Thursday's Game

Peter McGinn: Thursday’s Game is a lightweight comedy in some ways, but it is quirky enough to rise above the level of more forgettable network movies. It features Gene Wilder and a competent ensemble cast made up of faces that would later become very familiar in popular tv sitcoms. We watched it recently as part of a Cloris Leachman retrospective. The humor ranges from being fairly subtle to occasional slapstick. The plot focuses mostly on Wilder’s character, his employment and marriage ups and downs, with lesser attention paid to Bob Newhart’s restless character, who wants out of his marriage. As mentioned above, it is lightweight stuff, but entertaining enough to be worth our time, with a rather sudden and whimsical ending that in a way seemed to suit the story.