Unfaithfully Yours (1984)

A world famous composer and conductor (Dudley Moore) is married to a much younger Italian actress (Nastassja Kinski). When he suspects his wife of having an affair with the orchestra's guest violinist (Armand Assante), he concocts a complicated plan to murder his wife and have the murder pinned on the violinist. But things, as usual, never seem to go as planned. A remake of the 1948 Preston Sturges film of the same name, director Howard Zieff's (PRIVATE BENJAMIN) updated film is misguided. The possibilities of a decent remake are there but what Zieff and his screenwriters (there's three of them) have done is substituted the clever wit of Sturges' film with slapstick! There's nothing wrong with slapstick, it's a legitimate form of comedy but if you're going to remake a film, why throw away what was good about it and replace it with something that is inherently alien to it? Sturges' film was also a surprisingly dark comedy which might account for its box office failure in 1948. Perhaps in order to avoid the same fate, this version attempts to make it "cuter" and more audience friendly. With Albert Brooks, Cassie Yates, Richard Libertini and Richard B. Shull.