Just Tell Me What You Want (1980)

Just prior to the dawn of the Reagan era, two of cinema's most frequent collaborators, Jay Presson Allen and Sidney Lumet (Prince of the City), teamed for this faithful adaptation of Allen's 1975 novel of high comedy, which satirized the New York upper crust from within and thus anticipated the decade of greed by several years. In what is probably his most cultivated onscreen invention, the legendary standup comic Alan King (Bye Bye Braverman, Memories of Me) brings to life one of the most concurrently obnoxious and endearing screen characters in movie history. He's Max Herschel, an industrial overlord in the Trump and Buffett mold, who carries around an almost pathological need to manipulate and control every single facet of his corporate empire and personal life. As the story opens, Max's commandeering has sent the missus (Dina Merrill) to the nuthouse; it threatens to drive his svelte mistress/protégé, "Bones" Burton (Ali MacGraw), to the point of exposing him as a backstabbing liar on national television and into the arms of a failing playwright; and it renders him susceptible to a gross betrayal at the hands of movie mogul Seymour Berger (Keenan Wynn). These substories might wax hostile or even tragic were it not for the razor-sharp precision -- and glee -- with which Allen and Lumet unveil the desperate, whiny child at Max's core, the anal need for say in every arena that he can get his mitts on. (Upon learning of his wife's cooking lesson at her institution, he coolly demands that the doctor box the meringues if she doesn't completely foul them up). Laughing uncontrollably as Max threatens to explode into cataclysmic rants, we consistently feel sorry for him, but, as played by King, he is too outrageous and much too pathetic to ever warrant any dislike or disgust. Even before the roof begins to collapse, Herschel perpetually breaches the edge of absurdity. (One of the film's comic highlights involves Max's tennis practice; informed that a female intern is sick, he commands his secretary, in between balls: "Call Hammacher-Schlemmer! Order a yogurt maker!"). Lumet and Allen thus set the stage for a series of near-conniptions and nervous breakdowns when everything that Max has learned to rely on as stable and predictable comes raining down onto the poor man's head. By the second half, the film explodes into a battle of egos between Herschel and the pushed-beyond-her-limits Burton, as Lumet and Allen aim their sights, more broadly, at kissing off the Manhattan elite, with its pompous, grotesque subculture of Bergdorf-Goodman garments, Bulgari jewels, and private planes. With ever-bristling, witty dialogue, world-class performances (including neat tertiary appearances by Tony Roberts, a young Peter Weller, and Myrna Loy), and a bouncy Charles Strouse score that revamps Gershwin, the film's only outstanding weakness is its inexcusably shoddy cinematography, by Hollywood vet Oswald Morris. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide