Hotelgeflüster (1971) watch online HD

I expected this 1971 film to be a bright comedy. Instead I was presented with the filming of a very deep three-part stage play about the dark side of human relationships; only the last of the three stories could really be called funny.

A bride-to-be locks herself in the bathroom and her parents go through all kinds of hilarious slapstick agony trying to persuade her to come out. It is free of the darker undertones of the first two vignettes and has a cute surprise ending with a happy message. The other two, while being wry and witty in places, are really commentaries on the nature of man's unfaithfulness and exploitation of women, and women's culpability in allowing that state of affairs to develop and continue.

Walter Matthau plays the lead in each of the three stories, which take place in the same suite, 719, of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. He has different leading ladies in each one: Maureen Stapleton, Barbara Harris and Lee Grant. There are a few incidental characters but the stories revolve around the two main characters in each story. The dialogue is quite true to real life, even appearing to be repetitive and meaningless in places as real life conversations can be, but the playwright is taking us in each case to a specific understanding of the characters. There is nothing extraneous even though at first it appears to be cluttered with incidentals.

In the first story, a husband and wife check into the Plaza Hotel for their anniversary - and then things begin to fall apart. Maureen Stapleton as the seemingly scatterbrained wife is brilliant in playing both the tragic and comic aspects of this complicated role. As the story unfolds we realize things are not as they appear on the surface.

In the second story, a sleazy Hollywood businessman calls up various names in his little black book so that he can have some woman - any woman - come to his suite for sex from 2 to 4 between meetings. The woman from his past whom he persuades to show up is both afraid of the possible seduction and hoping he will talk her into it. This is all too painful and familiar a scenario and anyone will relate to the awkward dance between two individuals who have to try to save face while getting their needs met.

If you are looking for a light and fluffy comedy this is not the one to choose. It will disturb you and make you think about the tragic aspects of love, sex and marriage, long after it is over.

The old cliche applies to this brilliantly acted and wonderfully scripted film; they don't make them like this any more. The comedy, the intensity, the emotion is all in the dialogue and in the performances of the leading ladies and of course, that of Walter Matthau as the three lead male characters.

The dialogue crackles from start to finish. I don't think a script like this would ever get the green light in Hollywood today. Too much talk, not enough drama, nothing that really happens. In many ways it's more like a French film.

Walter Matthau is from that wonderful generation of fifties and sixties comic actors who could be over-the-top without overracting (Peter Sellers, Phil Silvers, Tony Hancock etc.). He manages to do this whilst never losing his grip on his characters and always managing to surprise with his subtle facial expressions and the comic timing of his movement.

Great performances and a great film.

I just watched this movie for the first time. And I have re-watched the first "act" a number of times now. I never gave Maureen Stapleton much of a thought, frankly. Until I watched this movie. I like this movie very much. It will be one of my "go-to's,"- those pictures that I can always watch and always enjoy. Matthau is effective throughout. Act 2 is played quite broadly, and it's a fun segment, but the weakest. Act 3 is (because I can't think of a better descriptor) conventionally funny - it follows the familiar pattern, and it's very good. But the best is the first act where the real focus is Stapleton. From the moment we first see her, she looks real. I wager that most people who watch this movie knows someone that is her character. Watch her closely, as she puts nuance into every scene - the expressions on her face, the gestures. There's a scene where she sits down on a bed, back to the camera as Matthau leaves the room. It's followed by her talking to herself. It's a brilliant bit of acting, that feels so real, and struck an emotional chord in me. I gave this an "8." If I had to grade each act separately, it would be: Act 1 - 10; Act 2 - 7; Act 3 - 8 Watch and enjoy.

