Luv (1967) Dir: Clive Donner <br /><br />Production: Jalem Productions/Columbia Pictures<br /><br />Woeful 'humorous' look at love, marriage, divorce. Harry Berlin (Jack Lemmon) is about to commit suicide by jumping off the Manhattan Bridge when old acquaintance Milt Manville (Peter Falk) serendipitously scoots by, oblivious to Harry's intentions, and blithely asks him to come to dinner. Harry's problem is he doesn't believe in anything. But Milt believes in love, in fact he says he's more in love today than he was on the day he got married. The joke is that Milt loves a woman that isn't his wife (ba-dum-bum!), but she won't even look at Milt until he gets a divorce. Milt knows his wife Ellen (Elaine May, whose real life maiden name is Berlin) won't divorce him, so he conspires to introduce Harry and Ellen and get them married, leaving him to his dreamgirl.<br /><br />Lemmon, Falk and May all play your stereotypical neurotic New York Jews (Lemmon is affecting a particularly embarrassing accent), which is supposed to be inherently funny but isn't. For all I know, it might have been in 1967 to an audience that hadn't heard of Woody Allen. The humor is mostly bizarre non sequiturs (two junk dealers who do business with Milt) and patience-testing absurdities. There is some satire of bourgeois values; Milt, after telling Harry how happy he is and how he has it all, takes Harry to his home for dinner--the home is in some hellish suburban subdivision and upon seeing what 'having it all' means, Harry promptly tries to kill himself again. But otherwise the film is virtually destroyed by Harry, played annoyingly by Lemmon as a borderline special needs person, shamelessly mugging his way throughout. And the obvious comedic pieces, I defy anybody to watch them and not sit there stone-faced. If you do, you are a far generous person than I am.<br /><br />* out of 4