Movie review: ‘California Suite’

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Neil Simon-written films give the viewer great dialogue and a chance for actors to prove their mettle. “California Suite” is no exception. It brings together four stories about people staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel and is just a masterful performance by all. You can find “California Suite” streaming, but you’ll have to rent or buy, but it does show up on occasion on cable and you can keep an eye out for it on the grid because, without a doubt, you’ll enjoy it (or enjoy it all over again).

‘California Suite’
(1978; 103 minutes; rated PG; directed by Herbert Ross and starring Maggie Smith, Walter Matthau, Michael Caine, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, Jane Fonda and Alan Alda)

GREAT WRITING, EVEN BETTER ACTING

(NOTE: I expanded this review with additional opinion and trivia and updated links on May 21, 2018. I again expanded the review on Jan. 17, 2026.)

I have reviewed an intersection film by looking at “2 Days in the Valley” (click here to read my review). While not a true intersection film in that disparate characters find their lives intersecting, “California Suite” has the Beverly Hills Hotel as the intersection for four stories, but none of the mingles with the others. OK, the analogy is strained, but I wanted to put in the link to my review of “2 Days in the Valley.”

“California Suite” was written by the legendary Neil Simon. While films are usually credited to the director (say something like, Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch”) “California Suite” and others are Neil Simon films for the celebrated writer, not the director or the star.

“California Suite” is essentially a stage play in four acts (Simon did four-act plays of “Suites:” “Plaza,” “California” and “London”): a screenwriter and his former wife discuss their daughter coming to live with him; an Oscar-nominated actress and her gay husband arrive for the show; a man comes to California for a bar mitzvah and winds up with a hooker in his room when his wife arrives; and two couples with constantly bickering husbands have a showdown on the hotel’s tennis courts and one of its suites.

Instead of a run-through of the plot, I’ll take you along through a critique of the actors and their performances …

  • First up, let me tell you about Alan Alda as “Bill Warren” and Jane Fonda as “Hannah Warren”
A promotional still photograph from the movie “California Suite.”

Divorced nearly a decade as the film opens, the couple’s daughter now wants to come west and live full time with Alda. From their first line to the last, this is the most dramatic pairing in the film, although Maggie Smith and Michael Caine give them a run for their money.

I’m in conflict over both Alda, who was “Hawkeye Pierce” on the hyper-popular TV series “M*A*S*H,” and Fonda, whose anti-Vietnam war antics are best defined as traitorous, and whose work onscreen is always superb. In “California Suite,” both are at the top of their respective games, although I’d say that Fonda was better in “The Electric Horseman” with Robert Redford (click here to read my review) but not at the level of her two Oscar-winning performances in “Klute” and “Coming Home,” which was released the same year as “California Suite.” Fonda’s CV is too long to recite, but I’ll include “The China Syndrome.” She remained good years later in “Monster In Law” opposite Jennifer Lopez (click here to read my review).

The banter between Alda and Fonda snaps, crackles and pops between these two and they pull it off perfectly. I’m not always sure about an Alda performance since it’s impossible to forget how he ruined “M*A*S*H”  by evolving into a preachy, politically correct ghost of the original premise. So movies like “The Seduction of Joe Tynan” and “The Aviator” just come off as an extension of “Hawkeye” goes Hollywood. He was bland to boring in the more recent “Tower Heist” (click here to read my review).

  • The most complex pairing as well as reaching deep for effort is from Maggie Smith, a two-time Oscar winner (yes, one is for this one) including for “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” and Michael Caine, who is also a two-time Oscar winner (and one other nomination).
A promotional still photograph from the movie “California Suite.”

Smith plays “Diana Barrie” and she’s coming to Los Angeles as a nominee for “Best Actress” and Caine plays her husband “Sidney Cochran” and he’s coming along for the ride. Funny, her character loses out for the fictional “Best Actress,” but Smith won in 1979 for Best Supporting Actress for “California Suite” (it was nine years after her win for “Jean Brodie”).

The two have a different kind of marriage, although with Simon writing the lines there’s no surprise that they are both devastatingly striking in conversation. She’s filled with self-doubt and as it spins out they have a marriage of convenience since he’s gay. The way their interpersonal life dissolves is a spotlight on these two actors’ great talent and they don’t disappoint. In one interesting scene, the urbane and sophisticated Caine double-dips (actually triple dips) the chips-and-dip spread at the Beverly Hills Hotel bar. Naughty, naughty.

Caine won for “Hannah and Her Sisters” and “The Cider House Rules” and was nominated for “The Quiet American.” I liked him in “The Dark Knight” and the little-remembered espionage thriller “The Fourth Protocol” (click here to read my review). I also enjoyed him in the comedy “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” (click here to read my review) with Steve Martin as well as two war flicks: “The Eagle has Landed” (click here to read my review) and “A Bridge Too Far” (click here to read my review).

Smith was in “Room With A View” and will most likely be best-remembered for her work in the “Harry Potter” franchise as “Professor Minerva McGonagal.” Smith died at 89 in 2024.

  • Next up is Walter Matthau, who’s the hapless uncle traveling to Los Angeles for his nephew’s bar mitzvah. He plays “Marvin Michaels” and his brother has a hooker come to Matthau’s hotel room. The hooker is passed out at the arrival of Matthau’s wife, “Millie,” played by Elaine May.
A promotional still photograph from the movie “California Suite.”

Matthau, best known for “The Odd Couple,” is an Oscar winner (“The Fortune Cookie”) and has notched films such as “Grumpy Old Men” with Jack Lemmon and the original “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” (click here to read my review). Matthau’s physical comedy outshines his acting, which is excellent at its worst. He goes through contortions of both the face and body as he hauls the hooker’s inert body around or falls in supplication to his wife. Matthau died at 79 in 2000 of a heart attack.

May, who was in “Heaven Can Wait” and “Primary Colors,” plays the aggrieved wife to a T, especially in the scene she cracks sarcastic where they are forced to get into the same taxi cab as the hooker (Denise Galik as “Bunny”) so they won’t be late for the bar mitzvah.

  • Finally, we have Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor. The duo plays a pair of Chicago doctors on vacation with their wives.
A promotional still photograph from the movie “California Suite.”

They bicker as if they’ve been married for years and Cosby, who plays “Dr. Willis Panama,” sparkles as he dominates the bickering. Pryor, who plays “Dr. Chauncey Gump,” is the perfect foil as the ever-increasingly agitated victim of Cosby’s every word. It’s a wonderful pairing and both are impeccable in their tone and timing.

Both are legendary stand-up comedians at heart and Cosby is of course known for his TV’s series “The Cosby Show” as well as films such as “Uptown Saturday Night” while Pryor was outstanding in “Harlem Nights” with Eddie Murphy (click here to read my review) and much less so in “Brewster’s Millions” and “Superman III.” Disgustingly, Cosby’s also been in the news for all the wrong reasons. In one piece of trivia that you’ve never heard: Pryor was also a co-writer of the hilarious “Blazing Saddles” (click here for my review). Pryor died at 65 in 2005 of a heart attack, just nine days after his birthday of Dec. 1.

It is truly special for a movie to rely solely on the actors’ performances and not rely even partially on special effects or period costuming. Although there are several exteriors and a tennis court battle between Cosby and his wife “Bettina,” played by Sheila Frazier, and Pryor and his wife “Lola,” played by Gloria Gifford, the actors create all the drama and comedy.

BTW … despite Cosby’s legal woes that have confirmed his status as a prime scumbag, I’m keeping him in my review.

By the time the credits roll, you’re convinced that each of the vignettes could have been its own individual film. You might not be wrong, but I’m sure Simon wasn’t when he chose NOT to do it that way!

“California Suite” made $42.9 million at the box office in 1978, according to Wiki, and it was just outside the top 10 for the year. “Grease” (click here for my look at that classic) was No. 1 at the box office that year with $159.9 million in receipts. Here are the other films from that year that I’ve reviewed for this blog:

Assorted cast and film notes (via IMDb.com):

  • Fonda’s middle name is Seymour; Alda’s full birth name is Alphonso Joseph D’Abruzzo; Smith’s full birth name was Margaret Natalie Smith; Caine’s birth name is Maurice Joseph Micklewhite; Matthau’s birth name was spelled Walter Jake Matthow; May’s birth name is Elaine Iva Berlin; Pryor’s full birth name was Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor III; and Cosby’s full birth name is William Henry Cosby Jr.
  • Directly from IMDb.com: “Dame Maggie Smith and Sir Michael Caine‘s scenes arriving at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Oscars were filmed before The 50th Annual Academy Awards (1978). Herbert Ross, who shot the scenes outside, was nominated that year as Best Director for The Turning Point (1977), but lost. Caine and Smith were presenters on the night. In fact, if one stares at the television during their pre-bar scene an image of Richard Burton (nominated that year) is on the screen.”
  • James Coburn has an uncredited bit part as Smith’s co-star in her film within a film. He has a few seconds and few lines at the start of “California Suite” (seen on a jet’s first class screen) but that’s all.
  • Veteran actor Herb Edelman plays “Harry Michaels,” who is Matthau’s brother. Edelman has been in “The Odd Couple” and “The Way We Were” and has a resume studded with TV series including “Maude” and “The Golden Girls.”
  • Dana Plato, whose signature role was “Kimberly Drummond” on TV’s “Diff’rent Strokes,” plays “Jenny,” the daughter being fought over by Alda and Fonda. She has only brief time on screen.
  • Finally and directly from IMDb.com: “The original production of the “California Suite” by Neil Simon, a play in two acts, opened on 2nd April 1976 at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles and ran until 5th June 1976. The Broadway production of “California Suite” opened at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre on 10th June 1976 and ran for 445 performances until 2nd July 1977.”

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