Sex And The Single Sixty-Somethings- Shirley McLaine and Jessica Lange’s “Wild Oats” (2016)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

Wild Oats, starring Shirley MacLaine, Jessica Lange, (released by the Weinstein Company which is/was headed by the now rightfully toxic Harvey Weinstein), 2016   

When I first started out reviewing films for a living in the late 1960s Hollywood was just starting to break out of the long time squeaky clean sexual code of conduct and Catholic-etched Legion of Decency ethos which inhibited any genuine look at the evolving sexual and social norms without constantly looking over one’s shoulder. Even worse although I was hardly aware of it at the time and only noticed it later when I started reviewing old-time films were the standards when I was growing up in the 1950s when even married people were shown many times occupying separate beds. Separate bedrooms in some cases. Plus no overt show of affection like a long passionate kiss. And nothing that could be construed as part of any sexual act in or out of the Kama Sutra. All of this to lead into the subject matter of the film under review here, Wild Oats, which in part deals with the sexual activities of, well, older people, Such a subject would not even come up back in the day when it was assumed that older people were beyond sex or at least didn’t talk about the subject in polite society. Ever. Certainly there would be no scenes as here showing the elderly joyfully jumping in bed together. I think that was first done by the late Marlon Brando and Faye Dunaway and I was rather shocked at first. Then got defensive when the twenty-somethings in front of me were heard to say that they didn’t want to see old people having sex obviously having come to see young Johnny Depp go through his paces. How the times have changed.    

Here’s the play aside from the sexual intrigues as my old friend Sandy Salmon who has taken over my regular spot here likes to tell people that I like to say when introducing the plotline of a film. Eva, played by Shirley MacLaine, who must be ancient since I first saw here and streetwalker in Irma La Douce is a recently widowed retired schoolteacher who gets a mistaken amount of her late husband’s life insurance five million dollars instead of the entirely inadequate fifty thousand that he was insured for. (You know that the difference in sums here is going to bring in somebody to sort things out-and not in her favor.)  Her best friend Maddie, played by still good-looking for a mature woman Jessica Lange (nice way to put it right) who has lost her philandering husband to a younger woman convinced her to keep the dough. The hell with the insurance company they can write it off. 

Convinced Eva and Maddie head off to a Caribbean island resort to spend their ill-gotten goods. While there they are easy pickings for a con artist who winds up in bed with Eva. Maddie winds up with a young stud who likes older women. That’s the sex and the sixty-something part. The other though is about that insurance company. They want their dough back. They sent out an ace investigator who is on the trail from the minute he landed. After a film hour worth of capers revolving around con artists trying to bilk older women, avoiding that insurance agent and a few other minor details Eva ends up with that insurance guy and heads home. Maddie well she stays on the island with her young stud. A happy ending. That Hollywood has down pat. Of course that happy ending had to be the case for AARP-worthies, the demographic who it was geared to and would watch it without blushing like those twenty-somethings mentioned earlier. The sex stuff well that is an interesting twist, very interesting.