Charles Grodin Movies
Supporting and occasional leading actor Charles Grodin has created a successful career playing low-key, uptight, and frequently wholesome comic roles; he also makes an excellent arch villain. Whereas many funnymen have been popular for their ability to overreact and mug their way around everyday obstacles, Grodin is of the Bob Newhart school of wry comedy that values understatement and subtly. Grodin learned to act under the guidance of Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen before making his 1962 Broadway debut opposite Anthony Quinn in Tchin Tchin. Two years later, Grodin made his first film appearance in Joseph Adler's Sex and the College Girl. Though offered the leading role in The Graduate (1967), Grodin refused, thereby providing a lucky break for Dustin Hoffman. In 1968, he played a small but memorably chilling role as a devilish obstetrician in Rosemary's Baby, and then played another villainous role when he played heartless navigator Aarfy Aardvark in Mike Nichols' Catch-22.Grodin got his big break when director and Nichol's former comedy partner Elaine May, who had been a longtime friend and mentor of the young actor, cast him in the lead of the Neil Simon-scripted The Heartbreak Kid (1972), in which he played a salesman who falls in love with Cybill Shepherd during his honeymoon. Though Steven Spielberg wanted him to play the role of shark expert Matt Hooper in Jaws (1974), Grodin preferred to direct the Broadway play Thieves on Broadway instead. In 1977, Grodin played the play's leading role in the film version. He also added spice as the villain in Warren Beatty and Buck Henry's remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), Heaven Can Wait (1978). Since then, Grodin continued as a supporting actor in such films as The Woman in Red (1984) and The Couch Trip (1987).
After receiving rave reviews starring opposite Robert De Niro in the 1988 hit comedy Midnight Run, Grodin's career began to slow down. He played the long-suffering patriarch in the first two Beethoven films and turned in a memorable performance in 1993's Dave, but by 1995 Grodin had decided to switch gears, opting to host a talk show. After The Charles Grodin Show ran for several years on CNBC, Grodin later took a gig doing Andy Rooney-esque commentary on CBS's 60 Minutes II.
In 1995, he hosted his own cable talk show. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
The gargantuan St. Bernard finds love in this sequel to the box-office hit. Beethoven happens to meet Missy, another St. Bernard, in the park and the two find they share a certain chemistry. Unfortunately, Missy is being held captive by Regina (Debi Mazar), a spiteful ex-wife attempting to leverage ransom money from her wimpy former husband. Fortunately for the dogs, their visit was long enough for the stork to come calling (no one ever accused Beethoven of having slow paws), and soon Missy berths a litter of adorable pups. Regina decides at first to drown the pups (an apparent attempt by the screenwriters to justify whatever horrible fate befalls her later) but reconsiders when she learns of their monetary value. However, the Newton children (Christopher Castile and Sara Rose Karr) manage to rescue them, and the entire family heads off for a Montana resort, Beethoven and pups in tow. Somehow, Regina and her sleazy boyfriend (Christopher Penn) end up at the resort as well, setting the stage for the final showdown. Less appealing than the original, Beethoven's 2nd is still an innocuous hour and a half of fun for younger kids and hardcore dog lovers. ~ Jeremy Beday, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charles Grodin, Bonnie Hunt, (more)
Feeling that something is lacking in their lives, the family of suburbanite Charles Grodin adopts a stray St. Bernard puppy. The cute lite beast grows up to be the less-than-cute Beethoven, a sloppy, slobbery, oversized and extremely destructive animal. Beethoven also brings with him a lot of hidden baggage in the form of evil veterinarian Dean Jones, who'll stop at nothing to steal Beethoven for the purposes of his insidious lab experiment. Several sequels followed, beginning with 1993 Beethoven's Second. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charles Grodin, Bonnie Hunt, (more)
- 1986