Neil Simon's Broadway success, brought to the screen in a dung-colored transfer. Walter Matthau plays three different men who check into suite 719 at the Plaza Hotel in New York City at different times. In the opener, he's a neglectful husband to needy, chatty Maureen Stapleton; in the second, he's a movie producer from Hollywood who phones up old flame Barbara Harris for a tryst; and for the finale, Matthau is married to Lee Grant and suffering the wedding catastrophe blues after his daughter gets cold feet before her ceremony. Simon, despite having penned the adaptation himself, was reportedly not happy with the picture; George C. Scott and Maureen Stapleton had played all the central parts on stage, though Simon felt Matthau's take on the three male characters didn't work on film. He was partly right (Matthau is most ill-at-ease in the second episode), but the main problem with the film is the first installment. Portraying a long-suffering married couple on the brink of imploding, Matthau and Stapleton are busily beleaguered and convincingly antagonistic...it might have helped if they were funnier. Matthau's incarnation of the callous (and cheating) hubby is, unfortunately, so unfeeling towards his spouse--in a story which is not satisfactorily resolved--that it leaves a sour residue from which the rest of "Plaza Suite" never recovers. Some of the flip talk is cheeky and amusing, Lee Grant gets some colorful bits of business, but this is still a depressing experience. The Plaza Hotel must have been infuriated with the art direction: this picture makes the posh resort look like a Burger King. ** from ****

I should probably first note that I have a bias. I'm a huge Walter Matthau fan. Almost any film with Matthau in it can get up to a two-point boost from me simply because of his presence, which naturally implies a great performance. With Plaza Suite, I'm not sure there was any overhead to fill, although my initial reaction to the second segment of the film this time around was that it perhaps brought the score down to a 9. However, on further reflection, I think the performances in each section of this film are perfect, as is Neil Simon's writing and Arthur Hiller's direction.

And if those three aspects are perfect, so is the film, as Plaza Suite is one of the purist examples of a structurally simple "filmed play" that can be had. As such, it shows why the normative advice that "films should not be filmed plays" is not hard and fast. It depends on the material. In some cases, such as Plaza Suite, nothing else would have worked better than this "filmed play".

Except for a couple very minor shots, mainly to serve as segues between the three segments, the whole film takes place in a single hotel room--a suite at New York City's Plaza Hotel. Although there are a few ancillary characters, the film solely rests on the shoulders of three man/woman couples.

The play by Neil Simon first ran at the Plymouth Theater in New York City beginning February 14, 1968, with Mike Nichols directing. The play was unusual in that George C. Scott and Maureen Stapleton took on the roles of three different couples.

After Arthur Hiller's success with the Neil Simon work The Out-of-Towners (1970)--which was initially written as a segment of Plaza Suite, by the way, but then siphoned off because Simon rightly felt it was too different tonally--Hiller was contracted to do the film version of Plaza Suite as well. George C. Scott had just become a big star because of 1970's Patton, and was unavailable. Thankfully, Hiller tapped Matthau to play the male roles. As with the stage version, Matthau plays three different parts. Slight changes in make-up and costume aid his varied performances. Because Hiller felt that also having the same woman play three different parts would probably confuse film audiences (and at present, audiences would probably try to figure out what the Matrix (1999)-like plot is if the same actors played all three couples), he instead had Stapleton reprise her role in the first segment, while Barbara Harris did the second and Lee Grant the third.

The first segment, "Visitors from Mamaroneck", concerns Sam (Matthau) and Karen Nash (Stapleton). Karen has booked Suite 719 at the Plaza to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Sam arrives a bit late. It quickly becomes clear that all is not marital bliss with the two. Sam is mostly preoccupied with work, and they bicker about everything, including how old Karen is, whether they really stayed in 719 on their honeymoon all those years ago, and just how long they've been married.

The second segment, "Visitors from Hollywood", concerns film producer Jesse Kiplinger (Matthau) and Muriel Tate (Harris). Kiplinger is staying in Suite 719, at some other point in time. He's in town on business. He calls up Tate, an old flame, now married with three kids, in his hometown in New Jersey. Tate hesitates but shows up at his hotel for "one quick drink". Kiplinger just wants to use her, and the segment is a subtly complicated cat and mouse game between the two.

The third segment, "Visitors from Forest Hills", concerns Roy (Matthau) and Norma Hubley (Grant), parents of a bride-to-be. They're in Suite 719, at some other point in time, all decked out for their daughter's wedding, which is being held downstairs in the very expensive hall. However, their daughter has locked herself in Suite 719's bathroom and won't come out or respond. The segment has Roy and Norma trying everything they can think of to get their daughter to come around, while they bicker all the way.

