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Show Review lovers' fall short of Simon By SUSAN MITCHELL Chronicle Staff What do you do when you are a 45-year-old owner of a sea food restaurant, happily married with three children and "nice" is the one word that can describe your entire life? You have an affair, or try to. "The Last of the Red Hot Lovers" is Barney Cashman. Suddenly dismayed with his complacent middle-class existence, Barney attempts to have affairs with three different women. Elaine Navazio is the first. An Of the three women, Sally Kellerman is the best. As Elaine she has the right amount of haughty self-confidence, and with that dismays Barney when he tries to establish the grounds for a "beautiful" if brief relationship. Paula Prentiss plays a familiar cutsie role as Bobbi. Despite her good looks she manages to eventually repulse everyone with her babbling conversation and bodily actions. Renee Taylor as Jeanette is believable if not a bit boring as the neurotic and frightened housewife. The movie also suffers a bit from the fact it was originally a play and most of the scenes take place in Barney's mother's small apartment, empty from eight to five every day. The lack of variety vari-ety in locations adds to the tediousness of the last two scenes. Perhaps the fact that the public has come to expect better elegant, worldly woman, her sole ambition seems to be to sleep with as many men as possible. Barney though is obsessed with the need for something more than a fast lay. His second encounter is with Bobbi Michele, a small-town singer aspiring to Broadway stardom. Barney lends her $20 for an accompanist. When they meet at his mother's apartment the next afternoon so she can return the loan, Barney's hopes of extra-marital excitement are drowned in Bobbi's paranoid conversation. Twenty dollars poorer, and even more frustrated, Barney becomes more convinced he will never, never be so foolish again. His third attempt at escaping his "nice" world is with Jeanette Fisher, the wife of a suburban friend. After his other experiences, ex-periences, Barney has become the aggressor, only to find Jeanette scared and defensive. He gives up finally, and sends Jeanette back to her husband. Regaining his sanity he calls his wife and tries to get her to meet him at his mother's apartment. As Barney, Alan Arkin makes the best of a shallowly developed character. Arkin's bland appearance, ap-pearance, reinforced by his blue suits and black four-door sedan, are the epitome of a middle-aged, middle-class male. things from Neil Simon, author of "Barefoot in the Park," "The Odd Couple" and "Plaza Suite," adds to the frustration of the movie. While not a bomb, "The Last of the Red Hot Lovers" is not as good as would be expected. If you are an Alan Arkin or Sally Kellerman fan the movie is perhaps worth the price of admission. ad-mission. But if you love Neil Simon, prepare to be disappointed. |