Tribute (1980): A Review

TRIBUTE

Sometimes, you watch a film and wonder, "why?". Why was it made? Why was it praised? Why and by extension how did it get Oscar recognition? Emilia Perez immediately comes to mind. Another one, for me at least, will be Tribute. If Tribute is remembered at all, it is because it earned Jack Lemmon his seventh and penultimate Oscar nomination. As of this writing, I have seen only five of his Oscar-nominated performances. Curiously, two of the three yet unseen are the ones for which he won: Mister Roberts and Save the Tiger. With all that said, I think that Tribute will easily be Jack Lemmon's weakest/worst nomination. Hammy and embarrassing for everyone involved, Tribute is anything but. 

Scottie Templeton (Jack Lemmon) is a former comedy writer now theater agent. He is a bon vivant extraordinaire, the life of the party, ready with zingers and one-liners for all occasions. This time though, there may not be punchlines but a gut punch. He is at the hospital for tests. Here, he is able to pick up Sally Haines (Kim Cattrall), a pretty young thing who has just had an appendectomy. He delights in telling her that he usually plays doctor but this time he is being tested. At the hospital though, he learns that he has leukemia. 

This won't change the happy-go-lucky rapscallion, who will keep the quips flowing as much as the booze behind the bookshelf. It is at this point that his ex-wife Maggie (Lee Remick) comes with their son, aspiring photographer Jud (Robby Benson). Maggie is in town for a school reunion and is initially not told of Scottie's condition. Jud too is kept in the dark, though it might not change his resentment against his father. Jud is as serious and somber as Scottie is humorous and quippy. 

Scottie wants to bond with Jud before time runs out. He attempts to set Jud up with Sally surreptitiously with disastrous results. He takes him to a tribute luncheon that Scottie organizes for Hillary (Gale Garnett), everyone's favorite hooker. Jud would rather go to the last day of a photographic exhibition. Will father and son reconcile even after Scottie's diagnosis is revealed? Will Scottie get his own Tribute?

Tribute's screenplay was adapted by the original playwright, Bernard Slade. That is one of if not Tribute's biggest problem. Tribute is a filmed play. It is one of the worst examples of a filmed play. It plays to an empty audience. Scottie Templeton mugs, does theatrical flourishes and puts on funny costumes for people who are not there. A particularly bad moment is when he makes big gestures in his apartment, ending with him dropping his pants right before he answers the door. I think that on a stage, with an audience, this will play well. He is being watched on a stage. 

In a film though, he would not be being watched. A film audience is different than a theater audience. As such, who is Lemmon mugging for? Who is he attempting to act for? There is one moment when Scottie startles Jud by appearing in a chicken suit. Scottie is attempting to get Jud to laugh by doing an old routine that he did when Jud was a child. On pretty much every level imaginable, this is a bad, bad scene.

First, it makes Scottie look insane rather than wacky. Second, there is no one to watch Scottie act out this alleged stab at happy memories. A theater audience might be laughing or wincing at the routine. A film audience can only stare. Perhaps in disbelief, perhaps in eyerolls. Third, it brings to mind something that Milton Berle once said about funny costumes in a comedy sketch. Your character comes out in a funny costume. You get the laugh for the sight gag. Then what, Berle asked. You have to continue the scene, with the character in the funny costume. Try as Lemmon, Benson, screenwriter Slade and director Bob Clarke did, you cannot have a dramatic moment when your character is dressed like a chicken.

Jack Lemmon originated the role of Scottie Templeton on Broadway. As such, he should have known the character. I can only hope, only hope, that Lemmon's stage performance was better than his film performance. Scottie Templeton was, I presume, meant as a tragic figure who masked his insecurities with zingers and humorous quips. In Tribute, Scottie Templeton was nothing but an obnoxious jerk. I get what Tribute was going for. Scottie was supposed to be someone who doesn't take life seriously even when confronted with serious matters like reconciliation and death. 

