Though it’s somewhat dated by now, I still think Neil Simon’s “Last of the Red Hot Lovers” is one of the funniest screenplays ever adapted to film. I didn’t even realize how ethnic the humor was until I had grown up some. The scene wherein Alan Arkin –quite against his better judgment- gets stoned with one of his dizzier potential love interests (the shiksa, Paula Prentiss) in his mother’s NYC apartment is as funny as the ones in which the unhappily married, manic-depressive (Jewish) Jeanette (Renee Taylor), also a potential lover, sobs into her soup at the local diner and blurts loudly: “What do you want, a good time? Well, you’re not going to have a good time with me, Barney!” and who then, some hours later, after having proved that latter point well enough, ends up (fully clothed) in Barney’s mother’s bathtub, saying, circumspectly (and as I recall): “What’s happened to the world, Barney? In London I heard about it, in New York I read about it, but I never thought that I would catch up with it in Great Neck.”
Now that's funny. And very well acted! Neil Simon is one of my choices.
