Monday, Mar. 15, 1976
Murder by Contract
By JAY COCKS
I WILL, I WILL . . . FOR NOW
Directed by NORMAN PANAMA Screenplay by NORMAN PANAMA and ALBERT E. LEWIN
Much laughter, many cheers and at least one low wolf whistle for Diane Keaton, who looks like the brightest light comedienne in movies. She brings nicely scrambled wit and bushwacked sex appeal to even the lowliest undertakings.
/ Will. I Will ...For Now is about as low as they come, and Miss Keaton must work hard at playing a neurotic contemporary woman trying to reconcile with her husband (Elliott Gould). Divorced, but unhappy about it, Keaton and Gould attempt a trial reconciliation, a marriage by contract. "Living with her is like living with a Lysol commercial/' grouses Gould to the family lawyer (Paul Sorvino), who has been enjoying a weekly liaison with Keaton. The lawyer would like to marry her himself, and makes the terms of the marriage contract so tough that he figures the relationship will not last even the prescribed six months.
Even at the best of times the marriage was shaky. Gould, naturally, is a beer-guzzling, girl-chasing, hard-betting slob, and rich into the bargain. Keaton is bright, hung up, a little tentative about sex, a maniac about keeping the house in order. Once, Gould claims, he got up to go to the bathroom at night and came back to find that she had made the bed. The movie is similarly witless throughout. There are many attempted jokes about marriage counselors, institutes for sexual behavior and breasts. Norman
Panama directs with the sort of visual flair usually found only on late-night television commercials for Connie Francis records.
Miss Keaton does not so much rise above all this as defy it. Looking a little like the White Rock girl with a degree from Sarah Lawrence, Keaton coaxes and brasses her way through her role. At one point, she must remark of the floozy upstairs, who sports low necklines and is bedeviled by brown supermarket bags that disintegrate from below, "Oh, her cantaloupes are always falling out." Keaton pays so little mind to the awkwardness of the line, to its prewashed vulgarity, that she makes it charming. Talent like that goes beyond skill; it is a kind of bonkers genius. Jay Cocks
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