This compilation tape is a collection of clips and trailers from low-budget, cult-type movies. The "framing" device of having two guys on a couch (one of whom is future cult-icon Steve Buscemi) watching TV and making cracks about the movies is fairly lame, and many of the films showcased have been included in other compilation tapes. However, there are clips and trailers from some rarely seen gems, such as Al Adamson's sleazo western Five Bloody Graves, Herschell Gordon Lewis' Living Venus (featuring an early appearance by Harvey Korman), and Doris Wishman's "masterpiece," Bad Girls Do Cry. ~ Brian Gusse, All Movie Guide
- 1986
Adapted from the play by Jules Feiffer, Grown Ups was produced for cable television. A pre-talkshow Charles Grodin plays the Feifferesque central character, a writer facing a mid-life crisis. He turns to his family for support, but, to put it mildly, they're no help at all. Feiffer is a writer of monologues rather than plays, and the verbose nature of this taped drama bears this out: characters talk at each other incessantly, but never to each other. Still, Grodin and his co-stars Jean Stapleton, Martin Balsam and Marilu Henner hold up quite well under the circumstances. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1981
Charles Grodin appears as himself in this episode, endeavoring to spread some genuine Christmas cheer throughout cynical, jaded Hollywood. When Grodin shows up at Bardwell's Department Store, Laverne (Penny Marshall) jumps to the wrong conclusion that the actor wants to date her, while Shirley (Cindy Williams) labors under the misapprehension that Grodin wants her job. Before the inevitable cross-purpose conversations, bitter arguments and warm-hearted reconciliations play themselves out, Lenny (Michael McKean) contributes his bit to the Holiday season by giving his roommate Squiggy (David L. Lander) a free shampoo! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
The Great Muppet Caper is the second Muppet film and it is considerably more complex than its predecessor, The Muppet Movie, which was essentially just a road movie. As the film begins, Kermit the Frog and Fozzie Bear are reporters who have failed to bag a story of a London jewel heist, which happened under their watch. The real criminals managed to escape and frame Miss Piggy as the thief. Kermit, Fozzie and the Great Gonzo set out on a mission to solve the mystery and track down the criminals who stole the Baseball Diamond. There are fewer star cameos and songs in The Great Muppet Caper than in The Muppet Movie, although appearances from John Cleese and Charles Grodin are particularly memorable. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charles Grodin, Diana Rigg, (more)
- 1979
Jake (Charles Grodin), an insurance investigator, is assigned to probe the killing of a wealthy businessman in Acapulco. To help him, he hires a beautiful New York model, Ellie (Farah Fawcett), to act as his wife, and they pretend to be tourists on vacation. Art Carney plays Marcus, a local detective who befriends Jake but gets him into various scrapes. Joan Collins also appears as the suspicious Nera. Sunburn was a made-for-TV movie which featured a pop-song soundtrack blaring from characters' tape recorders that included tunes by Herbie Hancock. The movie was based on the novel The Bind by Stanley Ellin. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Charles Grodin, (more)
- 1978
While the made-for-TV The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank sure looks like a pilot film, nobody involved would fess up to this. Based on the writings of humorist Erma Bombeck, the film stars Carol Burnett and Charles Grodin as an upwardly mobile New York couple who move themselves and their family to suburbia. What follows is a 1970s variation on Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, with lawn disasters, commuting problems, Little League intrigues and "committee-itis" thrown into the pot. Eric Stoltz, later to gain fame in such films as Mask, plays Burnett and Grodin's teen-aged son. Premiered on October 25, 1978. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1978
Louise Lasser, who wrote the script, stars in this made-for-TV comedy as a flaky New Yorker who finds romance with a staid computer salesman when the two are thrust together on a cross-country trip. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Louise Lasser, Charles Grodin, (more)
- 1977
This 1977 episode of Saturday Night Live is hosted by Charles Grodin and features musical guest Paul Simon. One of the highlights of the show is Grodin's stunning impression of Art Garfunkel, as he attempts to sing a duet with Simon. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charles Grodin, Paul Simon, (more)
- 1977
