The April Fools

The 1960s boasted numerous comedies and dramas about middle class rebels who were fed up with the rat race and tried to defy traditional measures of success. This 1969 film stars Jack Lemmon in the role of an Everyman named Howard Brubaker, who dutifully climbs the corporate ladder until a chance meeting with a French beauty named Catherine (Catherine Deneuve) at a high society cocktail party causes him to reevaluate his entire life. Lemmon is charming as the earnest but out-of-step stockbroker who rebels against the empty values of corporate culture, while Deneuve (in her American film debut) is lovely but also largely enigmatic as a woman who decides to leave her unfulfilling life as the trophy wife of a philandering CEO (Peter Lawford). The opening scenes effectively satirize New York society pretentiousness with a light touch and the first half of the film carries a poignant undercurrent, but The April Fools veers into loud, broad comedy when Brubaker tries to make his escape in the company of his drunk lawyer (Jack Weston) and a lush (Harvey Korman) whom they meet on the train. Another Lemmon vehicle, Billy Wilder's The Apartment, explored similar themes with more wit and insight, and the culture of "swingers" and miniskirts and ridiculous conceptual art pieces here dates this film as an artifact of the ‘60s mainstream trying desperately to be hip. Not a necessary purchase. (S. Axmaker)