I Saw A Film

A young man, who is blind and doesn’t quite have the skills of Zatoichi, moves into a hippy apartment in California and soon finds out he’s neighbors with perky and adorable Goldie Hawn. I’m not sure a better thing can happen to a (hetero) man, but while lots of sweet hi jinks ensue much of their enjoyment is spoiled by the fact that the young man’s mom is a very overbearing protector and isn’t at all happy with our blind lad being away from home.

I’ve never been the sort of lout to just fall over myself for Rom-Com or saccharine cloying storytelling, granted I cried when the wolf got shot in Dancing With Wolves, and I choked up when Bill Murray gives up his destruction of the shark that killed his mentor (in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou), but I always felt like those sorts of boilings over were frankly reasonable things.

However when Starsky (just kidding, actually Ralph played by Paul Michael Glaser) arrives to steal away our protagonist’s love you can’t help but find yourself suffering along with him. This sort of crap happened to me every night when I did restaurant work. I’d build what I thought was a reasonably sweet relationship with the fair lass who was serving the food I was cooking. But, by the end of the night, after lots of laughs and playful flirting, some oaf would arrive with a Mercedes and a cigarette holder between his teeth and whisk my fantasies away along with my lady! It’s a kind of constant of our lives really, and no one has a solution despite eight or ten thousand or so years of civilization. I’m sure in the ancient Indus Valley some poor Sanjay had to watch as his Madhuri got swept off her pretty feet by the town prince.

Goldie might be at her post Laugh-in cute best in this film. I’m not sure anyone has ever replaced her spunky, half-naked gorgeousness.

And while this whole thing is basically a stage play (a popular one at the time) with some outdoor establishing stuff added to it to give it a “film” feel, the choices made fit it very nicely into a very specific San Francisco “cool” era.

I’ve probably watched the thing three or four times over the years and have not been disappointed despite the plain theme of motherly responsibility having to surface to do-the-right-thing.

Still I miss the sincerity and fantasy of the time.

For about 3 bucks on Prime!