Carl Reiner’s “Where’s Poppa” released to blu ray

“Where’s Poppa” (1970) has noted TV comedian and actor Carl Reiner helming a screenplay by Robert Klane, based on his novel. It was one of the most outrageous comedies of its time and remains so over 45 years later.

George Segal is a lawyer whose life is disrupted by his unglued elderly mother, played by Ruth Gordon. He made a promise to his dying father that he’d take care of her, but she gets crazier as she gets older and just won’t die. When the lawyer meets an inept nurse (Trish Van Devere, making her film debut) whose patients usually die in her care, he hires her for his mother, but ends up falling in love with her.

In 1970 when “Where’s Poppa” was released, film comedy was frequently attempting to push the envelope. Carl Reiner, whose career included TV’s “Your Show of Shows” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show” explored what he could so with the new freedoms of cinema.

Political correctness was not a term in 1970, and “Where’s Poppa” wallows in dark humor about dementia, child abuse, sexual perversion, racial and ethnic stereotyping, and military posturing. Some critics noticed the underlying Freudian aspect of a senile mother thwarting her son’s sex life. Most embraced the sheer craziness of the movie that was set in contemporary New York, a city that was, at that time, plummeting downhill.

The cast includes, along with the aforementioned, Rob Liebman, Barnard Hughes, Vincent Gardenia, Rob Reiner, and Paul Sorvino who, along with Ms. Van Devere, also makes his film debut here.

The Kino Lorber blu ray is outstanding, but despite the fact that Reiner, Segal, and several others connected with this movie are still living, there are no extras featuring interviews or commentary. But there is an alternate ending that is quite interesting.

A real throwback to an era of comedy that often stumbled while balancing on the edge, “Where’s Poppa” is recommended.