SIX WEEKS (1982) *
My wife awoke in the middle of the night, it took her quite some time falling back asleep, and so naturally she joined me for about the last 30 minutes or so of Six Weeks. She asked me some basic journalistic questions like ‘What’s the little girl dying from?’ ‘I believe it’s leukemia.’ ‘No, it can’t be. It’s got to be something else. I don’t think she’d just suddenly die like that.’

At some point during our discussion, I said that actually this poor little girl has got the dread movie disease where the invariably dead-by-the-end-of-the-movie character becomes ever more beautiful and noble until her big death scene. Yes, the late film critic Roger Ebert named this affliction ‘Ali MacGraw Disease’ after the star of Love Story, the film based on the best-selling novel that one might say started it all way back in 1970.

Movies derived in way or another from Love Story invariably pour it on awful darn thick with the sentiment, until the movie in question becomes a real maudlin exercise. Six Weeks pulls out the stops more than most in this dubious category and that’s why I was utterly amazed that it did not feature a hot-air balloon scene like fellow maudlin tearjerkers Bobby Deerfield, Yes Giorgio, and Just the Way You Are. That’s about the only restraint practiced by Six Weeks.

Casting 101 pairs Dudley Moore (1935-2002) and Mary Tyler Moore (1936-2017), fresh off critical and commercial hot commodities Arthur and Ordinary People, respectively. Yes, wow, how far out, both actors have the same last name and they’re apparently not related. They don’t even have the same national origin. Anyway, like Walter Matthau and Jill Clayburgh in the turkey bomb First Monday in October, Moore and Moore do not share the slightest bit chemistry either, that’s for darn sure. Dudley plays a California politician who’s running for Congress, Mary’s a wealthy cosmetics heiress with the precocious 12-year-old daughter already discussed in the opening paragraph. Dudley’s hopelessly lost in an early scene, very late to a political fundraiser where he’s the featured speaker, and the 12-year-old gives him directions and a whole lot more. She wants Dudley to win his election and Moore² to hook up and become the ultimate happy family for her life’s remaining duration.

Katherine Healy plays the dying little girl and she’s a bit, what’s the word, insufferable. She’s one of those movie children with an unlimited supply of wannabe sharp dialogue and snappy comebacks. She’s dying, remember, and that makes her dialogue even worse and her fantasies ever more powerful. Yes, that’s right, she’s got six weeks left and she’s going to live out as many of her fantasies as possible within the production budget of a 107-minute feel good extravaganza.

Moore² and the little girl hit the bright lights of New York City because what better place to live out fantasies on the big screen and little Niki skates at The Rink at Rockefeller Center, takes on the lead in The Nutcracker, and rounds up Moore² for a smug little cutesy pie wedding ceremony that almost extracted wholesale vomit from the pit of my stomach. Not exactly in that order, though, because the wedding ceremony happens before the grandstanding grand finale ballet number. Niki performed her ballet number on center stage, I looked at my wrist like there’s a watch attached to it and said to my wife, ‘It’s about time for the little girl to die.’ Sure enough, that’s what happened in the very next scene.

I left out the part (until now, anyway) about Dudley’s family, his dutiful wife and teenage son. That’s OK, because they’re not that important and don’t stand in the way of the main body of the plot. Speaking of the plot, Six Weeks pushes and pulls so many emotional levers that it becomes one of the most shameful tearjerkers ever made. They finally resorted to yanking them emotions with pliers. Thankfully, I still resisted and this review signals my protest on aesthetic and emotional grounds.