How Long Is “Plaza Suite”?

This classic comedy is adapted from Neil Simon 's play of the same title and stars Walter Matthau . The film is made up of three different romantic tales all set inside the same Manhattan hotel. In the first story, Matthau returns with his wife to the same hotel suite in which they spent their wedding night some 24 years previously. But times have changed and the atmosphere between them is far less romantic than on their original visit. In the second vignette Matthau plays an over-the-top movie producer hoping to seduce his former sweetheart during their stay at the hotel. In the final, and some say the funniest, of the three short stories, Matthau plays the father of a reluctant bride who has locked herself in her hotel room on her wedding day and refuses to come out!, It is not uncommon for actors to double and triple in roles while appearing in the "omnibus" plays of Neil Simon. Plaza Suite was the first film version of a Simon play to carry over the multiple-role device to the screen. Walter Matthau appears in all three one-act playlets comprising Plaza Suite, with a different leading lady in each. First we see Matthau as the husband of Maureen Stapleton, nostalgically returning to the same hotel suite where they'd spent their honeymoon 24 years earlier. Times have changed, however, and the twosome spend more timing sniping at one another than pitching woo. The second vignette casts Matthau as an effusive movie producer (lavish toupee and all) who hopes to seduce his old sweetheart Barbara Harris. The third and best sequence finds Matthau and Lee Grant playing the parents of a bride who steadfastly refuses to leave her locked room to attend her own wedding.