Enjoy the sounds of Paul Simon, joined by Art Garfunkel on several songs, in this Lorne Michael ("Saturday Night Live") produced special highlighted by "SNL" star appearances. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1967
Escaped killer George Bellamy (Bradford Dillman) covers his tracks by setting a series of forest fires. Bellamy's strategy is to throw the FBI off the trail; while they're searching for an unknown arsonist, he will be able to flee the country. It is up to Erskine (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) to capture Bellamy before he sparks a final conflagration that will kill thousands of innocent people. Filmed on location in Angeles National Forest, this episode benefits from the strong supporting performances of TV stalwarts Lynda Day and Charles Grodin. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1966
Meanest Men in the West is basically a pair of episodes of The Virginian, chopped up by Universal Pictures' editing department and mashed together (with help from some voice doubles) into what could almost pass for a coherent plot. Judge Henry Garth (Lee J. Cobb), owner of Shiloh ranch, becomes the object of a revenge plot by Kalig (Lee Marvin), a criminal whom the judge sent away to prison for ten years. In the recut version of the two shows (of which the first was directed and written by Samuel Fuller), Kalig sends his half-brother (played by Charles Bronson, in footage from a completely unrelated episode of the show) to kidnap Garth's ranch foreman, the Virginian (James Drury). Not all of it makes sense, but since the two stories were never supposed to be related, that's understandable. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- 1964
A cad who goes through women faster than his laundry finally meets his match while vacationing in Puerto Rico. ~ All Movie Guide
James Belushi and Charles Grodin team up for this variation on the Prince and the Pauper. Belushi plays Jimmy Dworski, a convicted car thief, serving time in a minimum security prison. But when Jimmy wins a pair of tickets to the World Series from a radio call-in show, he can't resist walking out of jail, particularly when the warden won't even let the inmates watch the series on television. Grodin plays rich workaholic Spencer Barnes, who, when his wife walks out on him right before a long-planned vacation, leaves his datebook in an airport telephone booth. Happening upon Spencer's datebook is Jimmy, who simply intends to return the datebook to Spencer for a 1,000-dollar reward. But when he finds the datebook contains his credit cards, Jimmy assumes Spencer's identity, living the good life and dating the boss's daughter, while making his way to Malibu to return the property to Spencer. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- James Belushi, Charles Grodin, (more)
Michael Ritchie's The Couch Trip follows a long line of Hollywood films (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Disorderly Orderly) in which the psychos are seen as saner than the psychiatrists. Charles Grodin plays Dr. George Maitlin, a pompous radio self-help guru, who is having his own personal mental breakdown. Maitlin's lawyer puts in a call to a Cicero, IL, mental facility and the telephone is answered by schizophrenic mental patient John Burns (Dan Aykroyd). Thinking Burns is a crony of Maitlin, Burns is offered the job of replacing Maitlin during his recovery. Of course, Burns accepts the job. Immediately jetted to Los Angeles, Burns meets panhandler Donald Becker (Walter Matthau) at the airport. While wearing the garb of a priest, Becker sounds off against the madness of societal conventions; Burns takes to him immediately and they become fast friends. When Burns assumes command of the airwaves in Maitlin's place, his words of wisdom are so obvious and commonsensical that he is an overnight sensation. Meanwhile, in London, where Maitlin is convalescing, he gets wind of Burns' success. With renewed vigor and outrage, Maitlin leaves his recovery room and hops on a plane back to Los Angeles in an effort to recover his radio show. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dan Aykroyd, Walter Matthau, (more)
