There is a nagging inconsistency in Paul Mazursky's Down and Out in Beverly Hills that prevents it from being a bona fide comedy classic, at least in my opinion. Quite simply, the manner in which everybody reacts to Jerry Baskin, a homeless man that is "adopted" into the affluent Whiteman family, changes from scene to scene. For example, one moment their patriarch, David, displays genuine concern and compassion for Jerry. In the next, he is ready to strangle him. Even Jerry's characterization is widely inconsistent from scene to scene. At the beginning of the film, he tries to commit suicide after losing his dog. But later he displays a kind of zen-like wisdom that makes it hard to believe that he could ever be attached to something so desperately. At times he seems like a down-on-his-luck polymath. At others, he comes off as merely a bum. If the film had managed to portray him as all of these things simultaneously, then the film would have worked more. But for whatever it's worth, Down and Out in Beverly Hills is a decent comedy. The film concerns itself with absurdities: Jerry accidentally gives David's wife her first orgasm in years during a massage, David's daughter's eating disorder is suddenly cured when she falls in love with Jerry, and their dog has a knack for activating the home security alarm at the wackiest times possible. The film is based on René Fauchois' play Boudu Saved from Drowning which was adapted into a 1932 film by Jean Renoir. It has literally been years since I've seen Renoir's film, so I can't give a decent comparison of the two films. But I feel that whatever satire and condemnations of social hierarchies and classicism that may have existed in the play and Renoir's film are negated by an artificially sweetened ending in Down and Out in Beverly Hills.
6/10
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