The performances in each segment are quite different in approach. In the first, Matthau and Stapleton begin in almost a quiet realist drama mode, gradually work up to very intense comedy, and gradually transform that into even more intense, serious turmoil. The progression provides a breathtaking ride, with Stapleton particularly impressive (Matthau is appropriately much more subdued). This segment has a surprisingly downbeat conclusion.

In the third segment (I'll come back to the second), Matthau and Grant stay in a fairly high-intensity comedy mode throughout. This is the funniest segment (intentionally so)--I routinely had to pause the DVD because I was laughing so hard, and I've seen this film a number of times over the years. The comedy is an unusual combination of witty dialogue occasionally veering almost towards slapstick. It ends the film on a very high note.

The second segment was the one I had a problem with initially, as at first the performances do not seem nearly as confident and convincing. However, on analysis, they're not supposed to seem confident or convincing. Matthau and Harris' characters are each playing very unsure roles with each other. Kiplinger is experimenting with his manipulations and Tate is experiencing a rapid onrush of conflicting thoughts and desires. The "shaky" performances are perfect for the roles.

Although Plaza Suite is at heart a play, Hiller lets his filmic sense strongly affect the work, but in very subtle ways. For example, in the first segment, there is a clever usage of staging to symbolically show the rapidly evolving relationship. There is also ingenious usage of camera movement around Stapleton at appropriate moments. The other segments use similar techniques.

The confluence of superb writing, superb direction and the veritable master class for actors results in a must-see film that's both moving and hilarious.

I sat down to watch this film because of the three wonderful actresses in the cast - Maureen Stapleton, Barbara Harris and Lee Grant - and I've never been disappointed by Arthur Hiller. I've been slow to warm to Neil Simon, but "The Sunshine Boys" had me in stitches. I mention this to indicate that I had reasonable expectations for this movie.

Now I have to be honest and admit that I could only watch one segment, it left such a nasty taste in my mouth. In it, Neil Simon presents us with a marriage that has turned sour and seems to have lost any reason for continuing. Trouble is, the pair just aren't sympathetic or particularly interesting. Never mind the husband (Walter Matthau), Maureen Stapleton as his wife drove ME crazy! Arriving, it seems, right off the set of "Bye Bye Birdie", she prowls the hotel suite, nattering incessantly and hopping from place to place like a sparrow on speed, with that irksome camera constantly pursuing her. I don't wish to sound impatient or cruel. I know she plays a doormat begging for crumbs of respect, and I know that whatever happens (past the final fade-out) she'll get the short end of the stick, and I did feel sorry for her, but her neediness and whining were irritating. As for the husband, he's a heel, plain and simple. The story provides no surprising or interesting revelations. At the end, having sat through the entire segment, I wanted to know the outcome. No such luck. Instead, there's an unmerited and annoying void between the moment when the husband strides out of the suite in the evening to meet with his "secretary" and the wife hops out of the hotel in the morning.

When the second segment started - "Just one drink," insists one of the characters (a warning to me that there would be many more) - and the creepy new Matthau persona loomed and it looked as if I was going to be stuck in that same hideous suite, with its puke green and yellow palette, for another forty minutes, I turned the movie off, and breathed a sigh of relief.

Matthau scores in all three vignettes from Neil Simon's long running triumph about different people who stay at a particular room in the posh New York hotel. His three ladies Stapelton, Harris and Grant are also wonderful. This is among the best of Simon's works to be adapted for the screen.

3 wonderful short stories are fused together in this 1971 film.

The first story, which is the best, stars Walter Matthau and Maureen Stapleton as a couple whose marriage is failing and is spending their 23rd or 24th wedding anniversary there. Stapleton is terrific here as always. She shows great depth in going from a ditsy housewife to a woman hurt by the affair her husband has been having with his secretary.

In the typical tradition of Simon, Stapleton wonders why her husband couldn't be more original since all men have affairs with their secretaries.

