Where's Poppa?

Props for the edge, this one was really out there. But, it was original, legit and hilarious. Saw on TCM.

How much of your mother can you stand your entire adult life? Based on the book by Robert Klane starring George Segal and Ruth Gordon A lawyer named Gordon can't escape his senile mother Hocheiser. All he wants is to have a life of his own and even he knows she can't live forever. She has to be taken care of. Gordon wants to put her in a nursing home and he's getting married. Much of the women he's dated in the past can't put up with her but Gordon finally finds someone who can stand her ground. This nurse Louise played by Trish Van Devere falls for him hard as does he. His mother is a stubborn woman though and it's going to take more than forcing her to stay elsewhere to see reason. Even Gordon's brother won't help him so he's left to fend on his own. It's funny because this man has endless fantasies about his mother leaving to seeing this nurse in a brides dress. The title also points to Mrs. Gordon asking all the time where is Gordon's papa. As you can tell she's so senile she refuses to let go. The movie ended up being more enjoyable than I thought. It's full of good laughs, a jazzy soundtrack, and genuinely realistic characters. There's also this really funny gag involving a gorilla suit. Who can compete with someone's parent when age and memory start to show? Most of us when we reach that peak in our lives refuse to change. Sooner or later all of us need to start having lives aside from our folks. The film is quite a silly time and isn't afraid to make Freudian humor. George Segal is so terrific next to Ruth Gordon. It's a believable relationship between mother and son that gets so ridiculous it's touching.

The nonagenarian (not a word you get to use often, so you always should when you can) Reiner left behind him a matchless comedic legacy across multiple media, from records to TV to film—but even towering legends can make a few clunkers like this poorly paced, badly titled, and sorely outmoded black comedy.

The best comedy movie ever made!

I definitely would have tightened the slack pace of this--it seems perhaps 15 or 20 minutes too long, and really lags in spots--but it has some really excellent ideas and, in its basic underlying tenet of adult siblings trying to take care of their elderly parents, yet at the same time having fulfilling lives of their own, remains unfortunately very timely. I'm NOT a George Segal fan in the slightest (in both his previous roles in 'Ship of Fools' and 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf', he seems to think that simply by screaming at someone, that it inherently means 'range' and 'intensity'), but his work here is solid and he makes you care about his character's plight enough to actually empathize with his situation and root for him as a result. Solid work--and director Carl's son Rob is absolutely hilarious in a rare, pre-'All in the Family' performance. Good stuff here--contemporary PC-awareness notwithstanding, of course... ;)

Just behind the original "The Producers" as one of the best comedies ever made.

It's the Mother of all Jewish-mother joke films.

Any movie with a "humorous" rape scene gets no love from me.

A deranged comedy, with some deranged characters, that will have you laughing at it's deranged stupidity. "Gordon, as the widowed mother, is in senile dementia constantly asking "Where's Poppa?" and scaring off nurses and Segal's girlfriends with her bawdy eccentricities. In her mental lapses she can't remember her son is a grown man, and when he brings home Trish Van Devere the mother suddenly describes the size of her son's sex organs as if he were a child. Van Devere as a prospective nurse looks like the Angel of Mercy with her sweet pure face framed in a white cap, but she is also a little insane." This movie is hilarious. Not laugh out loud humor, and not raunchy like today's comedies, but still fu**ing funny as hell. Where's Poppa? is an intelligent, smart, dark and twisted little comedy. There's some pretty messed up shit in this movie and some hysterical, over the top, classic one liners, such as... "He's got a pecker this big." "And I want you to know that if you mess this one up for me, I'm gonna punch your fuckin' heart out." "He made a caca on the bed." You'll know exactly what I'm talking about when you see this movie. Funny shit! Well acted, smart, funny, and Highly recommended! <img src="http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm89/JDHallowEEn/WheresPoppa.jpg">

A very funny comedy, with Ruth Gordon doing what she does best. I'll subtract half-a-star for a rape scene done for laughs.