Seemingly inexperienced Burnett is unsure whether the wise-cracking and somewhat "obviously interested" Matthau is the real deal. A recently wedded middle-aged couple, never before married, must adjust to living together after a lifetime of living alone.
It's not even a comedy, even if it tries to be at first. His take on sex and marriage, "The first week you do it every day, then the next week 3 times, then after that once a week until you're cured." An interesting attempt, but perhaps filmmakers who live in Beverly Hills should stay out of the suburbs. The two actors had no chemistry, and their onscreen pairing lacked warmth and sexiness. Carol Burnett and Walter Matthau are middle aged singles at one of socialite Geraldine Paige's famous "parties".
Walter Matthau and Carol Burnett both portray characters who feel themselves unworthy, at least unworthy of love. There are colorful moments--and a surprisingly vicious/funny knock-down brawl between Burnett and Geraldine Page--but the script has nowhere to go, the possibilities far exceeding what we see on-screen. 1 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? 6 out of 8 found this helpful. 7 out of 9 found this helpful. An adult drinking incessantly in movies seemed so normal back then but would now be frowned upon. There is humor.
The acting of the leads was off, too. I also liked that, even though it was San Francisco in the early Seventies, you didn't get a lot of cultural Zeitgeist or gratuitous mentions of Watergate (I think there was one Spiro Agnew joke).
7 out of 10 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? This movie was a big disappointment. For most of the movie, she puts up with Matthau's philandering without confronting him, her anger buried under an overly prim exterior. And check out Tillie's devastating undermining of Pete's shallow paramour over cocktails. Matthau and Burnett play middle-aged singles who court, marry, have a child, and find their marriage tested by tragedy. Once their son Robbie is born, life goes the course it often does in Peter de Vries novels (it's adapted from "Witch's Milk"), chronicling the ups and downs of suburban American life. Jimmy Twitchell (Rene Auberjonois) is their gay friend.
Isn't this unrealistic? Matthau delivers his lines so naturally, you know that if he was to do drama, it could only be tragicomedy. Was this review helpful? She's guarded and he's flirtatious. Was this review helpful? In one go, Pete 'n' Tillie is an entertainment feat, with its high comic panache, its dexterity with bittersweet dramaturgy and its star turns for its two tremendously talented leads.
The couple separates, all friends and acquaintances suggest Burnett get a divorce.
Both "The Apartment" and "Breakfast at Tiffany's" have much better writing and acting, and both of them display the perfect balance between drama and comedy.
He talks his way into her life. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Was this review helpful? Did we really dress like that in 1972?
Netzkino bietet euch hier kostenlos und legale Filme in ganzer Länge an.
For most of the movie they are willing to live with each other's weaknesses not out of deep love, but out of an awareness that they most likely can't do better. Pete 'n' Tillie may provide the most unromantic view of marriage ever put on the Burnett, who was surely America's greatest TV comic of the 70s and adored by millions, plays it straight down the line. They are both brought down to scale (Burnett more fiercely than Matthau) and their comedic tics are mellowed out (Matthau plays a piano nude except for a hat, and it gets a laugh, but then it's back to business).
In this movie Pete (Walter Matthau) is the womanizer married to Tillie (Carol Burnett)who just wants a normal, committed marriage.
Directed by Jerry Belson. They're both intelligent and perceptive. 4 out of 5 found this helpful. I can't understand why other commenters found the "cat fight" between them funny; I found it violent, sexist ("proving" once again, that women can't be real friends to each other), and mean-spirited. It strives to give us sort of a day-to-day examination of married life in the suburbs, but first we need to fall in love with these characters and, despite the charisma of Matthau and Burnett, we don't. Was this review helpful?
3 out of 4 found this helpful. Yep. The film has a washed-out sense of 'realism' as two single people meet and marry, have a child, and soon face tragedy.
4 out of 8 found this helpful. There is one hysterically funny scene of a knock down drag out fight between Burnett and her best friend, played by Geraldine Page (who inexplicably received an Oscar nomination for this), but other than that, this is a muddled and confusing film barely watchable because of the natural charisma and legendary reputations of its stars. With Cloris Leachman, Carmine Caridi, Mabel Albertson, Dick Balduzzi. We see how people can live together and never honestly come together as human beings. 3 out of 3 found this helpful. Eventually they hit it off, get married, and have a son, whom they both adore.
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