Matthau stars in the second story as well but this time with Barbara Harris. As a Hollywood producer, he has come to N.Y. on business but has other things on his mind such as the seduction of Harris, a housewife from N.J. that he knew years ago when he lived in Tenafly. Matthau is quite funny here with his attempt to be suave and slick. While constantly changing her times of departure, Harris is hilarious while becoming quite inebriated from the liquor that Matthau serves up. Yet, this is the weakest of the 3 stories since you can't await for that bedroom scene that invariably takes place. Guess that Harris' marriage to Larry isn't as great as she made it out to be after all.

In the 3rd segment, Matthau and Lee Grant star as a couple whose daughter is about to be married at the hotel. Trouble is she has wedding jitters so she locks herself in the bathroom. A very funny routine is establish by Matthau and Grant attempting to get her to come out and get married. It is only when her husband-to-be is summoned, he solves everything by telling her to "cool it." So, here we see the generation gap is action.

The common link in the film is room 719 where the 3 stories take place. If only the walls could talk, they'd tell you not to miss this film.

This movie features Walter Matthau in three separate roles but the real stars are the women he performs with: Maureen Stapleton, Barbara Harris and Lee Grant. In each case, we see them in the roles of wife, girlfriend and mother. Maureen Stapleton's role was sad and the other two--Harris and Grant-- are comical. I found the roles of these women were more interesting and the acting more convincing than Walter Matthau. I am a fan of Walter Matthau but in this film he gives a lacklustre performance with limited material in the first story and overblown performances in the other two. Matthau is usually a very funny guy with great lines and superb delivery but the humour just isn't there and the lines fall flat. All three stories deal with marriage and relationships at various stages of life. The common thread is that they take place in the same suite at New York City's Plaza Hotel, a Neil Simon touch.

Some of the other comments here are critical - but several others wax enthusiastically over this presentation as being funny, witty, incisive, with a real, meaningful message. I thought it to be the opposite - and ironically, considering its author, that all three segments were virtually equally mediocre.

Babe Ruth went 0-for-4 sometimes, and there probably were shows where Sinatra was flat or Pavarotti's voice broke. Same for Simon here.

Walter Matthau made an art of playing the brash, devious, often smarmy, unctuous character on the right side of the line between funny and annoying. All three of his characters here were far onto the wrong side.

The movie producer, out to seduce an old high school flame, now settled and married (and way down in his "black book") was the epitome of smarmy/unctuous/phony).

The unhappy, successful businessman/husband, was the epitome of the chauvinistic, self-absorbed middle-age baboon.

And the father of the bride for the plush wedding party gone awry (even back then, an event like this would have been way up into five figures at The Plaza), was pretty much a one-dimensional loudmouth oaf.

The two wives, and high school classmate were played by three excellent actresses, with each character weak, unimaginative and one-dimensional. The daughter/fiancé in the wedding were as uninteresting and unsympathetic as her parents and his future in-laws.

Finally, without exception, every single one of these persons was annoying. This movie's tape is a time capsule example of the word "annoying."

Mark it three stars only for the technicality that it should be noted each segment rates only 1*.

Not very funny or interesting. All three of the skits are pretty boring. I could hardly keep myself awake during the second one, I only watched the third one because i heard it was the best of the three, It was just as bad as the first two. Walter Matthau is a fine actor but not in here.

Unfunny endlessly stagy repetitive non joke dialog, probably career low performance by Maureen Stapleton in the first episode. Muddy photography and no music make this seem about as deadly as most of it is. Flatly directed by Arthur Hiller it's like a badly blocked stage show only with worse lighting and non chemistry between the leads, not that the characters are funny or likable. A near total loss, only the final story manages some laughs or generates any chemistry. It's more build around a situation comedy than bad dialog and Lee Grant and Matthau generate chemistry and show off comic timing. In the first two episodes Walter can't buy a laugh, a rare bad day for him.

Only opening up of the play involves some airborne shots of NYC and bridges in spots where you don't need them. Story ends goes outside then comes back in for silent curtain calls.

This is really a bad film from what mostly seems like sub par material. Hiller shows almost no imagination and with a talented cast like this he has to be blamed for the performances. And Simon at this point in his career wasn't this bad but really shows no knowledge of how to make his material work on film. My rating is all for the last episode, skip to it if you can.

