Being There

continued

I also love how he's always looking for a TV to match the remote control he carries. In one of the great moments in comedy history, a gang of taunting street youths doesn't fall for his childish gardening rhetoric and threatens him with a knife; he points his remote control at them and tries to change channels. Melvyn Douglas, who won a supporting-actor Academy Award for his performance in Being There, died shortly after it was released. Peter Sellers, who manages to invest the idiotic Chance with a surprising poetic dignity, was nominated for best actor.

Being There is at the Michigan Theater on Monday, December 11.

[Review published December 2006]