The Owl and the Pussycat

TCM has been running a spotlight on romantic comedies this month that they've been calling "meet cutes". Tonight is the last night of the series, including the movie The Owl and the Pussycat at 8:00 PM.

Barbra Streisand plays Doris, who we see at the beginning of the movie is having difficulty dealing with life in the New York City of 1970: stuck in the rain, missing her bus, and all that stuff. Having problems of his own, but in a different way, is Felix (George Segal). He's a struggling writer who gets one rejection notice after another, and works in a bookstore to make ends meet. He gets back to his apartment with multiple locks on it, because this was the crime-infested era of New York.

Their lives are soon to meet when Doris comes knocking on Felix's door begging to be let in. He shouldn't let her in, but he does. It turns out that she's been evicted right then, and she needs a place to spend the night, so she imposes on him thinking he's the one who got her evicted. And boy is she a bitch about it. She basically tries to take the place over, keeping Felix up half the night. Actually, it keeps everybody in the building up and gets Felix evicted in the middle of the night.

They go to one of Felix's friends' places, and Doris continues to be such an anoying bitch that the friend, who was sleeping with his girlfriend, gets up to get a hotel room or something. It goes on like this for 90 minutes and at least one more change of temporary residence. But amazingly, along the way, Felix finds himself falling in love with Doris.

Frankly, I hated The Owl and the Pussycat, down entirely to the shrillness of Streisand's character. Personally, I think the movie would have been more interesting if it went in an entirely different direction. Have Streisand's character be that shrill and more, only to have her dead body dumped in Central Park, making it a murder mystery with a whole bunch of suspects because nobody could put up with her.

Still, you should probably judge for yourself. Just don't complain if you want those 90 minutes back.