Forgotten Film Friday: The Lonely Guy

A retrospective by Brooks Rich

This film is fucking bizarre. A mix of farce and romantic comedy this film is a sort of subversion of the '80s romantic comedy. At times it's like Airplane meets When Harry Met Sally meets a Woody Allen film. Steve Martin plays Larry Hubbard, a struggling wannabe novelist working for a greeting card company that suddenly finds himself as a lonely guy. No matter what he does he can't seem to find that special someone.

I don't think this is a fantastic film but it is an interesting film with different styles of comedy working for the most part. There's a real romantic comedy in there but there's the over-the-top goofy comedy at others.. The standout thing here is the main performance. Steve Martin is an American treasure and he absolutely is the number one thing that makes this movie work. His straight-faced playing of the hapless Larry makes the jokes land that much better, much like the dry delivery of Peter Graves, Robert Stack, and Leslie Nielsen in Airplane.

This film is streaming on Peacock right now. Again I do not think that this is a lost masterpiece from the '80s. I can see why it was forgotten. But I think some people will find this worthwhile. I can see some people also being completely pissed off by this. It's one of those you need to see for yourself.

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