Product: The Owl and the Pussycat [VHS] (1970)
Rating: 4.0
One Loud Hooker Plus One Insecure Writer Equals a Match Made Only in the Movies
After three big-budget Broadway-based period musicals in a row, Barbra Streisand obviously made a conscious career decision to convey a more contemporary image onscreen. She succeeds in spades in this often hilarious 1970 comedy adapted by Buck Henry from a hit Bill Manhoff play and directed by Herbert Ross. Streisand plays Doris, a loud-mouthed fetish hooker who claims to be a model and an actress. She gets thrown out of her apartment when her neighbor, a nebbish bookstore clerk and aspiring writer named Felix Sherman, reports her clandestine activities to the landlord. This causes a confrontation in which she is convinced he's gay and seduces him in a surprisingly graphic scene (at least surprising for Streisand). Another fight ensues causing them to get kicked out of his apartment. The rest of the film is mostly their bickering as they travel from one apartment to the next and carry out their improbable, Pygmalion-like opposites-attract romance.In the same year he made two greatly underrated films, the mature "Loving" and the manic "Where's Poppa?", George Segal makes Felix a lovably insecure schlub and provides great chemistry with Streisand in her first non-singing role. They have a great scene in the bathtub where both are completely stoned as his fiancée and her parents walk in, and he has a funny scene where he pretends to be the TV to help Doris get to sleep. For Streisand's part, she wears a hysterically tacky negligee, dances in a go-go cage, appears in a soft-porn flick called "Cycle Sluts" (we only hear the riotous audio - "Where are you putting THAT?") and says the "F" word (unfortunately cut out of the DVD version though it's obvious when she says it). It's not her best screen performance, but it's one of her funniest. Henry's sharp dialogue and Ross' quick pacing help considerably in making this an enjoyably vulgar romantic comedy. The 2001 DVD had no extras other than three trailers, none for this movie.