DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS @ 40

The Whitemans are rich but dysfunctional. Dad's boffing the housemaid while Mum's a shopping zombie. The daughter is anorexic and choosing bad boyfriends. The son is gender curious and irritates the rest of them with his invasive videography. Even the dog is depressed. One day, having lost his own dog to yet another Los Angelene bourgeois, the homeless and also depressed Jerry attempts to drown in the Whitemans' pool. Summoning the liberalism we've already seen in him, Dave rescues him and, feeling guilty, offers him the spare place until he can get on his feet again. One by one the Whiteman's essential issues are variously challenged and alleviated by the oafish but charismatic Jerry.

Jean Renoir's Bodu Saved From Drowning wasn't such a far fetched choice for Paul Mazursky in 1986. At the time, high concept comedies were machine gunning and hitting big. The master of the arch and strong Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice had plenty to broach with the conspicuously wealthy of Los Angeles with their gurus, pet psychiatrists, faux consciences, piling up the bank accounts and buying to be seen to buy at the expense of their humanity. 

All the targets are here and one perfect segue between a meditating Barbara humming and the buzzing of flies around Jerry, sleeping under a tree by the footpath says a lot about the approach. Mazursky is going to take pot shots but they will be coated in warmth and magnanimity. So, for a movie that has a lot of shadowy capitalism, sexual infidelity, risque sexuality and hot topics like dietary disorders, Down and Out is a comfortable satire.

Richard Dreyfus had a scandal to redeem himself from and does so with a complex blend of anxiety and base reason. Bette Midler gives Barbara a visible longing under the purchase-makes-perfect tornado. Nick Nolte plays his lumpen phsyicality and claimed worldliness as a smooth continuum. Evan Richards never allows Max's sexual curiosity to spill into camp. Jerry's cosmetic advice to Max is a touching moment, an encouragement rather than a sneer. Come to that, the Chinese business partners are just business people, nothing like the honking-accented alien in something like the then recent Sixteen Candles. Even the money grubbing pet psychiatrist can offer a word or two of genuine advice.

Mazursky's comedy is a natural inheritor of Renoir's, being worldly and intent on finding the foible and flaw that gives the characters strength. Could Little Richard's neighbour with his call-out of systemic racism have been given more gravitas? Yes, it's the one area that doesn't quite resolve. When he is banging out one of his classics, the party around him is distracted and flees toward a spectacle. Little Richard is playing in your living room; if you're running to look at something, it had better be walking on water. It reminded me of the heavily glossed depiction of the proto-rock star in the Girl Can't Help It when he and all the other early rockers perform in opulent venues they would never have been admitted to. Perhaps it's a subtler caspule of his vocal comments.

But Down and Out in Beverly Hills works because of its heart and the incsision that prevents it from blanding out into feelgood or getting overly caustic. It's a very happy coincidence of a well chosen tale to cover, and a cast at full strength. If you see that it's a mid'80s satirical comedy and you're thinking Splash or Bachelor Party be prepared to be warmed rather than slapped. So, it still works.