MIXED NUTS

MIXED NUTS

Mixed Nuts is based on the 1979 French play Le Pere Noel es tune Ordure, which in English loosely translates to Santa Claus is a Stinker.  That the movie opens on Christmas Eve with the song “White Christmas” is true irony because no one is having a day that is merry or bright.  That the story is set in carefree Venice, California where people rollerblade and ride bikes rather worrying about cold and snow makes it doubly paradoxical because beneath its hospitable weather and carefree lifestyle, the city is fraught with crises.  Every character either works for the Life Savers suicide hotline or is associated with someone who does, and a serial killer named the Seaside Strangler is murdering young women. 

The characters have personal problems, as well.  The office manager Mrs. Munchnik (Madeline Kahn) is a childless widow who is trying to get out of the office to attend Christmas dinner with her dead husband’s family, the only relatives she has.  Honest and reliable, the stoic woman finds the prospect of being late abhorrent, yet throughout the day her departure is repeatedly delayed.  Her coworker is Catherine (Rita Wilson), a shy woman in her thirties who still lives with her mother.  Having neither a strong personality nor adequate training, Catherine struggles with difficult clients, like the pervert who repeatedly calls to proposition her.  To make matters worse, she is in love with her boss, Phillip (Steve Martin), but cannot tell him because he is engaged to a woman named Susan (Joley Fisher). 

Gracie (Juliette Lewis) is the proprietor of a used goods store and Catherine’s best friend.  The two women met at an AA meeting that Catherine attended in hopes of finding a man.  Gracie is pregnant, unmarried, and constantly worried because she doesn’t have any money or health insurance.  One of twelve children, she can’t expect help from her parents, nor can she depend on her  boyfriend Felix (Anthony LaPaglia), who she met the day he got out of jail seven months earlier, because he doesn’t have a job and has given up trying to find one.  He could make a good living as a wall artist, but doesn’t have a wall to draw on, and Gracie’s refusal to marry him because he can’t provide a better life for their baby than she had growing up only exacerbates the tension between them.

Phillip has a lot of issues.  The only Christmas present he can afford to give Mrs. Munchnik is the fruitcake she gave him the previous year; his fiancé has called off their engagement; and Life Savers is being evicted because state funding has been cut back and he is three months behind in the rent.  He only needs five thousand dollars to move the office somewhere else but doesn’t know anyone with that kind of money.  In the meantime, he must keep the eviction secret to avoid spoiling his employees’ Christmas.   

Even minor characters are fraught with tribulations.  Chris (Liev Schreiber) is a crossdresser who believes he is a woman trapped in a man’s body.  What he wants most in life is to be loved, but his family makes fun of him because he is too feminine, and men ignore him because he isn’t feminine enough.  Louie (Adam Sandler) is an unpublished song writer that has a crush on Catherine, but she is too interested in Phillip to notice.  Mr. Lobel (Robert Klein) is constantly angry because Mrs. Munchnik, who he has nicknamed “the dog hater”, yells at his pets. Lastly, Phillip’s landlord Stanley has served eviction notices to all his tenants so he can sell the apartment building and get rich, but nobody will move out.    

The story opens with Phillip riding his bike to work carrying the fruitcake that will be play a big part in the plot.  As he walks into the building, Stanley, who is unscrewing lightbulbs, hands him an eviction notice.  Not wanting to ruin Catherine’s and Mrs. Munchnik’s holidays, Phillip hides the paper in his pocket and enters the office where the two women are manning the hotline.  A few blocks away, a hugely pregnant Gracie chases Felix to retrieve the Santa Claus suit he stole from the store because she cut up all his clothes in a fit of anger and he has nothing else to wear.   When she fails to catch him, she returns to the store and calls Catherine to complain, but instead of sympathizing, Catherine points out Felix’s good traits.  Instead of hearing her out, Gracie sarcastically remarks that Catherine could see the bright side of a plague and hangs up. 

 Just then, Felix comes back to the store to make up.  Instead of listening to his side of things, Gracie points a gun at him and tells him to go away because he can’t provide for her and the baby.  When he grabs the gun and tries to reason with her, she runs away.  In the meantime, Phillip has gone to the bank where Susan is a loan officer to ask for money to save the hotline.  Instead of helping him, however, she refuses his application, confesses that she has been cheating on him for the last four months, and breaks off their engagement.  Disheartened he returns to the office where he answers a call from a man who says he is so depressed he needs to come to Life Savers for help.  Even though it violates company policy, Phillip weakens and gives the man the address. 

Despite the utter chaos in the office, Mrs. Munchnik informs Phillip that she has to leave to avoid being late for dinner with her in-laws, gathers up her things, and heads toward the elevator.  It runs smoothly at first, but then it stops suddenly, stranding her between floors.  The only person who hears her cries for help is Mr. Lobel but he refuses to give her a hand because she has been rude to his dogs.  Back in the office, Catherine and Phillip exchange gifts; she gives him a pair of hand-knitted pajamas and he gives her a membership in the fruit of the month club.  Somehow the eviction notice has become stuck to the wrapping paper, however, and when Catherine sees it, she demands that Phillip explain why he didn’t tell anyone about it.  She is still in the process of trying to pry the truth out of him when Gracie arrives.  Felix shows up seconds later and Gracie runs into the office bathroom and locks the door.  By this point, Mrs. Munchnik is screaming that she has to pee and cannot wait any longer.  Since Stanley was called but failed to come, Phillip pulls her up through the elevator’s roof and she makes a mad dash for the bathroom.  When she finds the door locked, she grabs the fruitcake to break it down just as Gracie opens it. 

