Director: Menahem Golan
Cast: Elliott Gould, Sid Caesar, Margaux Hemingway

To start off my review of Over The Brooklyn Bridge, I would like to talk about struggles. If you took any kind of history class in high school or at university, no doubt you learned about various struggles between different cultures and countries that quite often lead to all out warfare. Thinking about those particular kinds of struggles is often quite interesting; I often partake in thinking about such memorable historical struggles. But I would like to talk about other kinds of struggles, struggles that will hit home for more people than armed combat struggles. One of the biggest struggles just about any individual in this present age of ours, or any time in the history of mankind, has had to deal with regularly is with family members. I'm sure most of all you readers are thinking right now something along the lines of, "Well, I get along pretty well with everyone in my family right now!" But if you think about it for a longer period of time, no doubt that you'll recall many struggles of various degrees with members of your family. If you grew up with siblings, no doubt that at times you had verbal or even physical battles with them, as I experienced from time to time. Even when you grow up and things have probably improved between you and them, there can still be the occasional flare-up in your sibling relationships, and various other problems with other members of your family. For example, me and my adult niece have barely spoken to each other during our lifetimes, even though there hasn't been any kind of animosity between us. Maybe she just doesn't understand my passion for unknown movies.

But there are more identifiable struggles individuals can have besides struggles with their family members. Another kind of struggle I think most individuals have is due to the particular religion that they follow. It could be for any religion. While I am sure most religious people follow the teachings of their faith as close as they can, I am also sure that many times when they think of a particular aspect of their faith, they can get puzzled or unsure. They may wonder why the teaching of their faith from higher powers tell them to do things that may not make complete sense to them. It certainly does not help many times when these same people are facing simultaneously demands from the particular society they are living in. The society they live in could very well demand they follow a particular faith or way of thinking. The society can also sometimes be closed to new ideas despite the new ideas seemingly right for the time and the place. And society can have other puzzling demands such as prices and taxes going up all of the time, even having dress codes that may not seem practical for certain or all possible situations. It no wonder then that the struggles with family, religion, and society all together make a fourth kind of struggle most people have to face. That particular struggle is an internal one, where each individual has to sort out the entire mess in a way that will not only be good for them, but make them fit comfortably in the environment they are currently in. I can tell you that I personally have had major conflicts with all four of these kinds of struggles, and often it's been quite taxing for me to deal with everything.

But while individuals dealing with all four of those kinds of struggles may seem serious stuff to the particular individual, it can sometimes be seen in a different light from outsiders observing the individual. It can be funny, and the reason for that is that to some degree or another we can identify with the character's struggles. Over The Brooklyn Bridge promised to showcase in a humorous light a character having all four of the kinds of struggles I discussed earlier. That appealed to me, though the fact that the director of the movie was Menahem Golan of Cannon Films did make me pause a little, since Golan generally didn't come across as having a good sense of humor, based on the other comedies that he directed and/or wrote, such as What's Good For The Goose and Hot Chili. Anyway, as you have probably guessed, the events of the movie take place in New York City. The central character is a Jewish man named Alby Sherman (Elliott Gould, Busting) who runs a Brooklyn luncheonette with the help of his associate Eddie (Robert Gosset, The Closer). Alby has dreams to open a fancy restaurant in Manhattan, but he hasn't been able to scrape up enough money to do this. In desperation, he goes to his rich uncle Benjamin (Sid Caesar, Fire Sale) to ask him for a loan. Uncle Benjamin has never been happy since Alby started living with a woman named Elizabeth (Margaux Hemingway, Lipstick), because Elizabeth is not Jewish. So Benjamin tells Alby that he will give him the money he needs if he breaks up with Elizabeth and marries a nice Jewish woman, possibly his cousin Cheryl (Carol Kane, Theodore Rex). Alby refuses the offer and is determined to raise the money by other means, but he soon starts to realize that maybe he can't do it on his own. Making matters worse is that Benjamin secretly approaches Elizabeth and tells her she's holding Alby back, also suggesting to her that she should leave Alby so he can find the happiness he wants.

