In the ritzy Beverly Hills neighborhood, Clare Lipkin (Jacqueline Bisset) is a widower haunted by the ghost of her husband. She and her daughter Zandra don't get along. Her friend Lisabeth Hepburn-Saravian (Mary Woronov) moves in as her home is getting fumigated. Lisabeth's brother Peter (Ed Begley Jr.) arrives for a visit with his new bride To-Bel. Juan (Robert Beltran) works for Clare and he's in debt to unsavory characters. Lisabeth's driver Frank suggests a different way to make money and then makes a bet with Juan on being the first to bed their employer.
Paul Bartel is a specific kind of filmmaker with his cast of actors, Woronov being his primary partner in crime. This is a social satire black comedy. Only I didn't laugh once. There are too many characters. It's an intertwining ball of sexual desires. The acting is deliberately broad and quite frankly deliberately bad. It gets tiring to watch so much deliberate fake acting that it becomes hard to distinguish from real bad acting. Rebecca Schaeffer's murder soon after the release also leaves a dark shadow hanging over this movie. This bundle of soapy interconnected mass of people holds no appeal. It's not surreal enough to be outrageous. It's not comedic enough to be funny. The social satire isn't sharp enough to bite. Bartel is not for everybody and in this case, it's not for me.
Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills
1989
Comedy
Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills
1989
Comedy
Plot summary
The story of this social satire and soap parody follows two rich white upper class families living in Beverly Hills, California. Recently widowed Claire is a once popular sitcom star, who dreams of a Hollywood comeback. She and her daughter Zandra are not very close, even though they live in the same house, so she turns to her best friend Lisbeth for comfort. Lisbeth is a socialite with her own set of problems. Her alcoholic husband Howard left her for another woman. Her son Willie is terminally ill and hopelessly in love with Zandra, who doesn't even notice him. Lisbeth's poor playwright brother Peter is in love with Claire, even though he just got married in Vegas to sassy To-Bel, a woman he barely knows. Meanwhile, Claire's houseboy Juan and Lisbeth's bisexual chauffeur bet on which of the two will seduce his cougar boss first. Several other plot points make things even more complicated. It turns out that To-Bel has a secret past. The ghost of Claire's husband Sidney starts haunting Claire. Juan keeps failing at his "mission", which terrifies him, because he has to sleep with Frank if he looses the bet. Lisbeth's ex husband keeps coming back into her life - when he gets too drunk to remember that they're divorced. Doctor Mo Van De Kamp shows up to ask for donations for his charity Hungry Drive in Africa, but his honesty is questionable. Mexican maid Rosa speaks in non-sequitur. A housekeeper is brutally murdered. The doctor's dog Bo'Jangles is attracted to To-Bel. A hypocritical wake is held and prejudice of both the upper class characters and the lower class characters is revealed. However, there may still be hope for some of these horrible people.
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Movie Reviews
Bartel satire soap
Funny, surreal satire on the classes in L.A.
Often laugh out loud funny play on sex, family, and the classes in Beverly Hills milks more laughs out of the zip code than it's seen since the days of Granny and Jed Clampett. Plot centers on two chauffers who've bet on which one of them can bed his employer (both single or soon to be single ladies, quite sexy -- Bisset and Woronov) first. If Manuel wins, his friend will pay off his debt to a violent asian street gang -- if he loses, he must play bottom man to his friend!
Lots of raunchy dialogue, fairly sick physical humour, etc. But a lot of the comedy is just beneath the surface. Bartel is memorable as a very sensual oder member of the family who ends up taking his sexy, teenaged niece on a year long "missionary trip" to Africa.
Hilarious fun.
Shapeless social satire
Cult figure Paul Bartel probably hoped for mainstream acceptance with this film, but it actually had the opposite effect; it practically stopped his movie-directing career in its tracks. And it's not hard to see why: the film lacks a dramatic center of gravity - it has nothing to compel you to keep watching apart from the familiar names in the cast. It's basically a bedroom farce that builds to some "outrageous" events which could hardly be considered shocking in 1989. It's not terrible - just terribly pointless. *1/2 out of 4.