The Heartbreak Kid

A first-class American comedy . . . a movie that manages the marvelous and very peculiar trick of blending the mechanisms and the cruelties of Neil Simon’s comedy with the sense and sensibility of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Vincent Canby, New York Times
featuring

Charles Grodin, Cybill Shepherd, Jeannie Berlin, Audra Lindley,

May achieves a delicate balance in her second film as director: The Heartbreak Kid is a bitter satire that plays like a whimsical romantic comedy. May’s daughter, Jeannie Berlin, shines as Lila, who marries Lenny (Charles Grodin) at the film’s outset. The Jewish newlyweds drive from New York to Miami Beach for their honeymoon, where Lila’s complete unselfconsciousness—and Lenny’s repeated run-ins with WASP princess Kelly (Cybill Shepherd)—cause Lenny and his marriage to unravel. Grodin brings a delightfully awkward energy to this film, which J. Hoberman called “one of the darkest, funniest visions of Jewish assimilation to emerge from Hollywood.”

FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Neil Simon
Cinematographer
  • Owen Roizman
Print Info
  • Color
  • 35mm
  • 106 mins