Amsucco

Firing up the Roku recently, I saw there was a section of recommendations because of one thing or another I had watched recently. One of the selections it gave me was a movie I had never heard of before, The American Success Company. Since it sounded like a quirky business comedy, I decided to give it a try.

Jeff Bridges plays Harry Flowers, a man working in the Munich offices of The American Success Company, which I presume is supposed to be a stand-in for American Express. They provide various financial services, such as charge cards. One couple hasn't paid off their charge card and run up a bill they have no hope of being able to pay, so it's up to Harry to get the couple back to the States and claw back whatever purchases he can. It's not much of a job, but somebody has to do it, even if he's got coworkers suspecting he's not very good at his job.

And if Harry's work life isn't going well, his home life is even worse. Harry married Sarah Elliott (Belinda Bauer), the daughter of Harry's boss Mr. Elliott (Ned Beatty). Sarah would prefer to dance ballet than to be a wife to Harry, while Mr. Elliott wants to boss Harry around to the point of ordering for Harry at a business lunch -- and ordering things that Harry doesn't want. Harry even has to suffer the indignity of the neighbor's dog realizing that Harry isn't enough of a man.

What's a man to do? In Harry's case, he decided to enlist the services of a prostitute, Corinne (Bianca Jagger). Only, in Harry's case, it's not really for the sex. Instead, it's to have Corinne teach Harry what sort of qualities women find irresistible in a man. Harry gets a wig and one of those Hollywood-style rubber prosthetic face masks, and goes out in public as this new man, Mack.

And surprisingly enough, much like Richard Basehart in Tension getting contact lenses, nobody's able to figure out that these are the same two people! Or maybe in Sarah's case she realizes it but doesn't care because she likes this Mack guy ravishing her. And if Harry can pull one over on the people in his personal life, this might just give him the confidence to pull one over on the people in his work life, leading him to come up with a scheme that reminded me of Peter Ustinov in Hot Millions.

Unfortunately, The American Success Company winds up being more than a bit of a mess. Doing a bit of reading on the movie, it seems as though there were multiple edits, and I'm not quite certain which edit I saw. One of the things that doesn't help is that with there not really being as obvious a difference between Harry and his alter ego, it's difficult at times to figure out exactly what's going on.

Another movie I found myself thinking of was Blake Edwards' S.O.B., in that both of them are movies where you can see why the idea being pitched is one that would really pique a producer's interest as being a quirky, offbeat film. However, when you've got something like this, you need to get the execution right, and I don't think The American Success Company succeeds (no pun intended) in that regard.