The Lonely Guy

source: The Lonely Guy

This is a great movie that has a lot of laughs, heart and romance. A lot of guys can also relate to it. Steve Martin plays a man who is oblivious to a lot of things that revolve around him, including his wife sleeping around. He finds out first hand when walking in on her (and he ends up being thrown out, thus starting the lonely guy part). While looking for a place to stay, he meets his new best friend, Warren, who is another lonely guy. He teaches Steve about all the ways of a lonely guy. Of course, all ends well with Steve meeting a girl. Its a great movie that really should be more popular. I rate this 7/10. (my rating) Rated R for sexual content/humor, and some language

I swear I have a life. Though I just can't get enough of movies from before CGi ruined them all for story. So whenever I can I try to watch an older movie. This movie "The Lonely Guy" starring Steve Martin is such movie. Here we have a loser down on his luck. A guy who wants a girlfriend,  any girlfriend! Desperately! He got dumped and his heart broken. All that stuff. Problem is there is no real point to it. Steve Martin plays his typical 80s SNL self. Loud, obnoxious and DUMB. Like real dumb. Like his girlfriend is in bed with her Latin lover and just acts like there is nothing wrong type DUMB. Like so bad he gets into bed with her and doesn't seem to care because he has a girlfriend. Like good grief Larry (the characters name) have some self respect. He doesn't. He is DUMB. The movie goes on for sometime and he meets a woman at a coffee shop half way through the movie. She gives him his number after she calls him a lonely guy and ha HA she wrote the number on a napkin and he wipes his face because Larry is a DUMB character. So surprise he can't call her. Sees her at a restaurant, loses the number she leaves with the waiter. Then sees her again on a subway car across the station, steals a gangsters spray paint can and writes backwards where to meet on the opposing trains window. He meets here and finds out shes been married 6 times!!! Maybe fate was losing the numbers because he needs to avoid here perhaps. He doesn't care because Larry has no self respect and just wants a girlfriend, any girlfriend. They date. He falls in love. She dumps him because he is perfect for her. Larry goes on a cruise. Surprise! She's on the same cruise. New York must be a small place in the 80s? He's still in love. They go to a costume party and he talks with her, begs her to go out with him again. A friend comes over as they're talking. The friend gets hypnotized by this women. Husband number 7 he becomes. Like a DUMB guy Larry tries to break up the wedding rather than count his lucky stars he's not marrying her. He is depressed because he can't marry this indecisive manipulative woman and goes to a bridge to jump off. As he is standing there. This psychopathic women just happens to be jumping off and he happens to catch her. Her reason is she couldn't live if she's not with Larry. Yeah right sure shes a crazy manipulator after all. They live happily ever after. Movie ends. And  this happily ever after probably lasts a day until this horrible woman dumps this dumb guy and gets divorce no.8! The premise is an understandable one. We all know a severely lonely guy who'll take anyone, even a horrible person but this movie didn't do well enough to tell it. It tried to be a funny comedy and it just fell flat on its face. It was horrible and may just be Steve Martin's worse movie he's ever done (don't know, haven't seen them all).

Steve Martin and Charles Grodin star as a pair of lonely, extremely depressed single men who find comfort in their mutual depression and friendship. Since I might be one of the only people in the world who has never been lonely, it's understandable that this movie doesn't speak to me. I'm a bachelor, but an extremely happy one, and have always felt that people that desperate for a relationship haven't learned the vital lesson of finding happiness within one's self instead of expecting another person to solve their problems. There are scenes when both men consider suicide because they don't have girlfriends, and when Steve talks to his pillow as if it were a woman, reassuring her that he'll never leave her and he'll love her forever, it's supposed to move people in the audience. When my brother saw this movie, he cried, identifying with the characters' loneliness so much. I just wasn't moved. I think people who cry into their pillow because they don't have a romantic partner are missing the entire point of life. Placing the responsibility of one's happiness entirely on a romantic status is unrealistic and irresponsible. Romance isn't perfect, and getting a girlfriend won't fix a man's problems, merely replace them with different problems. You can check out The Lonely Guy if you want to, just don't expect a good recommendation from me.

Other people here have commented on the unevenness of this movie. What an understatement. I found the first half of the movie funny, poignant, delightful. Then, all of a sudden, the movie becomes an unfunny, painful bore. It's amazing. The contrast between the two halves is so stark, it's hard to believe it's the same movie. I don't ever recall such a split between two halves of a movie. Ever. And in the second half, there is a scene in bed involving the 'o' word, that is very painfully unfunny and completely inane. But what do I know. Two scenes that really stick out in my mind: 1. When the girl says to Steve: "Nice guys don't stay lonely for long" -- so sweet! 2. When Steve realizes he missed out on a golden opportunity to "get lucky" with a pretty woman. That was wickedly funny!

