I swear I have a life. Though I just can't get enough of movies from before CGi ruined them all for story. So whenever I can I try to watch an older movie. This movie "The Lonely Guy" starring Steve Martin is such movie. Here we have a loser down on his luck. A guy who wants a girlfriend,  any girlfriend! Desperately! He got dumped and his heart broken. All that stuff. Problem is there is no real point to it.Steve Martin plays his typical 80s SNL self. Loud, obnoxious and DUMB. Like real dumb. Like his girlfriend is in bed with her Latin lover and just acts like there is nothing wrong type DUMB. Like so bad he gets into bed with her and doesn't seem to care because he has a girlfriend. Like good grief Larry (the characters name) have some self respect. He doesn't. He is DUMB.The movie goes on for sometime and he meets a woman at a coffee shop half way through the movie. She gives him his number after she calls him a lonely guy and ha HA she wrote the number on a napkin and he wipes his face because Larry is a DUMB character. So surprise he can't call her. Sees her at a restaurant, loses the number she leaves with the waiter. Then sees her again on a subway car across the station, steals a gangsters spray paint can and writes backwards where to meet on the opposing trains window. He meets here and finds out shes been married 6 times!!! Maybe fate was losing the numbers because he needs to avoid here perhaps.He doesn't care because Larry has no self respect and just wants a girlfriend, any girlfriend. They date. He falls in love. She dumps him because he is perfect for her. Larry goes on a cruise. Surprise! She's on the same cruise. New York must be a small place in the 80s? He's still in love. They go to a costume party and he talks with her, begs her to go out with him again. A friend comes over as they're talking. The friend gets hypnotized by this women. Husband number 7 he becomes. Like a DUMB guy Larry tries to break up the wedding rather than count his lucky stars he's not marrying her. He is depressed because he can't marry this indecisive manipulative woman and goes to a bridge to jump off. As he is standing there. This psychopathic women just happens to be jumping off and he happens to catch her. Her reason is she couldn't live if she's not with Larry. Yeah right sure shes a crazy manipulator after all. They live happily ever after. Movie ends. And  this happily ever after probably lasts a day until this horrible woman dumps this dumb guy and gets divorce no.8!The premise is an understandable one. We all know a severely lonely guy who'll take anyone, even a horrible person but this movie didn't do well enough to tell it. It tried to be a funny comedy and it just fell flat on its face. It was horrible and may just be Steve Martin's worse movie he's ever done (don't know, haven't seen them all).

This is dedicated to lonely guys everywhere. Larry Hubbard (Steve Martin) is an aspiring writer working at a greetings card company. He finds his girlfriend Danielle in bed with another man and she kicks him out. He befriends lonely guy Warren Evans (Charles Grodin) from the park bench. He meets Iris (Judith Ivey) at a diner but he smudges her number. He meets her again and loses her number again. She breaks up with him and he writes a book about his experience. He becomes a best seller.It has a quirky original sense of spoof humor. This Arthur Hiller film reminds me of Mel Brooks. It's wacky light fun for a little while but it gets a bit repetitive. Martin and the sad Grodin have some nice comic chemistry. Judith Ivey is not funny enough. She needs to be as wacky as he is. She needs to be a great comedian. She's too limited. The perfect way for her character to go is for her to be a lonely gal. Even the sad Grodin feels repetitive with their pontifications.

Love this movie! Loved it when I first saw it over 20 years ago and it still holds up today. After all, there have been and always will be "Lonely Guys" that can relate to the movie. Martin and Grodin were great in every scene together. I wish they teamed up in movies more often. They could have given Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor a run for their money! I do have one bad thing to say about the movie. The last third of it sort of went downhill. I still found it funny but the laughs were a little cheaper and not as witty, offbeat and deadpan. The sneezing scene is a case in point. It was just plain stupid and needed to be on the cutting room floor. Unfortunately, I relate to it more now than ever before. My wife left me a year ago and I now sometimes find myself feeling the same way Larry and Warren did. However, I do not see myself buying several cardboard stand-ups of celebrities anytime soon. The ones that actually talk are kinda tempting though! PS - I don't mean to sound queer or nothing', but the theme song is really sweet!

Nice guy greeting card writer Larry Hubbard (an excellent and engaging performance by Steve Martin) finds himself lonely and forlorn in New York City after he catches his ballet dancer girlfriend Danielle (the ravishing Robyn Douglass) cheating on him. Larry tries every trick in the book to surmount his dismal situation: he buys a dog, takes up jogging, and befriends fellow mopey sadsack Warren Evans (marvelously played to the melancholy hilt by Charles Grodin). Things finally perk up for Larry when he meets the sweet Iris (a wonderfully radiant portrayal by Judith Ivey). Ably directed by Arthur Hiller, with a warm, witty and perceptive script by Neil Simon, Ed Weinberger and Stan Daniels, polished cinematography by Victor J. Kemper, a sprightly score by Jerry Goldsmith, lots of inspired off the walls gags (sidesplitting comic highlights include Larry eating dinner by himself in a posh restaurant, lonely guys jumping off the Manhattan Bridge, Larry disrupting the wrong wedding, and Larry going up on a rooftop and yelling out Iris' name only to be joined by other fellow lonely guys in similar dire straits), and a winningly breezy'n'easy tone, this always funny and touching comedy totally hits the spot because it says something amusing and poignant about the basic human need for love and companionship. Martin is utterly charming in the lead, Grodin likewise excels in his role, Merv Griffin and Dr. Joyce Brothers have nifty cameos as themselves, Steve Lawrence is a hoot as smooth womanizer Jack Fenwick, and Candi and Randi Borough are adorable as the luscious Schneider Twins. But what makes this picture so special and endearing is that it has a wealth of genuine heart to it. A real treat.