Besides those aforementioned actors, Over The Brooklyn Bridge also has Shelley Winters (Tentacles) playing Alby's mother, and Burt Young (Carnival Of Blood) playing a friend (I think) to Alby. Winters and Young don't get a lot to do in the movie, but when they do appear, they are pretty good, giving their characters heart and personality instead of being stereotypes. The standout performance in the movie, however, belongs to Caesar. Though in his 60s, throughout the movie he exudes a great amount of energy, certainly in a comic sense, but he also does pretty well when the situation becomes serious. Whenever headline star Gould is paired up with Caesar in a scene, the two actors manage to generate an incredible amount of chemistry, even when the script requires them to quickly change tone in the middle of a heated exchange. While Gould is more than capable in these scenes, oddly he seems to be very unsure what to do when Caesar is not around. He often seems distracted enough that either he's underplaying or overplaying his character. Actually, a lot of this might come from the fact that there are some real gaps in the portrayal of his character. Take, for example, Alby's relationship with Elizabeth. We not only don't know how the two met in the first place, but what has kept them together for two years. There must be something keeping them together, but any insight into this never gets further from one telling the other s/he loves him/her. Odder still is that during the course of the movie, Alby has not only never introduced Elizabeth to both his mother and Uncle Benjamin in the past two years, Elizabeth has never introduced Alby to her family members during this time as well.

Actually, at one point in the movie Uncle Benjamin says to Alby that Alby doesn't know Elizabeth very well. Maybe the makers of the movie were trying to point out that the couple are from two different worlds which inevitably would lead to conflict and misunderstandings. Though there are a few token stabs with this (like when Elizabeth crashes a Hasidic wedding that Alby's attending), it's not enough to really explore this relationship and its participants. There are additional character weaknesses in the movie, such as cousin Cheryl's schizophrenic-like behavior and that Uncle Benjamin's passion for Jewish tradition and family doesn't get into that much depth. Why is he so determined to make sure things go his way and the way of his faith? It's isn't all that clear. It doesn't help that in the first half of the movie, there are a number of scenes with the characters interacting with each other that either finish in midstream or don't seem to provide any point other than to extend the running time of the movie. Still, I will admit that the drama portion of Over The Brooklyn Bridge does work pretty well, especially in the second half. The first meeting of Uncle Benjamin and Elizabeth is a very well constructed sequence, managing to have both characters state their points of view and motivations while having a lean running time. Later in the movie, there are some nice little moments when Alby talks to his very sympathetic mother as well as a boardwalk meeting with Phil. At the climax of the movie, where Alby confronts Uncle Benjamin at a celebratory family dinner, the emotions that all the characters (not just Alby and Benjamin) express feels pretty raw and powerful at times. This is not something that you would expect from the typically schlocky director Menahem Golan.

Golan also manages to make Over The Brooklyn Bridge visually impressive, giving the movie a look and feel of a big budget major Hollywood studio movie for the period despite the low budget (less than $4 million.) But Golan on this movie stumbles just as much as he succeeds with something. As mentioned before, he seems unable at times to punch up the details of the characters, and there is also the sometimes-choppy feeling and also what seems to be padding. The biggest flaw in Golan's direction, however, is with the humor. As I said earlier in this review, Golan never seemed to have a funnybone that would mesh with a mass audience, and it's the same with this movie. Oh, there are some amusing one-liner zingers here and there, and there are a few extended conversations during various uneasy moments that prove to be quite funny despite the stress and tension the characters are experiencing at the same time. And the cast shows enough times that they had the chops to deliver consistent and funny humor if they had been pushed enough. But the level of comic energy doesn't push through enough to make regular laughs. Some of the humor is lame and familiar from the word go, such as Uncle Benjamin's hopelessly stereotypical Japanese clients, and later when Alby falls asleep and snores loudly at an opera. Some of the humor seems too dumb for any sane person to do, like when Alby at the Hasidic wedding wears a baseball cap over his yarmulke. But most of the time, Golan doesn't seem to know how to get his cast or script pumped up enough to make comedy break through and tickle the audience. Golan seems to be aiming at a select audience that identifies strongly with Jewish issues and characters instead of a much wider audience, but I think even the former audience will feel cheated and say that there's not much new or interesting here. Maybe if Golan had scrapped the comedy and focused instead of making Over The Brooklyn Bridge a fairly straight drama, the movie would have played out a lot better. In the end, this is kind of a frustrating movie experience, where you see a lot of good, but the good is weighed down considerably by misguided efforts. You could call this movie an interesting miscalculation.

(Posted April 8, 2025)