Neil Simon's three playlet show Plaza Suite turns into a tour de force for Walter Matthau as he stars in all three which become funnier as the film progresses.

The first one pairs Matthau with Maureen Stapleton, the two have rented a suite at the Plaza for their 23rd or is it their 24th anniversary. They have differing views on that and more than they realize. Matthau's such a romantic he's brought some of his work with him. When Louise Sorel from the office brings him some revisions it's apparent it's not just his work that needs revising. This one had some laughs, but strictly of the ironic nature.

Matthau is opposite Barbara Harris in the next one. He plays a man from Tenafly, New Jersey who has sought fame and fortune in the west as Horace Greeley advised. West in the 20th century meant Hollywood and now he's a hot producer with all the perogatives of that breed.

Harris is a girl he left behind and one gets the impression back in the day she would not have given him the time of day. But now Matthau has mastered the skill of the casting couch and he lays out a campaign to win this now married New Jersey housewife. As for Harris it's amazing when you attach a celebrity status to someone how your view might change.

Best of the three by far is the last with Matthau and Lee Grant as the parents of a girl having her wedding at the Plaza Hotel. The bride to be their daughter Mimsy is having wedding jitters and locks herself in the bathroom. Grant tries and fails to talk her out and then sends for daddy.

Matthau is gradually seeing bankruptcy as the bills for a wedding at the Plaza pile up and things don't go quite according to plan. But when this crisis occurs Matthau pulls all the stops out with one of the funniest performances in his career. He does one of the greatest bits of overacting in a role that had to have it. With all he tries and all the indignities he suffers in his attempts to get Mimsy out from the john you have to see what does it in the end.

On stage Plaza Suite had Don Porter and Maureen Stapleton playing all of the main roles in the three playlets. This film is a must for Walter Matthau fans. You will never see him funnier, not in The Odd Couple, not in The Fortune Cookie, not in anything.

Like his later "California Suite", which was also made into a film, Neil Simon's "Plaza Suite" is what might be called a "portmanteau play", containing several separate stories. Whereas the four stories in "California Suite", however, are linked together by little more than the fact that they all take place in the same hotel, the three acts of "Plaza Suite", all set in Suite 719 of New York's famous Plaza Hotel, are also linked by a common theme of marriage or adultery.

In Act I a middle-aged couple, Sam and Karen Nash, are revisiting the suite where they spent their honeymoon. Karen believes that this will put the romance back into their marriage, but Sam, who appears to be an obsessive workaholic, seems more interested in attending to the needs of his business. Eventually, however, it appears that there may be more deep-seated faults in their marriage, that Karen suspects Sam of having an affair with his secretary Jean and that there might be something suspicious about his many late evenings at the office.

In Act II, Jesse Kiplinger, a successful Hollywood movie producer, meets his old girlfriend Muriel Tate, now a suburban housewife 1971. We learn that Jesse has been married three times and that all his marriages have ended in an acrimonious divorce. Although he claims to admire what he sees as Muriel's uncomplicated suburban life, it becomes all too obvious that he is trying to seduce her and thereby putting her supposedly happy marriage in danger. (We never see Muriel's husband Larry and, indeed, do not learn much about him).

In Act III a young woman named Mimsey Hubley locks herself in the bathroom and refuses to come out, despite all the threats and entreaties of her parents Roy and Norma. Until near the end of the story we never actually learn why Mimsey is behaving in this manner, and no, it's not resentment against her parents for having inflicted the name "Mimsey" on her. Simon is normally thought of as a writer of comedies, but here Act III, in fact, is the only really comic part of the film, the other two Acts, especially Act I, being more serious in tone. In "California Suite", by contrast, three of the four segments are essentially comic.

Although Simon himself wrote the screenplay, he was not entirely satisfied with the finished film. He admitted that he would have to accept some of the blame himself, acknowledging that he had been wrong to confine all the action to a single room. He also, however, disliked the casting of Walter Matthau in all three leading male roles (Sam, Jesse and Roy), even though when the play was originally produced on Broadway the same three roles were played by a single actor, in that case George C Scott. Indeed, in that production the three main female roles, Karen, Muriel and Norma, were all played by the same actress, Maureen Stapleton. Stapleton is cast as Karen here, but Muriel is played by Barbara Harris and Norma by Lee Grant.

I would only partly agree with Simon's criticism of Matthau. Admittedly, Matthau is not very convincing as the smooth, lecherous Hollywood lounge-lizard Jesse in Act II, probably the weakest of the three acts. I liked him, however, in both the other two segments in which he gets to play two men who are in some ways similar and at the same time very different. Sam Nash and Roy Hubley are both prosperous middle-aged American businessmen, and both would appear to be less-than-happily married. In personality, however, they are quite distinct. Sam is self- controlled, reserved and introverted whereas Roy is a loud, brash extrovert, something of a bully and a blusterer. Much of the comedy in Act III arises from Roy's blustering attempts to bully his daughter into coming out of the bathroom and going ahead with the wedding; his concern is not with her happiness but rather with the loss of face (and money) that he himself will suffer should the wedding be cancelled at the last minute. Norma, meanwhile, is proving too self-obsessed to be of any help, more worried by a hole in her stockings than by the drama unfolding in front of her. In Act I there is another good contribution from Stapleton. Karen is, nominally, the "wronged woman" with whom we should sympathise, but Stapleton manages to suggest, subtly, that she is the sort of person with whom Sam, and most other men as well, would find it very difficult to live.

I would, however, agree more with Simon's self-criticism. He was right to feel that the finished film is "stagey" and claustrophobic, and it would certainly have benefited if he had made use of the greater freedom offered by the cinematic medium to "open it up" with a greater range of locations. Nevertheless his writing and his psychological insights, together with some of the acting contributions, make it a film which still holds some interest today. 7/10

Central Park South is the setting of this film version of the Neil Simon hit Broadway play that gets a faithful film adaption that is both character driven and a comedy of the lack of American manners. A business man reveals to his wife on their 30th anniversary that he's been having an affair; A movie star meets an old girlfriend for chat and a hopeful rendezvous; A frustrated father of the bride deals with his nervous daughter. The women all face their situations with typical Neil Simon humor, a bit of bitterness. an overabundance of vodka stingers and brittle cynicism mixed with love and embarrassment.

Walter Matthau plays all three men with different looks-one dark haired with a mustache, one a California dyed blonde and one salt and peppered with an expensive tux. The women were three of the most popular stage and screen actresses of the time and all superb if at least one a bit annoying in her clinging manner. That honor goes to Maureen Stapleton, too loving, a bit cloying and way too chatty. Dealing with the news that her 30 year marriage may be on the rocks (plus the presence of anchovies in her room service order that she particularly requested she not get. Louise Sorel is the secretary who pops by with paperwork which leads to the revelation of the six month fling he's been trying to end. This segment ends with a bittersweet conclusion and while Stapleton's character could be a bit too much, I felt sorry for her in many different ways.

Broadway musical star Barbara Harris is the vodka stinger guzzling former girlfriend of movie lothario Matthau's, a station wagon wife and mother who is impressed by the name- dropping Matthau who is spoofing Hollywood pretty boys trying to remain glamorous past their prime. This is the least interesting of the three segments because the motivations are simply one dimensional and the characters aren't fully drawn out.

This leaves the best for last, a wedding segment with Matthau sounding very much like Archie Bunker and Lee Grant as the frustrated wife and mother. Grant is excellent, giving the best of the female performances even though it was Stapleton who ended up with a Golden Globe nomination.

It's easy to see why Matthau was so popular at this time and remained a leading man in spite of looking like a character performer. In spite of his gruffness, there is something really likable about him. He reminds me of the crazy uncle who amuses the kiddies while annoying the adults. Small moments work better here than some of the bigger moments. Some familiar faces add on to the character driven plays including familiar soap faces Jordan Charney and Augusta Dabney.

