 and starring Academy Award nominees Dyan Cannon, Sally Kellerman, Brenda<br />
Vaccaro and Joseph Bologna — as well as erstwhile <i>Flashdance</i> star Michael Nouri, plus Len Cariou — <b><i>Boynton Beach Club</i> feels like a relic of some old-guard Hollywood party, littered as it is with notable players of the 1960s and ’70s</b>. Director<br />
Seidelman’s mother, Florence Seidelman, and her friend David Cramer wrote a story about<br />
life as they experienced it at a so-called “active adult community,” which the younger Seidelman and co-screenwriter Shelly Gitlow then fashioned into a feature film script.<span style=)
The result is last year’s quietly released adult rom-com Boynton Beach Club, a
middling movie about the amazing capacity of the human heart to rebound and fall in love at any
age.
over the sudden passing of her husband, finds an unexpected new circle of friends
when she accepts an invitation to join the titular bereavement group.
While not ready to embark on a relationship herself, she is amused to realize
that so many of her contemporaries are actively looking for love. Lois (Cannon) is being courted by a
younger man (Nouri), while Harry (Bologna) tries Internet dating
and encourages his friend Jack (Cariou) to pursue a romance with the
mysterious Sandy (Kellerman). Through all sorts of ups and downs, these adults rage — individually and collectively — against the autumn of their years.
Boynton Beach Club posits that “60 is the new 40,” though this is more a product of fanciful language than realistic depiction. That the movie is able to wring occasional laughs from its set-ups is a testament to both some of its cast — Cariou and Bologna are in particular quite nice — but also its bawdiness, its refusal to conform to staid expectations regarding the niceties of language, body image and the like. Writer-director Eric Schaeffer tried this in 2001’s Never Again, with Jeffrey Tambor and Jill Clayburgh, which fitfully achieved patches of interest, and Boynton Beach Club goes down much more smoothly, if not quite as, ahem, memorably. So that’s a good thing, actually, but also a bit indifferent. Cannon is serviceable, much more sympathetic than I remember seeing her before, but I didn’t have much use for Kellerman, alas. It’s the aforementioned men that strike one as most interesting, surprising for a film with so much estrogen coursing through its veins.
Presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen that preserves the aspect ratio of its original (however limited) theatrical exhibition, Boynton Beach Club comes with a 5.1 Dolby digital English language track, and optional English subtitles. The transfer is relatively nice, and free of digital artifacting and, for the most part, grain. Seidelman also sits for a feature-length audio commentary track, the disc’s sole supplemental feauture. Therein, she discusses her own mother’s grappling with aging, and what she thinks it foretells for her, as well as all manner of production anecdote, sprinkled liberally along with much genial backslapping and congratulations for the cast. C (Movie) C+ (Disc)