Harvey, a wealthy yet depressed architect and his sympathetic wife strive to conquer their life issues in anticipation of his 60th birthday party.
Harvey (Jack Lemmon) and Gillian Fairchild (Dame Julie Andrews) face a difficult weekend. Harvey, celebrating his 60th birthday, is stressed and depressed. Gillian is awaiting the results of a throat biopsy. Their lives are further complicated by their three grown children, a ditsy neighbor, a fortune teller, and an alcoholic Priest.—Jeanne Armintrout <[email protected]>
Harvey (Jack Lemmon) and Gillian Fairchild (Dame Julie Andrews), an architect and singer respectively, have a busy upcoming weekend in celebrating Harvey's sixtieth birthday, first with their three adult children - Josh (Chris Lemmon), Megan (Jennifer Edwards), and Kate (Emma Walton Hamilton) - and each's significant other descending on the family oceanside Malibu estate for a Saturday night family dinner, with Kate and her boyfriend Steve (Robert Knepper) flying in from New York City, topped by a Sunday afternoon leading into night garden party with all of their friends at the estate for the primary festivities. In not wanting to take away from the weekend festivities, Gillian is not going to tell Harvey or the rest of the family that she has just gone in for a biopsy for a lesion in her throat which may or may not be cancerous, the expedited test results available on Monday. Gillian's stoicism over her real health scare is tested by Harvey, who has been going through not only some work issues with difficult client Janice Kern (Cynthia Sikes), but an end of work life moving into senior age emotional crisis, at times his behavior bordering on a nervous breakdown in dealing with that crisis. What Harvey does this weekend is affected by Janice's latest unreasonable requests, running into an old Notre Dame college rival and former roommate now Catholic Priest Tony Baragone (Robert Loggia), and consulting Madame Carrie (Felicia Farr), a fortune teller who has set up shop in Malibu. These problems at the Fairchild estate are only exacerbated by the arrival of the three children and Gillian needing to deal with their respective issues.—Huggo