The Lonely Guy is often quite funny but unfortunately sometimes dreadfully dull. Like Jim Abrahams and later Mel Brooks movies, this is classic Neil Simon where he throws rapid-fire jokes at you. Some hit and some miss, but you don't have to wait long for the next one. The scene where he dines alone in a fancy restaurant was one of the funniest. Somebody else seemed to think so, too, as it was copied almost verbatim for an Australian TV commercial two years later. Imitation must be the sincerest form of flattery. As a New Yorker, I liked seeing the city in this movie. It's a somewhat dirtier but more variegated New York than in movies like "Ghost" or "When Harry Met Sally," which spent too much time in tony neighborhoods like Tribeca, the Village and Midtown. Unfortunately, the definitive home video version does not exist and probably never will. The laserdisc is marred by a bad transfer and excessive, very objectionable video and audio noise. This may be the dreaded laser rot in action or just bad production. The DVD is beautiful, with a crisp transfer and no noticeable noise. But its 1.85:1 widescreen presentation is in the form of matting/masking the 1.33:1 Academy Frame, so instead of showing more picture, it actually shows less than the cassette and the laserdisc. The matting makes the "widescreen" frame feel distractingly cramped, with characters' heads continually butting up against the top. One joke in particular suffers badly: When Larry is laying on a bed talking to a woman, he's bare-chested in his fantasy to imply they're in bed together. But the widescreen version shows only his head, so the joke is weakened. Too bad a full-frame DVD will probably never be made as this is one of the few times when a full-frame presentation would have been preferable.

This was back (1984) when Steve Martin still made funny movies. Steve is very good in this film, and also very handsome. I've always thought Steve Martin was an extremely good looking guy - I especially like his black eyebrows and his very dark eyes. He probably should do some waxing or shaving however on the chest, and especially on his back and the back of his shoulders. Steve really dresses nice in this film, too. I particularly liked the pink shirt he wore in several scenes. Steve plays a lonely bachelor named Larry Hubbard, who is so desperate to have a girlfriend he's willing to even over-look the fact he comes home from work to find his current girlfriend in bed with another man. When Larry crosses paths with acquaintance, Jack Fenwick, played by the devilishly cute Steve Lawrence, it makes his own life even more depressing. Larry meets a kindred spirit in the park, however, when he befriends Warren Evans (Charles Grodin), whose life, if possible, is even more pathetic than his own. Then Larry meets Iris (Judith Ivey), who has a history of hooking up with losers and lonely guys. In fact, she's been hurt so many times she's afraid to be in a relationship with a guy she really loves and cares about. The film revolves around Larry and Iris and their up and down relationship, as well as Warren and Larry coping with their loneliness in a variety of comic ways. There are many laugh out loud scenes. I greatly enjoyed the film. The only reason it got a 9 rather than a 10 from me was due to the silliness of a bedroom scene between Larry and Iris--that was embarrassingly lame, but the rest of the film flies.

Who ever had the idea to film Bruce Jay Friedman's book "The Lonely Guy's Book of Life" is most likely out of work now. None of what was probably a wry, dry, occasionally witty user's guide is conveyed by Ed Weinberger and Stan Daniel's script (adapted by Neil Simon). Instead we get a lame, lousy, limp comedy with little to laugh at. Steve Martin tries his darnedest to give us a chuckle, and his infectious persona almost saves something from this flick. Alas he, and the likable Charles Grodin, can rescue nought from a pic whose one reasonable joke dies of loneliness. Also stars Judith Ivey and Dr. Joyce Brothers. Saturday, May 10, 1997 - Video

I have to admit this plot/story is quite original, I don't remember ever seeing a movie with this subject. And I didn't know that Steve Martin was already old in 1984. Sadly, "The Lonely Guy" never delivers what it promises. I was expecting it to be a comedy with some drama scenes, but simply there's no drama scene in the whole film. It tried to be comedy repeatedly, but only some few scenes were really funny and well thought. The restaurant scene for instance was very clever, I was able to laugh since I've been through a similar situation in past days. However, the sex scene for example, was very silly. Actually, many scenes felt lame and amateurish, and that's not what I expected for this kind of comedy. All in all, the concept of this film is brilliant but I don't think it was better executed. Maybe with a better writer it would've been better.

This movie started out with a bang when I first saw it as a child. I was really disappointed when I could not watch it in its entirety. So when I had a chance to rent it, I jumped at the chance and I am rather sad I did. The first half was still funny, but all the stuff I missed was sadly worth missing. Not that it was all bad mind you, there was a chuckle or two in this part of the movie, but nothing compared to the laughs found in the first half of the film from when Steve finds out his girlfriend has been cheating on him, to the restaurant, to the strange jogging using fake sweat. Then a bit before he writes his book on how to be a lonely guy the movie really slows down its pace and it becomes a bit to sentimental at times, while still showing a bit of the zaniness that made the first half of the film really good. The story is about a lonely guy who starts off with a girlfriend, but ends up alone in rather funny fashion. He makes friends with another lonely guy played very well by Charles Grodin and they proceed to try and help each other out. Like I said you get some great scenes during this time and Steve meets up with a girl he for some reason cannot hook up with due to one problem after another. So in the end an okay movie, that just needed some of that energy from the first half of the film to carry over to the second.