Word: lemmon
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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TIMOTHTY FARLEY(Jack Lemmon) is a man comfortable with his job: flexible hours, great fringe benefits, plenty of time to include a healthy appetite for golf, good port, and expensive cars. No midlife crisis here-lots of friends, hordes of admirers, all, an adequate hero for a mediocre movie. But Mass Appealgives to this good ol' boys a bizarre twist; rather than spending his morning writing letters to constituents, as we might expect, Farley instead stands at the front of a church and leads a congregation in the Profession of Faith. Timothy Farley is a priest, and a very contented...
...following for the modifications made here for the benefit of the TV generation) has been around and has been satirized since the earliest days of the Roman Catholic Church. Yet Farley is the latest, the most inventive and complex, in this reliquary of triteness, this film of continuous banality. Lemmon copes admirably: at moments reminiscent of Ronald Reagan at his complacent best, he creates with terrifying familiarity a portrait of the sycophantic politician per excellence. He oozes charm, exudes insincerity, succeeding so well, in fact, that the only thing priestly about this bon vivant is the funny collar he wears...
Some priests have flocks; Father Tim Farley (Jack Lemmon) has fans. The 5:20 Mass is S.R.O. for this Johnny Carson in alb and chasuble, who keeps the customers satisfied with ingratiating patter-dinner and a show for the price of your soul. Off-pulpit, Father Farley is a bit of a sacramental wino but still relentlessly endearing, dodging attacks and responsibilities with an easy quip. Somewhere beneath the show-biz charm, though, compassion pulses. When an angry young seminarian (Zeljko Ivanek) antagonizes his rector (Charles Burning), Father Farley resolves to detoxify the lad's ardor, teach...
...serious roles, Lemmon often turns his best instincts upside down. His gestures seem stranded between media: too intimate for the stage, too ostentatiously cunning for the screen. His Emmett Kelly face sags under the weight of compromise, drains of life, wears anguish like a Distinguished Service Cross. These roles inevitably win Lemmon Oscar nominations (three in the past five years), but this time he might even deserve one. Father Farley is an ideal Lemmon subject: the entertainer at mid-life crisis, with all attendant weary routines and stutter-step timing, and a love-hate relationship with his audience and himself...
John U. "Jack" Lemmon '47 attended Harvard, as did Frederick L. 'Grandy '70 ("Gopher" on "The Love Boat"), Susan W. Stockard-Channing '65, Frederick H. Gwynne '51 ("Herman" on "The Munsters"), John A. Lithgow '67 ("The World According to Garp"), among other actors...