Outrage

 This is sort of out of left-field - Outrageous Fortune (1987) - It's an 80's romantic farce starring Shelley Long and Bette Midler, with Peter Coyote as the guy in the middle.

Long is a perennial drama student. We see her in stage fencing class creaming her opponent and in ballet outjumping everyone in class. When she hears that the great Russian director Robert Prosky is teaching in NY, she goes to beg her family for the money to take his class. Her mother refuses, but her father can't. 

While Long is preparing to audition for the class, Bette Midler bursts into the waiting room to use the phone so that she can bullshit someone out of an overdue bill. This destroys Long's concentration and composure, and she starts haranguing Midler. Just to be ornery, Midler decides to sign up for class - after all, she figures acting is just bullshitting. Besides, she has already been in a biker movie (Long has never been in a single production of anything). 

So there you have the setup - Long is an intense, over-achieving student/under-achieving actor from a whitebread Connecticut suburb. Midler is the brash, trash-talking, loud-dressing, streetwise bullshitter who lovers to antagonize her. Then Long meets Peter Coyote.

Coyote drops by the shop she works in and is just too good to be true - Even if he were just not gay or an actor, it would be too good to be true. Soon, they are spending a lot of time in bed. But what she doesn't know is that he's sleeping with Midler as well. 

Next, he's in a taxi with Long and jumps out at a florist to get some roses. The shop blows up and he's killed. When Long goes to the morgue to see him (he was identified by his wallet), Midler shows up too. While they are fighting, the body is uncovered. The face may be completely gone, but when they look a little lower, they realize that it isn't Coyote. So they set out to find him, together. 

The trail leads to New Mexico, where hippy burn-out and adopted Indian George Carlin offers to be their guide. And so on.

I enjoyed this mainly for the Long/Midler nonsense, and honestly, mainly for Midler. Carlin was funny but under used. Coyote was great, although he didn't get a lot of screen time either. The last act, where it's revealed that Coyote is an international spy villain with an evil plot, etc, puts us in action movie territory, and it's great to see long use her theater skills to win the day. This is all directed by Arthur Hiller, who made of lot of movies like this, and I guess this is better than some of them, not as good as others. 

Every now and then, we try an 80's comedy like this, and sometimes they pan out. We would have liked this better if Midler did any singing.