Generation of Vipers

By J.C.

MIXED COMPANY

Directed by MELVILLE SHAVELSON

Screenplay by MELVILLE SHAVELSON and MORT LACHMAN

This movie begins with a sure sign oi trouble to follow: a montage of stills showing cute kids, each representing an ethnic minority, all of them pretty and smiling and irritatingly adorable. Having established this trough at the very outset, Writer-Director Melville Shavelson is free to proceed downward.

Shavelson, whose credits include The Pigeon That Took Rome and The War Between Men and Women, shows himself a master of a formula that used to be standard fare on TV sitcoms: the emasculated American male who blusters and protests while remaining the tool of his pert, soft-spoken but granite-willed wife. Here he is played by Joseph Bologna, she by the adept but woefully misused Barbara Harris. Hubby coaches a hapless professional basketball team, the Phoenix Suns. He makes a good enough living, however. His suburban home is roomy, wellappointed, and chock-full of kids--three when the movie begins and three more by the fadeout. Since Mixed Company covers only about six months and is not science fiction, we may reasonably conclude that it is a film about adoption.

More precisely, it is a film about how Mom overcomes Dad's loud protests and brings assorted orphans into the house. She does this by weeping, by putting the frost on, by cajoling, or by any combination of these techniques. Mixed Company is a good case for the founding of men's lib. Not only is Dad generally a nitwit; he is not even a virile one. A recent case of the mumps has put him out of the reproductive action, and he is impotent even in his job. His work and his home life are the same; he keeps yelling and losing. He protests when he is victimized by the team star, and yelps when he comes home from a road trip to find that his wife has ordered up yet another kid from the adoption service. In all of this, he is made to look thoroughly unreasonable. Things weren't even this bad with Stu Erwin in Trouble with Father.

As if these flaws were not enough, the movie has the style and texture of an Army training film. When Dad, first learning of his infertility, asks Mom (in front of the doctor) to reassure him that he has indeed made every valiant effort, she responds with a pert, "Oh, yes, dear. You worked your tail off." This may be a small movie, but it is definitely worth hating.

.J.C.

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