A Fish in the Bathtub Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

A Fish in the Bathtub Blu-ray Movie Review

When "Harry" and "Sally" have been married for 40 years, and then "Wanda" shows up.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 12, 2022

Are show business marriages doomed to failure? It might seem so when you consider the histories of stars like Elizabeth Taylor, Nicolas Cage, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Mickey Rooney, Jennifer O'Neill and Lana Turner, just to name a few. In that regard, while the inimitable Stephen Sondheim may not have been referring exclusively to show business marriages, he delivered this delicious lyric in one of his great songs from the classic musical dissection of relationships Company:

It's not so hard to be married
It's much the simplest of crimes
It's no so hard to be married
I've done it three or four times!

Now "three or four times" would make the singer of that song something of an "amateur" within the context of the stars listed above, some of whom have gotten dangerously close to double digits in the spouse department. But the underlying fact in this hopefully obviously joking opening is that, despite Sondheim's assertion, it can be hard to be married, and that difficulty may not ease even despite having been together for a long time. A Fish in the Bathtub evidently came and went very quickly in 1999 when it was originally released, and it perhaps surprisingly was met with some critical umbrage, but my hunch is any married couples who have weathered the storms of several years together will find this film both hilarious and touching in about equal measure, and one way or the other it provides the joy of seeing two show business folks who managed to make it past their Golden Anniversary together, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara.

Sam (Jerry Stiller) and Molly (Anne Meara) have been married for forty years and the cracks are beginning to show, especially for Molly. Sam is a cantankerous fool a lot of the time, but he is lovable, if on the rumpled side. He also is the sort of guy who, despite his bad temper, will go out in a torrential rainstorm to get two prized buns from a local Asian foods emporium that Molly wants. Unfortunately for Molly, Sam also spies a live fish in the shop's fishtank and for never explained reasons, brings the damn thing home in a large baggie and then deposits it in a bathtub filled with water, feeding it occasionally. Initially, despite some shouting and screaming (there's quite a bit of that in this film), the two (or three, including the fish) continue to cohabitate together.

Meanwhile, their son Joel (Mark Ruffalo) is an enterprising realtor who may be on the verge of some marital problems of his own with wife Sharon (Missy Yager), courtesy of a very flirtatious and attractive client named Tracy (Pamela Gray). Sam and Molly's daughter Ruthie (Jane Adams) doesn't actually enter the story until sometime later, and while she seems to not have any huge relationship issues at present, that "at present" part turns out to be a salient plot mechanism in one of the film's most hilariously scabrous vignettes, when a supposed therapist named Eldon Krantz (Jonathan Hogan) who is hired to help the family turns out to have had a history with Ruthie.

Now on one level there is no doubt you've seen this story before, but I would argue that where A Fish in the Bathtub excels is in its many "little" moments, especially some of the nonstop sparring between Sam and Molly. Anyone who has been married long enough to understand both being the subject of "corrective efforts" on the part of your spouse while you may perhaps be simultaneously engaging in the same sort of behavior toward them should experience the same general hilarity that I did. But the film also has a kind of double edged sword in terms of this bickering behavior, and when things get completely out of control at a weekly get together with a bunch of their friends that Sam and Molly host, it's definitely a very uncomfortable moment, and one that the film arguably struggles a bit to recover from, at least in terms of being generally light in tone.

For those with good memories who recall the now iconic scene in The Simpsons where the family encounters therapist Marvin Monroe and all hell breaks loose, something quite similar, albeit without shock devices, occurs in one of this film's funniest scenes, as mentioned above. That then gives way to a perhaps maudlin but still genuinely touching coda where a tragedy finally manages to get Sam to reconsider his boorish ways, and Molly to reconsider being an emotional support system for Sam.

Before the film gets to its expected happy ending, both Sam and Molly of course try the dating scene, and that offers some delicious cameos for the wonderful Bob Dishy, as Molly's driving instructor who has a penchant for breath spray, and a lovely Phyllis Newman, as Sam's neighbor who suddenly senses an "opening", but who may have to give up her obsession with birds in order to pursue her new prey. Ruffalo and Adams in particular also have some really fun moments as siblings still ensconced in a fair degree of rivalry. Other fun supporting turns come courtesy of Doris Roberts as an imperious ally of Molly's, and Paul Benedict as Sam's best friend.

A Fish in the Bathtub Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

A Fish in the Bathtub is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of the Cohen Film Collection, an imprint of Cohen Media Group, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. (This is another Cohen release with a subbranding, in this case, Classics of American Cinema.) All you need to do to see the result of what is only generically described on the cover as a "new 20th anniversary restoration" is to see the original trailer included on this disc and then compare it to the actual feature. The trailer looks worn and faded, with pretty anemic suffusion, while this apparently new transfer is wonderfully vivid and typically very well detailed. The palette enjoys consistent densities throughout the presentation, and a wide range of colors is often very energetically presented. Fine detail also is generally excellent throughout, especially on some of the heavy fabrics that Sam wears. There are some minor nicks still visible which are kind of curious in that they are so minor and seem like they might have been ameliorated, if not outright eliminated. Grain resolves without any issues.

A Fish in the Bathtub Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

A Fish in the Bathtub features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track that benefits greatly both from some enjoyable source cues, but also some top flight jazz playing by the likes of Bill Cunliffe and Lew Soloff performing John Hill's score and arrangements of standards. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available, but Cohen might want to consider hiring someone with a smattering of Yiddish for a film like this. Let's just say that it is not "fisher" that Sam keeps saying.

A Fish in the Bathtub Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• On Stage Q & A with Director and Co-Writers (HD; 27:10) is a really worthwhile and often extremely sweet conversation with Joan Micklin Silver, John Silverstein, David Chudnovsky and moderator Bruni Burres which took place on March 19, 2017 at the Jacob Burns Film Center. This does show some pretty prevalent combing artifacts.


• Original Trailer (HD; 1:57)


• Re-release Trailer (HD; 00:59)

A Fish in the Bathtub Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As manifold people who take the time out of their days to send me private messages "informing" me of how stupid my assessment of this or that film has been, let me just concur with them that reviewers can get it wrong, insofar as the critics who saw and evidently dismissed A Fish in the Bathtub back when it was released were frankly just not seeing the same film I did. There's some sweet subtext here about so-called "interfaith" marriages, as Stiller and Meara famously were, and as the product of just such a marriage (back in the days when, as Molly herself says in the film, it just "wasn't done"), I'll only say that this was one of the sweetest Christmukkah and/or Hannumas presents to ever show up in my review queue. Technical merits are solid and the included interview also very appealing. Highly recommended.