However, Jack Lemmon refused to ever tone down the alleged wackiness. For most of Tribute, Lemmon is a caricature. He is so theatrical and hammy that he never appears to be a real person. Lemmon is playing a character. He is not playing a person. His mugging, his alleged comic one-liners and theatrical moves all might have worked before a live audience (operative word, might). They just never worked here. Tribute wants us to think that so many people loved him, found him irrepressible and the life of the party. I think most people would have found him annoying, idiotic and would have run away from him. Lemmon is so broad and exaggerated throughout Tribute that it makes the few stabs at drama unbelievable. It does not help that, for reasons no one will probably ever be able to explain, Tribute gives us a photo montage of his hospital treatment. 

This is one of the worst performances that I have ever seen from Jack Lemmon. It may be one of the worst performances ever captured on film. I would not be surprised if we discovered that literal bribes were exchanged to get Lemmon his Best Actor Oscar nomination for Tribute. That was the sole nomination Tribute received, and it was one too many.

It soon becomes a battle to see who is worse: Jack Lemmon or Robbie Benson. Benson is so flat and dull as Jud. It almost feels like he opted to be near comatose once he saw how over-the-top Lemmon was going to be. Whenever attempting to do anything: drama, a touch of humor, romance, Robbie Benson was painful to watch. Lemmon attempted to play drama while dressed as a chicken. Benson couldn't play anything.

We can't blame Jack Lemmon's cringeworthy broad and hammy manner for Benson's stiffness. He was equally blank with Kim Cattrall. In their scenes together, Benson communicated nothing. He was saying the words, but there was no emotion to them. Cattrall for her part, might have been a bit rushed in her delivery. However, she actually was decent as Sally, the girl who found Scottie and Jud charming. 

You know that there is a problem when Kim Cattrall is the best performance in a film. 

Lee Remick did what she could with her part. We are supposed to believe that she would willingly go to bed with Scottie despite being in a better and more stable relationship. Again, I think Remick did her best, but it couldn't save her embarrassment. Same for Colleen Dewhurst, woefully underused as Scottie's extremely patient and tolerant doctor. 

At least Remick and Dewhurst didn't show us their boobs the way that Gale Garnett did. There is late in the film some alleged comedy schtick about Scottie's nurse culminating with her taking her top off and popping her breasts out. The comedy, I think, is supposed to come from the nurse really being Hillary the Hooker in disguise. None of it is funny and one just winces at everything in Tribute.

This is, I think, why Tribute is such a horror to sit through. Everything plays like it would on a stage. The chicken dance. The Nursey Nurse Nurse bit. The large apartment set dwarfing the actors. The overall broadness of almost everyone (Robbie Benson being the emotionless exception). It never felt like a real story. It felt like a play. 

Worse is Clark and Slade's decision to have a photographic montage of Scottie in the hospital. Over Kenneth Wannberg's melancholy music, we see pictures that are both wildly comical (Scottie in his hospital bed with a rose in his mouth) and wildly overdramatic (Scottie apparently screaming in pain). Having this montage when having actual film is a choice, as the kids say. 

It was a poor choice, but a choice, nonetheless. 

Tribute was totally schizophrenic. It wanted to be a broad comedy and a serious drama. You can have dramatic and touching moments in a comedy. You can have serious moments in a comedy. You cannot have hammy, over-the-top acting and then demand that the audience cry at a faux father-and-son reconciliation. 

Apart from Lemmon's irrational Oscar nomination, Tribute has We Still Have Time, a pleasant song cowritten and performed by Barry Manilow. The song, like the music, is sad and melancholy. It was meant to evoke the drama behind Scottie's yuks. It instead made the dichotomy more pronounced, almost as I said, schizophrenic. 

At one point, Scottie asks Maggie, "Let me ask you one question love. You don't suppose I'm being a little too much all about the whole thing?". The definite answer is, "Yes. You are being WAY TOO MUCH". Tribute, despite being a Jack Lemmon film which earned him an Oscar nomination, is not remembered. In fact, it is not available on streaming or DVD/Blu-ray (I think I found a VHS tape for sale online). Hopefully, it will never see the light of day, if only to spare Lemmon's memory embarrassment. 

Tribute is worth watching only if you enjoy seeing bad acting. 

No, I will not accept this rose...

DECISION: D-