Stale portrait of misbehaving men
If the sex-obsessed male protagonists in the contemporary comedy “Bernard and Huey” talk like they’re from an entirely different era, that would likely have to do with the unpublished, 30year-old Jules Feiffer script that serves as the film’s raison d’etre — as well as a handicap.
Updated to present-day Manhattan, the film from director Dan Mirvish catches up with college friends who had formed an unlikely bond in the late ’80s.
When pudgy, disheveled Huey (an effective David Koechner) shows up unannounced at the loft of his impressionable buddy, Bernard (Jim Rash), you don’t need one of the many flashbacks to realize his chick magnet days are well in the past.
It doesn’t take long for the guys to pick up where they left off, although nebbish Bernard has now become the improbable player.
Sharing some DNA with “Carnal Knowledge,” the 1971 film that established Feiffer, the longtime Village Voice cartoonist, as an equally gifted screenwriter, “Bernard and Huey” respectfully retains Pfeiffer’s distinctive speech patterns, but lacking the stronger directorial imprint of a Mike Nichols, what may have sounded fresh and daring back in the day quickly grows mannered and repetitive.
Like its developmentally arrested, misbehaving manchildren, the long-shelved source material hasn’t aged particularly well.
“Bernard and Huey.” Not rated. Running time: 1 hour, 31 minutes. Playing: Laemmle Monica Film Center, Santa Monica; also on VOD.