The original title of SHE’S FUNNY THAT WAY was Squirrels to the Nuts, because the co writer and director of the film, Peter Bogdanovich had a hard-on for the Ernst Lubitsch film, Cluny Brown, renowned for its Charles Boyer parley to the titular plumber.
Squirrels to the Nuts becomes a franca lingua lief motif, an intrinsic and thematic catch-cry in SHE’S FUNNY THAT WAY, a strange seductive utterance from Owen Wilson’s character, theatre director, Arnold Albertson, who, though happily married to theatre star, Delta, a delicious take on the domesticated Diva by Kathryn Hahn, likes to romance call girls.
Yes, he beds them, but he wines and dines them, and “incentavises” them to ditch their Irma La Douce routines and pursue their dreams.
In New York to cast and commence production on a new play by playwright, Joshua Fleet and starring his wife and famous leading man Seth Gilbert, Arnold hires harlot, Glo, who tells him of her aspirations of becoming an actor. He encourages and inspires her, an honest and heartfelt benevolent gesture that backfires when she auditions for him later that week.
At base, SHE’S FUNNY THAT WAY is a bedroom farce, a connecting door comedy that’s a delightfully old fashioned skew at the screwball and wears its madcap with panache and pride.
When it flies, it soars, thanks to Owen Wilson’s boyish charm as a feminist womaniser and Imogen Poots energetic enthusiasm as Glo.
Poots has already shown her comedic chops in the underrated A Long Way Down and her career seems to be waiting in the wings for a real career take off. Her performance here is another calling card for audiences and producers to take note.
No wonder the playwright played by Will Forte falls head over heels for the harlot with a heart for art. His ardour makes it less harder to disassociate from his tryst with the psycho psychiatrist perfectly played by Jennifer Aniston. Talk about putting the anal in analysis.
To build on the bamboozling, Glo is a patient, as is a former client of the call girl, who has hired a private dick to shadow her.
SHE’S FUNNY THAT WAY is a valentine to Hollywood, a yearning for the golden years, much as What’s Up Doc? was back in its day, and his last picture, The Cat’s Meow.
Bogdonivich fills the script with talk about the stars and movies of yesteryear, Audrey Hepburn, whose last screen appearance was in the helmer’s They All Laughed, and Lana Turner and Lauren Bacall, illustrating how potent myth making is and how magic generated by movies is necessary to take us out of the mundane. Cinema is certainly the stuff that dreams are made of.
Furthering his own nostalgia fondling, he has cast actors from his own glorious past – Cybil Shepherd, Tatum O’Neal, Joanna Lumley, Coleen Camp, George Morforgen and Austen Pendleton pop up and do the twirl.
Fabulously funny, SHE’S FUNNY THAT WAY is well worth a look for those who want charm, heart, and style in their humour.
It’s funny that way.
SHE’S FUNNY THAT WAY opens in cinemas this Thursday 27th August.