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase in 1980’s door-slamming Neil Simon farce Seems Like Old Times. He managed to steal our attention away from the impossibly glamorous leads of 1978’s Oscar-nominated reincarnation rom-com Heaven Can Wait, Warren Beatty and Julie Christie. If you’ve never watched the scene where Shepherd’s old-school father (brilliantly played by Eddie Albert) calmly threatens Grodin after dinner (“There’s no deceit in the cauliflower”), then give it a watch below.įrom there, the hits kept coming. In Elaine May’s 1972’s comic romance The Heartbreak Kid, Grodin was electric (albeit, in his usual low-wattage way) as a nebbishy-but-smug salesman who impulsively marries Jeannie Berlin (May’s real-life daughter) only to have his head and his heart stolen by a seemingly unattainable blonde (Cybill Shepherd) while on his honeymoon. And when he did, well, that was even more interesting.Īlthough Grodin had appeared as Aarfy Aardvark in Mike Nichols’ satiric fiasco Catch-22 in 1970, it wasn’t until two years later that audiences finally got a taste of what he could do. He didn’t need to get the girl to jump off the screen. His regular-guy appearance and constantly flummoxed mien were hardly a threat to the biggest male box-office stars of the time like Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Dustin Hoffman. After cutting his chops on long-forgotten TV shows and on the stage throughout the ‘60s and early ‘70s (he would finally take flight and soar opposite Ellen Burstyn in 1975’s Same Time, Next Yearon Broadway), Grodin was finally embraced by Hollywood. His 17 appearances on Late Night with David Letterman will go down as some of the most perfectly crafted moments of television in the second-half of the Twentieth Century.īut let’s return to the movies…. Like the best character actors, he could make good movies great ( The Lonely Guy) and bad movies palatable ( Beethoven). ![]() He rarely got the spotlight or name-above-the-title recognition of an A-list leading man, but he made every movie he was in better just by turning up. No one could crack you up quite as easily by just (barely) frowning and acting like the world had gone mad except for him. The thing that made Grodin so special and so unique is that you never really knew whether his put-upon curmudgeon act was just that-an act-or if it was just his everyday emotional default setting. And if you’ve been looking for an excuse (not that you need one) to watch or re-watch classics such as The Heartbreak Kid, Heaven Can Wait, and Midnight Run or slightly guiltier pleasures like Ishtar or Clifford, now’s the time. But it’s his work on celluloid that was my gateway drug to his particularly hilarious strain of simmering dyspepsia. He wrote books and plays, appeared on stage, provided weekly disgruntled radio commentaries, and even briefly hosted a late-night talk show of his own in the ‘90s. Clearly, he was a lot more than just a comic actor in the movies. And one of my most enjoyable detours was plummeting down the rabbit hole of Grodin’s filmography. Midnight Run Is Peak '80s Action Buddy Comedyĭuring the past year of seemingly interminable quarantine, many of us used that time to take up new hobbies, learn new skills, or nostalgically re-visit the pop-culture cul de sacs that brought them joy before we knew what the term “herd immunity” meant.
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