I couldn't relate to that other review at all. We're talking about a seriously entertaining film here, I'm not sure exactly what was boring about it. The hilarity was pretty much non-stop, all the roles were delightfully impeccable, and I doubt that the writing could be flawed at all. I can see how the recommendation below points towards "The Royal Tenenbaums" too, obviously the comedy here-in takes a certain understanding to fully sink in. Not to mention the brilliant poignancy it leaves behind.

"Boring"... feh. That's someone who needs a good hard drink.

Give Walter Matthau a script by Neil Simon, and the results were often golden. But give Matthau three Simon scripts, in the form of this adaptation of three one-act plays set in a room at Manhattan's Plaza Hotel and starring Matthau in widely different roles, and all you get is a harsh clanging sound.

Two problems dog the movie. One is the opening act. Here Matthau plays a preoccupied businessman coldly dismissive of his anxious, aging wife Karen (Maureen Stapleton). It represents a stab at serious drama by Simon, with a few unfunny one-liners thrown in to offer some wan chuckles. Matthau's character barks about the roast beef having too much fat. Stapleton, meanwhile, is all feral desperation, eyes bulging and eager to please, practically begging her husband for a moment's attention as she worries about the state of their marriage.

"I like to put your eyedrops in," she says at one point in their labored to-and-fro. "It's the only time lately you look at me."

The "can-this-marriage-be-saved" storyline doesn't work, because we don't care about him and can only pity her, especially as it develops and he drops a bomb on her you see coming five minutes in. "I'm attached to you!" she wails. Stapleton is a chore to watch here, and director Arthur Hiller is no help as he magnifies her every overplayed emotion with long, tight close-ups.

After that, you get the lighter pieces, but like Moonspinner's review here notes, you aren't really in the mood to enjoy them after that opening act from hell. This brings up the second problem: Simon's not much funnier here when he's trying to be.

Story #2 has Matthau playing a Hollywood producer picking up an old flame from Tenafly, played by Barbara Harris. Harris is a good comic actor and plays her part well here, but there's nothing much to this story, unless it's the novelty of Matthau in a blond wig. Early on we see the producer going through his little black book, with the idea that Harris's character is just another time-filler to him. But later, he seems to get serious, telling her he sleeps on a 360-degree bed but that 180 degrees of it are empty. Simon never bothers to explain what the character really thinks.

She, meanwhile, just gets drunk, which is where much of the comedy comes, along with her curiosity about his show-business life. "Do you know Frank Sinatra?" she asks. The segment peters out after many show-biz gag lines and maybe one or two light chortles.

The final tale puts Matthau in a gray wig and tails as the father of a bride who won't come out of her bathroom to get married in the Plaza Hotel ballroom. He worries about the cost of everything: "There's 200 dollars of cocktail frankfurters getting cold downstairs."

Mother-of-the-bride Lee Grant begs her daughter to think of the social shame of a lockaway bride. "Come out of the bathroom now," she pleads. "If you want, I'll have it annulled next week."

Contrived as it is, and it's very much so with Matthau taking a walk on a ledge to try climbing through the bathroom window and battling pigeons instead, this is the one sequence with any hard laughs or energy to it, and the only time Matthau seems engaged. Simon doesn't know what to do with the situation, though, and it shows, with a left-field resolution that feels like a shrug.

I guess the point of the picture, beyond maximizing the use of a single cheap set, has something to do with taking in the dicey state of man-woman relations circa 1971. Simon apparently didn't change the script much from the stage play, a hit on Broadway, but what might have seemed novel and engaging in live theater comes off claustrophobic and cold here. The stories lurch from melodrama to contrived sitcom humor, while Matthau's usual irascible energy is lost under an uncharacteristic absence of charisma. The end result is a movie that fails to deliver much of anything, and takes too long doing it.

