Maxie (1985)

Maxie is a dumb comedy about a bored woman played by Glenn Close whose body is frequently inhabited by the ghost of flapper from the 1920s but neither the modern woman nor the flapper is the least bit interesting – in fact, they’re quite obnoxious.  So then, I was asking, who cares?  What is this story about?  Why was it written?

The story is not really here.  Jan (Close) and her husband Nick (Mandy Patinkin) move into a new house in San Francisco that, decades ago, was occupied by a flapper named Maxie Malone who had dreams of being a movie star.  Sadly, she died in an accident before her dreams could be realized.  But, in Jan’s body, she won’t leave until she gets to the audition that she missed all those years ago.

Does this sound like a premise to you?  I suppose the idea was to capture the magic of those 1930s screwball comedies with Carole Lombard or Jean Harlow but this movie feels like bad television.  It feels like one of those TV sitcom pilots that premieres early in the Fall season, gets dreadful reviews, poor ratings and it gone in a matter of weeks.  I felt like I’d seen it before.  In fact, I had seen it before.  A similar premise happened some years ago in a series called “Jennifer Slept Here” starring Ann Jillian in nearly the same premise.  It’s bad television, but at least in the case of the series, you might have believed that it would pick up steam as the episodes went along.

This movie has nowhere to go.  The jokes aren’t funny.  The characters are irritating and the premise is stupid.  Maybe, maybe, there could have been something if the character were a little bit sympathetic but she’s not.  She’s rude, pushy, irritating and frequently causes a scene.  With that, we’re better off without her.