This poster was the reason it took 3 decades to watch this film…
Jerry (Nick Nolte) is a Beverly Hills hobo, down on his luck in the land of empty wealth and asinine humanity. Upon losing his dog during a concrete nap (the non-mobster kind), Jerry decides that’s enough, and walks into the deep end of the nearest swimming pool he can find with no intent of resurfacing.
It may have been belief in the value of human life; it may have been wanting to get the smelly hobo out of the pool, but Dave Whiteman (Richard Dreyfuss) makes a split second call and drags Jerry from his chosen chlorinated coffin. With the ratty and very naked hobo now drying poolside, Dave and wife Barbara (Bette Midler) now face another decision. What to do with the very recently suicidal homeless guy?
The decision to permit Jerry temporary residence is definitely not a unanimous one.
Jerry knows of no disagreement – or cares not – and he moves in without a second thought. Over the ensuing days Jerry and Dave share conversations and outings. And here is where the film derails.
Down and Out in Beverly Hills is one of those ‘fish out of water’ movies, where people from different demographics change each other’s lives. Only this film doesn’t know whose life should be the one changed, and who should be doing the bulk of the changing. Seeing Dave swig out of a paper bag full of cheap hard liquor before sleeping on the beach was an eye opener. Watching Barbara seduce Jerry merely to spite Dave – who is banging the maid – was another.
I was receiving mixed messages throughout the film, as every time I thought it was going in one direction it strangely changed tack to another, and every time someone calls Jerry a bludger he instantly offers to walk out the door, only to be ordered back inside equally quickly. It’s actually all too confusing.
Regardless of confusion the one universal truth is that Jerry changes the life of all in the opulent Whiteman residence, paid for by Dave’s successful clothes hanger business. The maid, the sexually confused kid, the initially arrogant daughter, the ‘keeping up appearances’ wife who would nonetheless bang a hobo, the ‘I want to help make your life better’ samaritan of convenience who would nonetheless share a goonbag with the unwashed.
I could deal with all this. I could deal with Jerry’s transformation from porch sleeping trash eater to well manicured tea sipping newspaper reader. I could deal with all the eccentricities, all the inconsistencies, all of it. If it only made the slightest effort to entertain. I’m sure the filmmakers and cast strived to craft a film to elate, amuse and inspire, but the end result is a drab and bland affair.
Jerry could have saved us all the trouble and stayed at the bottom of the pool…
It seems I am now down to the one-percenters; films that I haven’t previously watched that I check out for the one percent chance that I missed something good. Put another way, the only films that people still talk about a quarter century later are pretty much acknowledged as classics. I’m pretty sure people stopped talking about Down and Out in Beverly Hills about twenty five days after its release.
It isn’t awful, but there just isn’t anything to talk about.
Final Rating – 5.5 / 10. One man arrives from nowhere to change the lives of others, whether it is for the betterment of anyone involved is clearly a matter of conjecture.
