Foolin’ Around (1980)
I had to ask myself, is Foolin’ Around suppose to be a parody? Was it suppose to kid those tired old movies in which a sweet, beautiful rich girl is supposed to marry a vacuous snob but then meets a good-hearted doofus and changes her mind right there at the altar? It doesn’t seem so.
I don’t know what the thinking was here. The movie stars Gary Busey and Annette O’Toole, two very engaging actors pilfering through a story that has him as an Okie working his way through college, and she as a research scientist. How dedicated is this movie to the rom-com requirements? Well, she meets him when he’s her research subject and she nearly kills him with electric shocks. It’s that kind of movie.
The supporting players are right out of central casting. There’s the disapproving mother (Cloris Leachman). The hard-assed grandfather (Eddie Albert). The irritating fiancé (John Calvin). And, for some reason, a butler named Peddicord played by Tony Randal who sounds like Max from Sunset Blvd. and looks like Gomez Addams.
It wouldn’t object so much if the movie were about something, if the two lovers had time to prove to us that they belong together but the movie keeps getting distracted by stupid stunts, one involving a hang glider and the other walking on a girder hundreds of feet in the air, and jokes involving people falling down and getting wet.
And, of course, it all comes down to the moment when Busey shows up at that wedding with the parents and the groom aghast when the bride decides not to go through with it. How the mother deals with this is beyond stupid, but so is the rest of the movie.