bkoganbing
Jack Lemmon and Catherine Deneuve star in The April Fools about a pair who on
one irresistible fall in love and decide to go off to Paris. The problem is that
they're married to different people.In Lemmon's case it's his boss's wife, his brand new boss Peter Lawford who is a
free swinging hedonist who likes to throw parties at his Manhattan townhouse.
It's there that Lemmon spots Catherine Deneuve looking quite bored at it all
and he's struck by her beauty. The two go off where an older couple played by
Myrna Loy and Charles Boyer kind of play matchmaker.Lemmon is married to Sally Kellerman who has an expensive hobby, redecorating homes, her homes. And once she completes a project she gets
Lemmon to sell. Gives new meaning to the term housewife. It's Lemmon who has to foot the bills for her because she doesn't work. And in Craig's
wife we know about people who value their living space over all.In the Citadel Film series book on the films of Myrna Loy she mentions that a
lot of her footage with Charles Boyer was cut out. The two old timers stand out certainly and I wish there was more of them.Jack Weston and Harvey Korman play a couple of fellow Connecticut commuters and they do have a memorable journey back home when they
miss their stop and decide to get plastered along with Lemmon.The April Fools has its moments but it's not the best of Jack Lemmon's comedies and won't make a top ten list for him.
moonspinner55
Upwardly mobile investment banker, married to a shallow mannequin out in the suburbs, picks up a sophisticated Parisian beauty at his boss's mod party in New York City, unaware she's the boss's wife. Forgotten star-vehicle for Jack Lemmon and Catherine Deneuve (who replaced an unavailable Shirley MacLaine) is an instantly-dated piece of absurdist romantic comedy in the modern idiom circa 1969. Most of the secondary characters are deadpan eccentrics who take turns staring at the strait-laced leads as if they're the ones who are odd, while the busy camera tries to catch everything about the city that is weird-for-a-laugh (often straining to do so). Lemmon is still doing his nervous schnook from "The Apartment" nine years earlier, only this time with dark brown hair dye; he never clicks with Deneuve, who never clicks with her unhappily married character. Director Stuart Rosenberg tries to keep the mood loose, but he falls into the general trap of the scenario, that of chic, shallow deadheads working too hard at having a good time. ** from ****
Doghouse-6
Whatever praise - and criticism - has been directed at this film in other comments here is pretty much right on. But the elements considered by some as flaws need not necessarily be bothersome; they aren't to me. That all of the supporting characters are rather broadly drawn caricatures works, I think, because it leaves Lemmon and Deneuve, at the heart of the story, the only seemingly real people in it, one might say. Isn't that the way love is sometimes? Maybe everyone around you thinks you're nuts (hence the title?), but to the smitten couple, the exact opposite seems the case.What we really have here is the late-60s equivalent of screwball romantic comedy. As such, it's full of colorful characters and unlikely situations, with a good dose of social satire thrown in - with marriage, in particular, under the microscope. We have high-powered executive Lawford and Deneuve, his neglected trophy wife; put-upon suburbanite Lemmon and Kellerman, his self-absorbed, psychobabble-spouting spouse; Weston trying to be the assertive "man of the house" with his bickering "Mimsy;" Loy and Boyer as the long-married and still very much in love eccentrics. But THE APRIL FOOLS isn't about marriage, of course; it's about love.If you can find this picture, which is pretty hard to do as of this writing, it will reward with wonderful moments, delivered by a varied cast which pretty much represents the spectrum of players: the just-emerging Kellerman, Dillon and Mars; Lemmon, Lawford and Weston in their prime and old pros Boyer and Loy. Deneuve finds herself in an unfamiliar milieu here, but with her character that works in her favor. It's unexpected - and thoroughly amusing - when she suddenly lashes out at Mars: "Leesen, if you toush me agayne, I'll geev you a sock-in-the-eye!"My favorite moment: Lemmon's awkward attempt to be suave and "come on" to a sexy blond at Lawford's swanky party. The payoff is priceless.
nobita
The April Fools, starring Jack Lemmon and Catherine Deneuve is a likeable, though not outstanding film. The film, somewhat bereft of a script, deals with Lemmon's character who arrives at his extremely trendy boss's apartment for a social gathering, which, to Lemmon's sheer amazement, is a fully-fledged swinging 60's hip shindig in classic over-40's type psychedelia. Deneuve plays the rather neglected wife of Lemmon's boss and of course the two meet at the party and do a terribly unconvincing job of falling in love. Deneuve, while pretty to look at, strolls through this film acting like she's hanging around for her agent to come up with something better. And in this film Lemmon just doesn't cut it as a romantic interest. The scene stealers are Lemmon's two drunken cohorts.This film is far more interesting as a time piece, however. It's fun and engaging to watch this film and see how Hollywood was interested in projecting the late '60s high-class psychedelic world. The scene where Jack Lemmon takes Catherine Deneuve to the private club which is completely fitted out like the jungle and features sexy waitresses who slink around in various animal skins, with the only way to attract their attention is to shoot them on the bottom with a cap gun, really does make you marvel at the fact that clubs like this really did exist. Ah! Those were the days....
AD
