‘Lost in Yonkers’

Neil Simon’s play had a melancholy undertow, and Mercedes Ruehl and Irene Worth, who each won Tonys for their performances on Broadway, bring out its full sadness in Martha Coolidge’s 1993 film. Ruehl (center) plays a womanly child whose will is stunted by Worth, her ogre of a mother. It’s the summer of 1942, and Ruehl’s recently widowed brother (Jack Laufer) deposits his two sons (Brad Stoll, left, and Mike Damus) with his unaccommodating mother. The atmosphere inside their Yonkers apartment over their candy shop is thick with dreams. A major dreamer is Ruehl’s other brother (Richard Dreyfuss), a petty hoodlum hiding out there for a time (HBO Sunday at 6 a.m., Friday at 11:30 a.m.).