benovite when you get to the scenes that involve Albert Brooks without his shirt... try not to gag on a fur ball.I like Albert Brooks. I've seen most, if not all of his movies but it was the first time seeing this one. Modern Romance is an interesting take on the subject of love. There are few movies that handle the desperation of love as well or as overtly as Modern Romance, although 1979's Chilly Scenes of Winter comes very close. They both essentially deal with obsessed men that are too psychologically attracted/obsessed to their respective women.Where-as Chilly Scenes of Winter borders on the subject stalking, this movie has a more grounded foundation with the subject of love because both people are already in a relationship.. and out of the relationship.. and back in it again.And because it's a movie that was released in 1981, it is of its time in terms of styles and such. That's the main reason I like this movie. My basic rule when it comes to movies is "If it sucks at least it may have some historic relevance", you know time capsule stuff.Which leads me to the horrific scenes of Albert Brooks sans shirt.The man is hair. Very hair. Like he's wearing a black curly fur sweater-hairy. And what's worse is he almost looks burn victim-hairy. It's not a pleasant sight and the scenes with him without a shirt go on and on. Back in the early 80's hairy men were seen as normal and nothing shocking. But in 2009 the sight of something like this is just plain revolting. Sorry, Albert! I wish at some point someone said "hey let's try this scene but with you wearing a simple t-shirt, I mean you might scare people". It's just really bad and I feel sorry for the poor pretty actress that had to deal with Albert Brooks naked body on top of hers. She was probably pulling out his hairs from her teeth for days after that.Anyway, it's an OK movie. It could have been better if I hadn't see Albert Brooks without his shirt for what seemed like 10 long continuous minutes because that will forever taint my viewing of this movie.

ALauff One of my major discoveries of this year is Albert Brooks. His comedy develops in a unique way from his queasiness regarding contemporary mores and he always plays the male symbol of self-absorption that his films affectionately target. Part of the joke is that his affluent characters myopically find misery in often mundane setbacks. Brooks takes their lives and concerns seriously (refreshingly, Brooks doesn't hold their wealth against them), but there's an implicit rebuke in their pettiness, and their journeys are carefully littered with clear-eyed supporting characters that illuminate their lack of suffering.His character this time is more disturbed than most, a film editor working on a suitably bad George Kennedy sci-fi picture (Kennedy appears as himself at the director's house party), involved in an on-again/off-again relationship with a pretty banker named Mary (Kathryn Harrold). As the film opens, he breaks off their relationship yet again. Immediately regretting the decision, he seeks solace from his assistant editor (Bruno Kirby), who sends him home with a few Quaaludes. The ensuing chemical high leads to an extended scene of astonishing observation in which Brooks stumbles around talking to himself, his parakeet, his rolodex, and his record player ("I love my album collection. Look, I have so many great records!"), drunk-dialing a date with a woman he won't remember in the morning, and promising to embark on a new, Mary-free life. (The blind date is one of Brooks's wisdom-imparters, a lovelorn aging woman who clearly idolizes his character; their night together consists of a one-take drive around the block and back to her home again, the camera fixed on the hood capturing them both through the windshield, a sad Michael Jackson ballad on the radio.)This resolution doesn't last long and soon enough they're back together. The story then takes a darkly funny turn into intense sexual jealousy and his character's controlling, near-sociopathic behavior. The film absolutely nails that feeling of sexual obsession-cum-inadequacy, in which you know the woman that you love is too good for you, so you compensate by holding her under your thumb, guarding her from the other guys drooling all over her low-cut blouse. By presenting this side of the male ego as bald reality, the film rightly renders such behavior insane but also symptomatic of the skewed state of monogamy in modern culture. Brooks doesn't quite go all the way with his character's increasingly mad behavior; if he has one flaw as writer-director, it's that he loves his characters too much to end their stories sourly, so the film has a rather warmed over, unsatisfying non-conclusion. But it's a very good film nonetheless, full of the kind of penetrating social observations at which Brooks is uncommonly adept.

Vaginarian Mr.Popularity Petey.Virtually every line out of his mouth in this movie is a gem, and a good amount of everyone else's. The old man at the phone, "he's there now isn't he, oh please I wasn't born yesterday!" Or Al's brother Dave in the sport shop, "What are you 5'11?", "I misjudged you, go with the box"And the song lyrics on the radio when he's driving around, "She's out of my life", "God only knows what I'd be without you" "And then along comes Mary"And just the true angst that men put themselves through, when the blood rushes to their genitals and they can't think straight, and come up with unfounded jealousy. I just copped the DVD from ebay for 11.98 door to door.....An unsung classic of American cinema and his best work by far......

connorratliff MODERN ROMANCE is one of the great unsung film comedies. It's not for everyone, in that the comedy is possibly too close-to-the-bone for people who like their comedy nice and painless. But in the post-Seinfeld era, when Curb Your Enthusiasm is a cult favorite, it is looking more and more like Modern Romance was WAY ahead of its time.Real Life, Lost In America, and Defending Your Life are all great, but for some reason this film stands out to me as Mr. Brooks' greatest cinematic effort. (Stanley Kubrick was a fan, too-- he was trying to make his own film about jealousy, which would end up being EYES WIDE SHUT two decades later.)The real shame is that this film is the only Brooks effort never released on DVD. We can only hope that Criterion might rescue it from oblivion with a nice special edition (with commentary by Brooks!)