Neil Simon possess a gift, he succeeded to dig in the human relationship and go out all the negative the fears, the wrongs and the frustration with the laughter and the funny but all of this whole of blue. It's Blue because his characters are aware to own wrong but at the same time are condemned and all things that they do is useless and worst because this is their nature. The flick narrate 3 tales acclimatized in a Plaza Suite, all the action is concentrated in this room and so all the goodness is addressed on the leading players a wonderful Matthau that play all of 3 characters for the stories. In the first a wife discovered the betrayal of the husband in their 23rd anniversary, in the second a famous Hollywood producer try to seduce one his ex-girlfriend to youngness years, now happiness married, and in the end the problem of a surly couple in the wedding-day of the un-security daughter. Many laughter but each of these with the better retro-taste and melancholy, the three characters compared themselves with own wrong, deny its, scream, fighting but continued in the same wrong. In the end all the things going as must going to damage of the their actions but in every end solutions there is something to good tuck known take you. Wonderful actor trial for Walter Matthau, the cinema world had lost many in his dead, he is a complete actor able to through the mimic facial a express many feelings and players each kind of flick. My rate is 8.

Although there are marvelous performances here, it seems a little boring, but hey, just a little. All of the stars act great in this picture; the script is funny, and I think that´s it. I would pay at least a buck for this one, maybe two. But if you haven´t seen it, you should.

Neil Simon kind of owned the 1970's/80's. Either he had a new play coming out or one of his old ones was being made into a movie. I saw many of them in one incarnation or another -- 'The Odd Couple', 'Brighton Beach Memoirs', 'Biloxi Blues', 'California Suite', etc. -- but giving them another look decades later I'd have to say my patience with Mr. Simon's work has worn about as thin as it can go. Simply put, his characters never shut up. When they leave the stage and venture onto film, this becomes a problem.

'Plaza Suite' is an excellent example of the overly-talky, stagnant result obtained from an unimaginatively filmed play. Walter Matthau, a Simon staple, plays three roles, in three separate stories taking place in the same seventh-floor suite at the Plaza Hotel in New York. Maureen Stapleton is so annoying as Matthau's wife in the first segment that I found myself wanting to marry her just so I could have the pleasure of leaving her. The second vignette is so dull I almost turned it off. In the third, Matthau's character climbs out the window of the suite onto a ledge. As I was thinking back to my time living in New York, doubting the fact that there is in fact a ledge at the seventh-floor level, the film obligingly cuts to a shot of a man on a ledge at the Plaza… obviously at the fourth floor, and there are none higher. Thanks, movie… saved me Googling it. What arrogant writer would not only state a falsehood about a well-known landmark, but then show that what he has just stated is untrue? Neil Simon, folks; owner of the 70's and 80's. If he wants a ledge on the 7th floor of the Plaza, they'd better start building one for him. He's Neil Simon.

There is, naturally, an exception to every rule. I enjoyed 'Murder By Death' very much, and I even think I like it better now than I did when it first came out. Stellar cast, excellent writing, checked off all the boxes. 'The Goodbye Girl' is another one that holds up very well. I also have a place in my heart for one of Simon's lesser-known works, 'I Ought to be in Pictures'. But 'Plaza Suite' and its ilk have seen their day. Mr. Simon is a prolific writer, but his writing is repetitive and many of his characters seem one-dimensional in this day and age. If you have the chance to see a local community theater do 'Plaza Suite', you might enjoy it in a retro kind of way. Don't bother with the film adaptation.

Had the entire film been as funny as the last segment, I would have rated it higher. The first 2 were full of dull, sexy, or bitchy dialogue, but the last was a real ripper. The distraught mom and the overwrought dad had me in the floor with their idiotic antics. I don't care for Neil Simon comedies; at least the ones I've seen.

even Jackie Gleason and Audrey Meadows with Gale Storm in 1956...could not make this a first-class play > yes, there are 4-5 hilarious one liners and some pretty funny slapstick but what's the fuss about? on 2nd thought, we can look at this 3 act play as a Matthau tour de force...although the flat, tired, dragged out proceedings make it at the level of a watchable 1971 TV movie. and the names Eisler and HUbley, while seeking to betray the dignified upper ten really are about very nervous blue collar folks, wondering if the expensive wedding may turn into a very expensive lunch, only > will the pampered 21 year old, having 2nd thoughts cowering in a upscale powder room, emerge before the next party arrives? many opportunities to really sell a scene are ruined by offhand gibberish - again, suggesting that the author compulsively threw this thing together...on a limo ride to a wedding.