Elgar Enders (Beau Bridges) is a trust fund baby who has never really worked. He buys a ghetto tenement house. He plans to evict the tenants and remodel the house in gentrifying Brooklyn. The fish out of water starts to find himself falling for the black neighborhood and its people.

Director Hal Ashby is starting the 70's with a comedic satire about race, wealth, and gentrification. It's got the 70's style. I like the premise. I like the ribbing but it's not that funny despite all the wacky attempts at humor. It's just dated. As a comedy, I struggle to get to a laugh. Like his Being There at the end of the decade, I have a tough time with Ashby's style of social comedy. I appreciate it but he rarely makes me laugh. Harold and Maude is probably the only one.

Beau Bridges plays a rich young man who, on a whim, buys a tenement building in a lousy neighborhood. His intention is to renovate the building into luxury apartments, but over time this changes as he starts to bond with his Black residents and seems like he would like to be Black as well. At first, when he comes to the building, he is scared away by some of the residents. Seeing Lou Gossett and the rest chasing him down the street was awfully funny, as were the social commentaries made by comparing these people with Bridges' stuck up liberal family--a family with lofty ideals, but were amazingly prejudiced at heart. However, after being a mildly diverting comedy, the film turned dreadfully serious and just seemed to lose momentum. It also had some nice insights about prejudice and race relations. In the end, though, much of original impact of the film just seemed lost. And, while it was meant as a bit of shocking film in its day, today it seems a tad dated and Bridges' character a bit unlikable.

I think aside from this mixed focus, I was also disappointed because the film was directed by the same man that did the delicious black comedy, HAROLD AND MAUDE. While some elements of THE LANDLORD seemed similar to this other film in spirit, this only seemed to be in fleeting glimpses. There were many excellent moments, but overall it just didn't hold my interest.

Hal Ashby (famous for the likes of "Harold and Maude", "The Last Detail", "Shampoo", "Bound for Glory", "Coming Home" and "Being There") made his directorial debut with the offbeat Beau Bridges vehicle "The Landlord". Bridges plays Elgar Enders, the son of a wealthy - but pretty despondent - landlady (Lee Grant). Grouchy and pretty bigoted, this woman cares only about her African-American tenants paying their rent. So when Elgar takes over the apartment building, he not only decides to change things for the better, but he also begins to develop a relationship with one of the women in the building.

Like many movies that came out around 1970, this one features numerous jump cuts between totally different scenes. I don't know the specific purpose of this, but I get the feeling that they may have done it to create a sense of the confusion pervading the world due to the unprecedented changes occurring around that time. But I will say that it helps to stress Elgar's disgust with his family's ignorance and scorn of the world outside theirs. You really have to root for what he does as landlord of this building, just as a complete rejection of everything that he's been raised to believe and do.

All in all, I wholeheartedly recommend this movie. Maybe it goes a little overboard in practically beatifying Elgar, but he really deserves it. Lee Grant's character will probably make your skin crawl. Louis Gossett Jr. - whom I previously only thought of as Fiddler on "Roots" - plays one nasty dude (though we understand why he's like he is). Ditto Prof. Dubois (Melvin Stewart).

So see it. You'll probably like it. Also starring Robert Klein and Hector Elizondo in early roles.