The Mirror Has Two Faces

The two categories are as painstakingly configured as two doors marked Square Peg and Round Hole. This is a matter of convenience, naturally. All is as it should be, but it ain’t. She has a mother who’s seen it all, including a daughter so plain mere plainness is relief.

Dullness by definition is the object of satire. The precedents are Louise Lasser and Charles Grodin as neurotics who bumble through their courtship in John Erman’s Just Me and You.

There is a stern rapport with the Hawks of Bringing Up Baby and Balls of Fire, a classicizing overlay on the observed naturalism of Erman, it exacerbates the dilemma in an academic, Platonic sense.

The comedy is determined by its elements, if there were no lack of understanding between the sexes, another sort of comedy would take place, a comedy of nature, Burns & Allen. A one-sided farce has extensive possibilities, but here the thing is impossible, the mathematics professor cannot be comforted or solve for x, the entire situation must be rethought, and now one side tips the balance, the stasis is unencumbered from two poor souls without a clue, she blossoms like Giulietta after the nightmare, he launches himself into the affair like Douglas Fairbanks.