Cheap Husbands and Wives (DVD) (Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Judy Davis, Sydney Pollack) (Woody Allen) Price

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Customer Reviews of Husbands and Wives

Don't Miss It!
This movie has it all. Allen traces the emotional ups and downs of his charcters with his usual wit and perception of human relations. The acting is superb, particularly by Judy Davis and Sidney Pollak as a middle aged married couple. Crackling dialogue and jarring camera work make for a completely satisfying cinematic experience. Allen plays his usual neurotic character, this time an english professor who gets lured into an enfatuation with one of his female students, Juliette Lewis. Liam Neeson and Mia Farrow are also terrific--Farrow's last role in an Allen film.

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Just Too Marvelous For Words...But I'll Try
A married couple strolls into a Manhattan apartment and announces--to another married couple--that they've decided to split up for a trial run--just to see what it would be like to be single again...An obvious dramatic conceit? Watch and see...

This is a superb Woody Allen drama from the early 90s, and it's kind of like Alvy and Annie fifteen years later--had they made it to begin with. We all know, even before the black screen with the 1940s jazz soundtrack appears, that Allen's characters are dissatisfied, whimpering, anxiety-ridden Manhattanites who think they deserve better--in love and in life--and therein lies the genesis of each character's dissoluteness and [im] or [a] morality. That's a key question for the student of Woody Allen's films: do we have the right to think we deserve better? See what the characters have to say about it. Judy Davis turns in a marvelously comedic and dramatic performance--worthy of the Oscar! I'm not a Sydney Pollack fan--he's icky--but as Judy Davis's husband, he turns in a great performance as a dissatisfied husband who wants a little more out of life--something other than being married to a cold-in-bed, cerebral Simone-de-Beauvoir type brilliantly played by Davis. They're an explosive couple who ultimately realize the meaning of marriage--even if they can't pinpoint it exactly in every context. Mia Farrow does a good job in this film--for once she acts--maybe the realness of her real-life situation (remember the scandal? )with her adopted daughter brought out real emotions that were captured on-screen. If you're interested, read Farrow's biography ("Things Fall Away"--available from amazon.com), and she'll pinpoint for you the scenes she acted in after her knowledge of the Woody/SoonYi affair. Allen in this film is Allen--a writing professor who has a slight thing for Juliette Lewis, a New York debutante/student-of-Allen's on the eve of her 21st birthday--her name is Rain and she's named after Rilke--what do you think is the significance of that? She brings out the stormy and tempestuous side of love--but, as Lewis's character says to Allen, "Well...I'm worth it." The only disappointing casting in this film is Allen's casting of the horse-faced, lumpy and dumpy obvious-as-a-limmerick Liam Neeson who ends up with Farrow in the end. They deserve each other.

This film will certainly make you rethink marriage--heterosexual marriage anyway. But then again, maybe you got that from watching mom and dad...get this video instead. At least these characters are given witty dialogue and know the importance of opera and theatre--so if love fails, at least there's that...

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Wince and Love It
Never has a movie about relationships hit so many nerves on so many levels. It takes guts to view this film with an open mind. I takes familiarity with relational boredom and heartache to understand it completely.

Woody Allen delves into the minds and dysfunctional lives of two and then four couples with the deftness of a ninja in "Husbands and Wives." Rarely have I seen such candor in depiction of the seven year itch. It is a place in time that will be familiar to many couples given the opportunity for honesty and will likely create interesting if not brutal debate in the most secure of unions.

The hand held camera used in many of the scenes are not for those prone to motion sickness. Nonetheless, it creates an intimacy and urgency that grant the film credence at its most passionate moments.

Each of the characters is someone that the viewer probably knows in situations that they would never discuss, leaving him both baffled and sympathetic.

I highly recommend the film to those viewers able to be honest enough and possibly brave enough to face their most intimate relational demons.