Lenny, the hero of The Heartbreak Kid,… seems more the progeny of [Bruce Jay] Friedman, who wrote the story on which the film is based, than of Neil Simon, who wrote the screenplay, or Elaine May, who directed. But May has softened the edges, making Lenny more enchanting than he has any right to be, and brought into dramatic, if not completely resolved, focus, the surrounding characters….

Elaine May's second feature is a funny and sometimes sidesplitting film whose whole never approaches the success of its best moments in which the two levels of romantic fantasy and satire are reconciled. It falls prey to the kind of tonal inconsistencies, or rather irresolutions, that one might expect from the collective effort of such similar, wittily urbane, but not identical sensibilities as May's, Simon's, and Friedman's.

The first half hour, and weakest section of the film, sets up in derisive...