The Gin Game

The Gin Game
by Arvin Brown

List Price: $9.97
Category: DVD
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Movie Reviews of The Gin Game

Movie Review: Simple Story; But Packs A Wallop, Thanks To These Two Stars
Summary: 5 Stars

Dick and Mary are a joy to watch together again in this simple story of two elderly residents of an old-folks home, who fill their days and nights by playing Gin Rummy and discussing their lives with each other.

If you're expecting nice, clean, sugar-coated dialogue from these two former television icons, think again. The script bristles with just about every four-letter word you can imagine. So you probably won't want to let young children view this movie.

I was quite surprised at the amount of salty language contained here...but pleasantly surprised. Dick Van Dyke's dialogue seems very "real" indeed. He talks just like you'd expect a crusty old geezer who's been put in a retirement home to talk -- complete with an assortment of expletives that many times had me howling with bursts of laughter. Dick is hysterical in this film. But he's also got some good serious moments in the movie as well.

Mary, as always, is also outstanding here too. And she gets off a few spicy zingers of her own (though not nearly as many as Mr. Van Dyke does).

I was a bit disappointed in the ending. I would have preferred an additional scene tacked on to the last reel, altering the rather downbeat ending that we get here. But, even without a "smiley face" ending, I still enjoyed this motion picture very much.

It's a tribute to the great acting talents of both of these dynamic performers, especially considering the fact that this entire movie is a "word play" between just two individuals, with all the "action" being simply the words spoken by these two actors. Keeping a viewing audience interested in watching two people play cards and talk for nearly an hour-and-a-half is probably no easy task for a playwright or a screenwriter (and accompanying director of such material). But that's exactly what happens in "The Gin Game". I *was* entirely interested in seeing these two people talk and play cards for nearly ninety minutes. In fact, as I said earlier, I wish the film had been even longer. The chemistry that Mr. Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore had during their ultra-successful and always-entertaining 1960's TV series, "The Dick Van Dyke Show" (when they made us laugh regularly as Rob and Laura Petrie), is still very much in evidence in this movie, close to 40 years after Rob and Laura left the air.

The DVD presentation of "The Gin Game" looks very good. We get a nice, sharp anamorphic widescreen picture (in a 1.78:1 ratio), and a quite-ample Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo soundtrack. Dick's plentiful expletives come across loud and clear here. (I found myself, in fact, using the reverse scan button on a few occasions in order to replay some of his rather raunchy utterances.) It's just so funny, in my opinion, hearing the person who played Robert Simpson Petrie cursing like a sailor. The most profane thing that the TV network censors would ever allow to pass the lips of Mr. Petrie in the 1960s, I think, was "dog-gone-it". LOL! :)

Play "The Gin Game" (using your DVD Player). It's a game I'll be playing many times I'm sure.

Summary of The Gin Game