Promise?
Calling your film Never Again is like handing an ax to a critic and meekly placing your head on the chopping block. Will some of my colleagues write “never see Never Again” or “not even once, let alone Again” or “another Eric Schaeffer film? Never Again!”? You betcha.
The latter is pretty much how I felt after reviewing Schaeffer’s last feature, the insufferably egocentric Wirey Spindell (1999), but Never Again, though nothing special, is pleasant, diverting and modest.
Christopher (Jeffrey Tambor, best known as Hank Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show), a middle-aged exterminator and jazz musician, has had so many failed relationships with women that he’s beginning to think maybe he’s gay. He’s also suffering from impotence. After a woman’s casual remark leads to a gay sex dream, Christopher wonders about his “gay vibe.”
His best friend, Earl (Bill Duke), points out that it’s ridiculous to begin to doubt one’s orientation at age 54. “All guys have gay dreams now and again,” he says, with a shift of his eyes that suggests a broad range of possible meanings.
Grace (Jill Clayburgh), like Christopher, is 54 and divorced. She has just been through a horrible but mercifully short Internet blind date when she ducks into the gay bar where Christopher is taking an experimental step. They strike up a conversation. She assumes he’s gay; he assumes she’s a man.
Once the misunderstanding is ironed out, the entire sexual-identity theme disappears. From then on, the film traverses much more shopworn turf: Two people start a sexual relationship based on avoiding love and then are in a quandary when they do fall in love. This is not exactly original, but Schaeffer and his cast manage to make it tolerable. There are some funny set pieces, one of which is hugely implausible but hilarious.
Clayburgh and Tambor make an unusual couple. For that matter, anybody and Tambor would make an unusual couple. He is not — no big insult here — a frequent or obvious choice for a leading man. But it’s refreshing to see a merely pleasant-looking, middle-aged, bald, out-of-shape guy as a viable romantic lead. Of course, it would have been preferable to have equal-opportunity averageness; Clayburgh is blatantly pretty.
Schaeffer wrote the piece specifically for Tambor and Clayburgh after playing their son in the short-lived sitcom Everything’s Relative. Fortunately, Schaeffer didn’t write himself into Never Again, the first of his films not centered on his own performance. He’s finally made a film that doesn’t feel like a paean to himself.
Still, Schaeffer runs out of steam toward the end and resorts to two sudden tragedies to give the plot its final push. It’s not terribly surprising that Never Again, which played at the South by Southwest Film Festival more than a year ago, is only now making it to theaters.
