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It’s a little shocking that I’ve never seen this before, seeing as how I am a huge Alan Arkin fan, a medium sized Neil Simon fan and someone who is generally fascinated with the late 60s/early 70s sexual revolution and New York Jewish post-shtetl mentality and the forcefull vertex those two topics create. It’s been explored to death in countless books (half of them by Philip Roth) but not nearly as many movies. This may be one of the best I’ve ever seen. Arkin is Barney Cashman, owner of a midtown fish restaurant, resident of Great Neck, very balding, very chaste and he begins each day by looking in the mirror and saying, “oy, you again!” There’s some frills on the edges, but this is basically three uninterrupted Simon scenes — Arkin takes a woman back to his mother’s apartment (she volunteers at Mount Sinai in the afternoons) in the hopes of committing adultery. Wackiness ensues. First with Sally Kellerman (Arkin thinks a monologue on death is the way into this woman’s pants), then Paula Prentiss (Arkin smoking reefer ties with Buck Henry’s in Milos Forman’s similar Taking Off as the funniest joint in movies) and, saving the best for last, fellow Great Neck-er Renee Taylor. It says something when you are watching a movie by yourself at midnight and you are laughing so hard you have to rewind it ’cause you’re missing lines. Zingers back and forth at breakneck speed — and a lot of great running gags. (My favorite involves Arkin constantly putting ointment on his fish-smelling-fingers.) Anyway, this movie may not be for everyone. But as far as I am concerned, it is a work of unparalleled genius.