Felix charges in behind Mrs. Munchnik and he and Gracie resume their argument.  When she mentions being seven months pregnant, Mrs. Munchnik scoffs that Gracie could deliver any second.  The untimely comment causes Felix to accuse Gracie of carrying another man’s child and she becomes so enraged, she hits him in the head with the fruitcake, knocking him out.  The injury looks bad, so Catherine and Phillip decide it should be seen by a doctor, but because Felix has no health insurance, they take him to Dr. Kinsky (Rob Reiner) the local veterinarian.  Since someone must man the phones, poor Mrs. Munchnik must delay her departure once again.  Dr. Kinsky stiches up Felix’s wound, but when he turns to tell Phillip that everything will be fine, Felix grabs a bottle of dog tranquilizers and takes an overdose.  Having no other alternative, Catherine and Phillip take him to the hospital to get his stomach pumped then head back to the office, arguing the whole time.

Right after they return to Life Savers, Chris knocks on the door and Gracie, who is on her way out with Catherine, throws the door open, knocking out Mrs. Muchnik who was standing behind it, and lets him in.  After they drag Mrs. Munchnik’s body into the corner, Gracie and Catherine leave and Chris is left alone with Phillip.  Gracie takes Catherine back to the store where she gives her a beautiful gown to wear and does her makeup while, back at the office, Chris explains that he is severely depressed, but will feel better if Phillip dances with him.  To prevent Chris from harming himself, Phillip agrees, and they begin slow dancing to “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve”.   Mrs. Munchnik wakes up, sees Phillip in the arms of a strange woman, says she is going to sue him for not telling her the office was closing, and storms out.  Unfortunately, her car won’t start and, once again, her plans are foiled.  Phillip is so upset by her tirade that he takes it out on Chris, who has continued dancing alone, by calling him a nut.  Insulted and hurt, Chris leaves in a huff, forgetting his cape.   

The characters’ actions begin to intertwine, culminating in a major disaster.  While she is waiting for someone from the auto club to get her car started, Mrs. Munchnik sees Catherine coming back from Gracie’s and tells her that Phillip is in the office dancing with a strumpet; Felix escapes from the hospital, runs to Gracie’s store and gets the gun; Louie comes into the office and, finding Catherine there, sings the song that he has written especially for her; and Phillip becomes so jealous that he takes it out on Mrs. Munchnik by throwing the fruitcake she left behind out the window.  It smashes her windshield just as the auto club has gotten the car started, and unable to take anymore, the poor woman begins sobbing bitterly drawing the attention of Mr. Lobel who is out walking his dogs.  Back in the apartment, Chris returns for his cape just as Felix shows up with the gun.  The two tussle over it and Felix accidentally shoots Chris in the foot, grazing his toe.  Louie, who is immediately drawn to the crossdresser, begins taking care of him.  Catherine takes the gun away from Felix, but Gracie grabs it and starts shooting to get rid of the bullets.   After the gun is empty, they hear an odd noise coming from the hall and when Gracie opens the door, she finds Stanley’s dead body leaning against the buzzer. 

I’m not going to spoil the ending of this raucous story.  If you want to know whether Mrs. Munchnik makes it to her in-laws, if Catherine and Phillip get together, how the group deals with Stanley’s corpse, or learn the identity of the Seaside Strangler you’ll just have to watch the movie.  Neither critics nor civilians give it a high rating on Rotten Tomatoes, probably because the characters are unrealistic and the plot is completely ridiculous, but when viewing the movie from a Sociologist’s point of view I’m reminded of Max Weber’s (pronounced Vaber’s) Ideal Types.  According to Weber, an Ideal Type is the ultimate form of something to be used as a tool for classifying social phenomena.  For example, Catherine represents Innocence, Phillip is Caring, Mrs. Munchnik is Honesty, and the Seaside Strangler is Evil.   When interpreted this way, it becomes clear why this story takes place at Christmas.  As Phillip so eloquently points out in a speech toward the end of the movie, the holiday is a time when people compare who they are to who they could, or should, be.  In other words, Christmas is the ultimate Ideal Type.

There are other examples of ideal types in this movie and If you decide to watch it, you might enjoy the story more if you look for them.  Mixed Nuts, which offers a really good Christmas soundtrack along with its stellar cast, is streaming for free on a lot of services right now including Roku, Vudu, and Pluto, and can be rented for around $3 on Sling, Fandango, Amazon Prime, and Apple TV.  This is my last post of 2019; I’ll be back in January with new movies for the new year.  I hope you have a wonderful holiday season and see a whole bunch of really great flicks