Director Martin Brest, of Going in Style and Beverly Hills Cop fame, was in charge of Midnight Run. Robert De Niro stars as Jack Walsh, a hard-bitten bounty hunter offered $100,000 to bring in embezzler Jonathan Mardukas (Charles Grodin). Handcuffed to the wimpy Mardukas, Walsh assumes that the extradition trip from New York to Los Angeles will be an uneventful one. But the prisoner hasn't told Walsh the whole story: the embezzler owes $15 million to a mobster (Dennis Farina), and he's been targeted for assassination. It's a toss-up as to what is the most entertaining aspect of Midnight Run: the slam-bang action and chase sequences or the verbal byplay between DeNiro and Grodin. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert De Niro, Charles Grodin, (more)
- 1988
- R
A young Ohio man moves to Los Angeles in search of a career and a girlfriend in this romantic comedy, whose action centers on the '80s singles scene. Eddy (David Packer) heads to California after his cousin, Skip (Scott McGinnis), promises him a job in the ad biz, but Eddy ends up with the unenviable task of handing out flyers on the beach. Turning his focus from the professional to the romantic, Eddy joins a video dating service and endures a series of inaccurate match-ups that drive him to adopt wilder and wilder guises for his video ads. Along the way, he meets Peggy Kellogg (Bridget Fonda), an employee of the dating service, but she's always got her boyfriend on her arm. Frustrated over Peggy's inaccessibility and the dead-end job he's unfairly been stuck with, Eddy finally decides to take a gamble -- to be himself in the yuppie fantasia of L.A. The soundtrack to You Can't Hurry Love features singer Phil Collins' cover of the '60s song from which the film takes its name. Kristy McNichol, Charles Grodin, and Sally Kellerman all appear in cameo roles. Kellerman previously appeared in writer/director Richard Martini's previous outing as a screenwriter, Three for the Road. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- David Packer, Scott McGinnis, (more)
George Lollar (Charles Grodin) overrides his wife's judgment and takes his family for a vacation on a sunny Caribbean island that just happens to be on the verge of a revolution. Their hotel is not the usual Hilton on the beach but a pick-up joint for singles where the main activities are sex, sex, and sex. In that order. As the horrified father watches almost helplessly, his wife becomes liberated, his daughter falls for a Frenchman who is actually a guerrilla, one of his sons loses his virginity to a buxom, worldly-wise woman, and his other son burns down the mini-camp he was forced to attend. But that's hardly the worst of it -- there is that small matter of a political overthrow about to explode on the scene. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charles Grodin, Robin Pearson Rose, (more)
In a comedy as flat as the cardboard cut-outs of movie stars that appear in one scene, Steve Martin plays Larry Hubbard, a wild and lonely guy who has been dumped by his girlfriend. Since misery loves company, he takes up with Warren, a fellow Lonely Guy (Charles Grodin), and eventually both Warren and Larry find some surprising companions, especially after Larry writes a best-selling Lonely Guy Guide. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Steve Martin, Charles Grodin, (more)
- 1982
- R
The action-adventure scenes of unconvincing sword fights, passable martial arts, and other macho displays alternate with the feminine displays of twins Mira and Mara (Leigh Harris and Lynette Harris) in this prehistoric fantasy. Mira and Mara were raised as boys -- for awhile, anyway -- to protect them from their villainous father Traigon (Robert Ballesteros) who needs to sacrifice his first-born to the gods in order to become even more powerful in the arts of magic. The twins are aided in their struggle against their father by two warriors, Erlik (Bob Nelson), dubbed with a Southern accent that gives away the tongue-in-cheek subtext of the plot, and Baldar (Bruno Rey). Subsidiary battles with sex-starved zombies who have been put away too long, and the monkey men who suffer from the same problem, imply that sexual deprivation can lead to some nasty-tempered machos, even if they are zombies. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lynette Harris, Bob Nelson, (more)
- 1980
- R
Claudia Weill's second feature is a romantic look at the humorous and tragic sides of love, starring Jill Clayburgh as Kate Gunzinger, a mathematics professor who lives with perpetually sunny architect Homer (Charles Grodin) in Chicago. But during a trip to New York City, Kate becomes romantically involved with handsome hunk Ben Lewin (Michael Douglas), a recently retired professional baseball player who is trying to adjust to a life outside of professional sports. The son of her father's fiancee, Ben, in spite of uncertainties about his future, actively pursues Kate, and Kate, much to her surprise, willingly permits Ben to make his amorous approaches. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jill Clayburgh, Michael Douglas, (more)
Director Mike Nichols and writer-actor Buck Henry followed their enormous hit The Graduate (1967) with this timely adaptation of Joseph Heller's satiric antiwar novel. Haunted by the death of a young gunner, all-too-sane Capt. Yossarian (Alan Arkin) wants out of the rest of his WW II bombing missions, but publicity-obsessed commander Colonel Cathcart (Martin Balsam) and his yes man, Colonel Korn (Henry), keep raising the number of missions that Yossarian and his comrades are required to fly. After Doc Daneeka (Jack Gilford) tells Yossarian that he cannot declare him insane if Yossarian knows that it's insane to keep flying, Yossarian tries to play crazy by, among other things, showing up nude in front of despotic General Dreedle (Orson Welles). As all of Yossarian's initially even-keeled friends, such as Nately (Art Garfunkel) and Dobbs (Martin Sheen), genuinely lose their heads, and the troop's supplies are bartered away for profit by the ultra-entrepreneurial Milo Minderbinder (Jon Voight), Yossarian realizes that the whole system has lost it, and he can either play along or jump ship. Though not about Vietnam, Catch-22's ludicrous military machinations directly evoked its contemporary context in the Vietnam era. Cathcart and Dreedle care more about the appearance of power than about victory, and Milo cares for money above all, as the complex narrative structure of Yossarian's flashbacks renders the escalating events appropriately surreal. Confident that the combination of a hot director and a popular, culturally relevant novel would spell blockbuster, Paramount spent a great deal of money on Catch-22, but it wound up getting trumped by another 1970 antiwar farce: Robert Altman's MASH. With audiences opting for Altman's casual Korean War iconoclasm over Nichols' more polished symbolism, the highly anticipated Catch-22 flopped, although the New York Film Critics Circle did acknowledge Arkin and Nichols. Despite this reception, Catch-22's ensemble cast and pungent sensibility effectively underline the insanity of war, Vietnam and otherwise. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alan Arkin, Martin Balsam, (more)
In Roman Polanski's first American film, adapted from Ira Levin's horror bestseller, a young wife comes to believe that her offspring is not of this world. Waifish Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) and her struggling actor husband, Guy (John Cassavetes), move into the Bramford, an old New York City apartment building with an ominous reputation and only elderly residents. Neighbors Roman and Minnie Castevet (Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon) soon come nosing around to welcome the Woodhouses to the building; despite Rosemary's reservations about their eccentricity and the weird noises that she keeps hearing, Guy starts spending time with the Castevets. Shortly after Guy lands a plum Broadway role, Minnie starts showing up with homemade chocolate mousse for Rosemary. When Rosemary becomes pregnant after a mousse-provoked nightmare of being raped by a beast, the Castevets take a special interest in her welfare. As the sickened Rosemary becomes increasingly isolated, she begins to suspect that the Castevets' circle is not what it seems. The diabolical truth is revealed only after Rosemary gives birth, and the baby is taken away from her. Polanski's camerawork and Richard Sylbert's production design transform the realistic setting (shot on-location in Manhattan's Dakota apartment building) into a sinister projection of Rosemary's fears, chillingly locating supernatural horror in the familiar by leaving the most grotesque frights to the viewer's imagination. This apocalyptic yet darkly comic paranoia about the hallowed institution of childbirth touched a nerve with late-'60s audiences feeling uneasy about traditional norms. Produced by B-horror maestro William Castle, Rosemary's Baby became a critically praised hit, winning Gordon an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Inspiring a wave of satanic horror from The Exorcist (1973) to The Omen (1976), Rosemary's Baby helped usher in the genre's modern era by combining a supernatural story with Alfred Hitchcock's propensity for finding normality horrific. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, (more)
