Either the producers behind Used People are incredible salespeople or there was once something in this screenplay which attracted the amazing cast that proliferates this film. Unfortunately, whatever charm may once have been inherent in the story fails to make its way to the screen in the end product.The story centers on a NYC Jewish matriarch Shirley MacLaine, who is taken aback following her husband's funeral when Italian charmer Marcello Mastroianni introduces himself as a friend of the deceased who has loved her from afar for years. Around this rather astounding declaration, MacLaine and Mastroianni's extended family spins in their own assorted subplots. MacLaine has two daughters - Kathy Bates and Marcia Gay Harden - with whom she has embattled relationships with. Her young grandson, convinced that the spirit of his grandfather is protecting him, runs about doing one dangerous stunt after another. Meanwhile, her mother Jessica Tandy and her best friend Sylvia Sidney kvetch from the sidelines. Everything gets tied up in a neat little bow in time for the U.S. moon landing.The film is obviously trying to be something in the same vein as Moonstruck, but its fails spectacularly and only increases appreciation of that earlier film. The bulk of the film's problems stem from the screenplay and the characters. Did there really have to be this many people? Bates is a great actress, but her character is too generic. By contrast, Harden is so off-the-wall that no scene with her can possibly be taken seriously. Harden spends the film donning one cinematic disguise after another - one moment she is Mrs. Robinson from The Graduate, in another scene she is Bonnie Parker from Bonnie and Clyde, etc. This is obviously a woman with something pathological wrong with her and the fact that almost no one in the film addresses it is disturbing.Tandy and Sidney are fun as the old-timers, but they are given limited screen time. And even with that it is hard to dismiss the notion that Tandy is miscast and Sidney should have been given her role instead.Most damning of all is that it is impossible to root for a romance between MacLaine and Mastroianni. I usually enjoy MacLaine, but she is playing a cast-iron shrew here. She comes off as an utterly joyless woman who gets her jollies by picking other people apart - especially those unwilling or unable to defend themselves. When the good-natured Bates finally summons the courage to escape her mother's home and malignant influence, she should be given a moment where she lays out how MacLaine has denigrated her. Instead, somehow MacLaine gets a foolish rant about how everything impacts her - revealing the utter selfishness in an unlikable character. We can see no reason why anyone with an iota of intelligence would fall for such a charmless person - and this ends up making the otherwise charming Mastroianni seem either delusional or insane. If we have nothing invested in the romantic central pairing, then the film can only be considered an abject failure.This is the kind of film where literally every character on screen is given a manufactured crisis that can then be solved magically by the climax. MacLaine will find love with Mastroianni, Tandy and Sidney will find satisfaction in their twilight years, Harden will learn to put away her childish game and become a mother to her needy son. It is the kind of film where Bates has barely left MacLaine's sphere of influence to launch a new life across the country, before she has returned a "success" - which means she shows up at a family function with a new hairstyle.A really brazen and shallow film that would work far better as a low-rent sitcom.

Slow dancing to a '40s love tune, slow driving to a cemetery 25 years later. A stranger appears at the Shiva, tenderly offering condolences. Pearl's buttoned-down life precludes a relationship with this man. But he persists, with his warm Italian accent, to break down the barriers. Flowers, dinner for her whole family and his, an air-conditioner, a kiss shared while wading in a children's pool, lying beside her in bed to see if they "fit", all culminate in standing before a hippie-Jewish rabbi and a hippie-Catholic priest and saying "I do." In between, others in their lives have their share of problems. Little Sweetpea makes like Superman and tries to dare the Fates, relying on his dead grandfather to save him. Daughter number one, having lost a son, tries on a multitude of roles to survive. Daughter Bibi who hates her nickname, fights her fat battle and her mother battle. Grandma and friend fight each other but end up singing, "Moon Over Miami" together. It's a "happily ever after" movie. In real life there are no guarantees, but "Used People" shows us that, just, maybe, we can make our own happiness.

Admittedly, I LOVE films about relationships. Perhaps this is because I am a therapist.This film is not only about finding love, but also about waking up to love that is already there. The characters grow and change in this film and if it seems uneven, this may be why. When the character of Pearl tells us early on that she never did anything she wanted in life, you doubt her ability to break away from her old life, but break away she does, carrying her mother, daughters and grandchildren with her.This film has a happy ending, but it is not all neatly tucked away in pretty packages. If you like films that say something, try this one on for size. Films of similar flavor are "Wrestling Ernest Hemingway" "Harold and Maude" and "Moonstruck" .

This movie is a shameless, poor man's knockoff of the almost-as-bad and terribly overrated, "Moonstruck" --MacClaine's performance is unbearable. What was with her attempt at an ethnic New York accent? She wound up sounding like Lanie Kazan with adenoids. Jessica Tandy, by this time, was on life support, and so overused and played out, that you've got to feel sorry for her. Everybody else in the script, save for Marcello, has a "New Yawk" accent while Tandy sounds like the local Mrs. Vanderbilt. She must have gone to a finishing school in Flatbush.Marcello is dragged into this mess in a blatant attempt to add legitimacy to the drivel -- poor guy.Used People must have been green-lighted by a USED Car Salesman. It's a worse-than-Moonstruck (and that ain't easy) atrocity.Sorry but I calls 'em as I sees 'em. Damien