Cassavettes has a lot to say about men, the way they cling to standard forms of masculinity as a rebellion of their voluntary marriage and the various ways they connect with each other and with women, usually through extended humiliation and embarrassment. Unfortunately, while the director has many intriguing things to say about manhood, they are buried within a two and a half hour film that is intent on being redundant, repetitive, lost and obnoxious. Peter Falk, John Cassavettes and Ben Gazzara star as three friends whose common friend has just died. This throws them into an existential funk consisting of drinking, humiliating women and laughing with one another. All three of them are varying degrees of asshole. Even trying to pick one who has any redeeming qualities is a waste of time.
There is a lot to admire here which makes its failure al the more unfortunate. An extended scene near the beginning which lasts about 20 minutes involving a singing contest and the last part of the film which examines each man's interaction with a women they pick up. Most of the material in between fails to say anything substantial about their plight outside of the fact that they are each desperately lonely and use their lack of identity as an excuse to treat others terribly. This could have been conveyed in half the time. The three actors fill two and a half hours with constant laughter. Husbands tramples on its own potential through its own redundancy and inability to say anything substantial about its three protagonists. Perhaps this was the point but it was not working for me.
There is a lot to admire here which makes its failure al the more unfortunate. An extended scene near the beginning which lasts about 20 minutes involving a singing contest and the last part of the film which examines each man's interaction with a women they pick up. Most of the material in between fails to say anything substantial about their plight outside of the fact that they are each desperately lonely and use their lack of identity as an excuse to treat others terribly. This could have been conveyed in half the time. The three actors fill two and a half hours with constant laughter. Husbands tramples on its own potential through its own redundancy and inability to say anything substantial about its three protagonists. Perhaps this was the point but it was not working for me.