MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Had to Be You’ Loses Its Way

In their play “It Had to Be You,” Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna offered a perfectly pleasant evening in the theater and enjoyed a long local run with it, but in bringing it to the screen, they’ve met with disaster. Never as strong as their durably hilarious 1971 “Made for Each Other,” of which it is a variation, “It Had to Be You” citywide)just lies there and dies, an embarrassment.

Taylor casts herself as Theda Blau, a flashy, neurotic, garrulous, fad-ridden, no-talent, aging starlet who manages, through tortuous twists of fate, to trap Bologna’s Vito Pignoli, an eligible, successful (but sour) advertising executive in her East Village flat on Christmas Eve. Theda is one of those obnoxious types who are supposed to be adorably irresistible underneath their desperation.

But Theda is such a bore, such a dated, stereotyped self-demeaning kook, and so relentlessly grating that it defies credibility that Vito should fall for her, even if eventually he does get to see her in a new light.

“It Had to Be You” might just have slid by had its writer/stars not also attempted to direct as well. Throughout, there’s the feeling that they’ve given each other permission to let it all out. The effect is to make the film play like a miscalculated vanity production.

Taylor and Bologna are too experienced to have indulged themselves as they so clearly have in “It Had to Be You” (rated R for mildly adult situations). Its only genuinely funny moment is a cameo by the wonderfully eccentric William Hickey as Theda’s ancient agent who no sooner tells her he is going to make her a star or die trying, than he drops dead.

‘IT HAD TO BE YOU’

A Frank B. Tolin, Herve S. Tolin & Ronald B. Fenster presentation of a Tom Yanez/Richard G. Abramson production. Writers-directors Renee Taylor, Joseph Bologna. Camera Bart Lau. Music Charles Fox. Production designer Stephen Wolf. Costumes Leslie Herman. 2nd unit camera John Ercole. Film editor Tom Finan. With Renee Taylor, Joseph Bologna, Gabriel Bologna, William Hickey, Tony Randall, Donna Dixon, Eileen Brennan.

Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

MPAA-rated: R (younger than 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian).