The Gin Game

Rating:
Summary: Simple Story; But Packs A Wallop, Thanks To These Two Stars
Review: Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore team up again in 2003's "The Gin Game", a PBS-TV production which had me smiling and laughing out loud for much of its 87-minute running time. But, in addition to some side-splitting dialogue, there are some serious and touching moments as well.

Dick and Mary are a joy to watch together again in this simple story of two elderly residents of an old-folks home, who fill their days and nights by playing Gin Rummy and discussing their lives with each other.

If you're expecting nice, clean, sugar-coated dialogue from these two former television icons, think again. The script bristles with just about every four-letter word you can imagine. So you probably won't want to let young children view this movie.

I was quite surprised at the amount of salty language contained here...but pleasantly surprised. Dick Van Dyke's dialogue seems very "real" indeed. He talks just like you'd expect a crusty old geezer who's been put in a retirement home to talk -- complete with an assortment of expletives that many times had me howling with bursts of laughter. Dick is hysterical in this film. But he's also got some good serious moments in the movie as well.

Mary, as always, is also outstanding here too. And she gets off a few spicy zingers of her own (though not nearly as many as Mr. Van Dyke does).

I was a bit disappointed in the ending. I would have preferred an additional scene tacked on to the last reel, altering the rather downbeat ending that we get here. But, even without a "smiley face" ending, I still enjoyed this motion picture very much.

It's a tribute to the great acting talents of both of these dynamic performers, especially considering the fact that this entire movie is a "word play" between just two individuals, with all the "action" being simply the words spoken by these two actors. Keeping a viewing audience interested in watching two people play cards and talk for nearly an hour-and-a-half is probably no easy task for a playwright or a screenwriter (and accompanying director of such material). But that's exactly what happens in "The Gin Game". I *was* entirely interested in seeing these two people talk and play cards for nearly ninety minutes. In fact, as I said earlier, I wish the film had been even longer. The chemistry that Mr. Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore had during their ultra-successful and always-entertaining 1960's TV series, "The Dick Van Dyke Show" (when they made us laugh regularly as Rob and Laura Petrie), is still very much in evidence in this movie, close to 40 years after Rob and Laura left the air.

The DVD presentation of "The Gin Game" looks very good. We get a nice, sharp anamorphic widescreen picture (in a 1.78:1 ratio), and a quite-ample Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo soundtrack. Dick's plentiful expletives come across loud and clear here. (I found myself, in fact, using the reverse scan button on a few occasions in order to replay some of his rather raunchy utterances.) It's just so funny, in my opinion, hearing the person who played Robert Simpson Petrie cursing like a sailor. The most profane thing that the TV network censors would ever allow to pass the lips of Mr. Petrie in the 1960s, I think, was "dog-gone-it". LOL! :)

Play "The Gin Game" (using your DVD Player). It's a game I'll be playing many times I'm sure.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad, but....
Review: DVD and MTM do a passable job in the production of The Gin Game, but what was their greatest asset in the old Dick Van Dyke series becomes their Achilles heel here, namely their strong chemistry as a team. I just couldn't get past the feeling that these people had known each other for decades, and knew each other's every quirk. In this show, that gets in the way of the story line that revolves around two elderly strangers getting to know and dislike one another and go through the process of accepting each other (and themselves) for who they are. It's too bad that they picked this particular project for their long-awaited reunion.

I was privileged to see the incomperable Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn in the original stage production of this play. Strangely enough, although they also were a team of VERY long standing, they were able to overcome this issue. I understand that a VHS version of that performance is floating around. I strongly recommend seeing that, if you can.

Rating:
Summary: Great Movie!!
Review: It's nice to see Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore reunited again which makes it a great movie!!