Bad Manners (1997)

User Rating:

6.5/10   

Director:

Jonathan Kaufer

Writers:

David Gilman (screenplay)
David Gilman (play)

Release Date:

9 October 1998 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama | Romance

Plot:

Wes and Nancy are a married academics couple. One day they host Nancy's long-ago lover Matt and his current sexy girlfriend Kim...

Plot Keywords:

Jealousy | Ex Boyfriend | Musicologist | Older Man Younger Woman Relationship | Convertible

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

David Strathairn	...	Wes
Bonnie Bedelia	...	Nancy
Saul Rubinek	...	Matt
Caroleen Feeney	...	Kim Matthews
Julie Harris	...	Professor Harper
Robin Poley	...	First Musicologist
Daniel Koch	...	Musicologist
Steve Forbert	...	Coffeehouse Troubadour

MPAA:

Rated R for language and sexuality.

Runtime:

88 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

USA:R

Company:

Davis Entertainment Classics

Trivia:

The teacup held by Professor Harper (Julie Harris) is antique American china made by Stetson called American Beauty. The china was originally sold in grocery stores for pennies a piece, but is now quite valuable.

Pretentious Trash

A woman who is a tenured professor at Harvard invites an old boyfriend to her home. He brings along an ill-mannered (hence the title) girlfriend who, moreover, the woman's husband thinks stole $50 from his wallet. That's the setup, and from there it deteriorates. Why does the woman not ask her guests to leave? No reason is even suggested. If you can swallow that, perhaps you can enjoy the rest of the movie, though there isn't much to it except more bad manners and suspicions and accusations and, notwithstanding the blurbs on the videocassette box, precious little wit. Oh, yes, you get to hear the girl talk dirty.

There is also the putative pleasure of seeing that the rich (the Cambridge mansion where the movie takes place is worth a fortune in today's real estate market - right now you can take advantage of a pre-construction offer and purchase a studio apartment in Central Square for $360,000), and the highly respected, handle their personal affairs as poorly as the rest of us. If you changed the characters' professions, if the Harvard professor were a waitress, and her former boyfriend was in town not to deliver a musicology lecture but to compete in a bowling tournament, and if the setting were a 2-bedroom apartment in Queens, I strongly suspect the critics would pan the movie as just a lot of uninteresting and, yes, ill-mannered conversation where nothing happens.

But the professor is not a waitress, she is a tenured member of the Harvard faculty. No one, certainly no woman, achieves that distinction by being an ineffectual wimp. Yet no intelligent, forceful person would put up with this invasion of her home, and even attack on her marriage - she would ask her guests to leave (there's plenty of nice hotels in Cambridge).