Il grande imbroglio

Leonard Hoffman (Alan Arkin) is an insurance agent with a suburban family. His three sons all get accepted into Yale. His boss Winslow (Robert Stack) refuses to help him with any scholarships. His work mate is the hard-nosed O'Mara (Charles Durning). He goes on a sales call to the drunken rich trophy wife Blanche Rickey (Beverly D'Angelo). She complains about her gambler husband Steve Rickey (Peter Falk). Desperate for money to pay for his kids' college, he joins Blanche to murder her husband for the life insurance.

This is the last film of John Cassavetes and he apparently hated it. The plot is so close to Double Indemnity that this is basically a spoof. Of course, none of it is funny because every moment of the movie, I'm asking if this is deliberate. It's hard to tell since Double Indemnity is not watched all the time. In order for a spoof to work, the audience must know all the beats in the original and what the filmmaker is doing to satire each moment for a joke. Then the last third of the movie goes bonkers. It becomes non-sense. The actors are trying for some wacky physical comedy despite the noir story. It's frustrating to watch a movie where the jokes don't work. One can see that everybody is trying but I don't understand what the film is trying to do.