What makes a great on-screen team?

The romantic: Yes, Virginia, opposites attract
Ah, romance. The screwball comedies of the 1930s were like some crazy square dance where dapper but often pliable men (Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, Gary Cooper, Fred MacMurray) were constantly changing partners with smart but often illogical women (Jean Arthur, Barbara Stanwyck, Katherine Hepburn and Carole Lombard), and in the process making screen magic. Usually the women ruined the men’s lives before saving them (“Bringing Up Baby”; “The Lady Eve”), but always, always, the men and women had opposite personas. William Powell played sardonic and not-particularly-interested detective to Myrna Loy’s free-thinking and interested society wife in the “Thin Man” series. In musicals, Fred Astaire played amused, lovestruck charlatan to Ginger Rogers serious, high-class dame. In adventure, Errol Flynn was the sexy swashbuckler wooing Olivia de Haviland’s chasteness.

Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy re-wrote the rules with “Woman of the Year,” adding an undertone of seriousness to the snappy patter. It’s beyond flirty. Like true lovers, they bring out the kid in each other. She’s girlish around him, he’s a schoolboy around her. They expose their vulnerabilities to each other — it’s actually quite touching — and they did it for eight more pictures: he the gruff, working-class teddy bear to her fast-paced Boston Brahmin.

Before Diane Keaton, Woody Allen worked well with Louise Lasser, and after Diane Keaton he worked well with Mia Farrow, but it was with Diane Keaton that he made his best romances. Farrow wound up being too much like Allen in speech and mannerisms, but Keaton was always her goofy self. The basic match was morose, love-struck Jew with flighty shiksa, but a truer distinction is that, during the course of the film, she changes and he doesn’t. In most of their movies she’s sweet, too, which is why “Manhattan” was such a shock, and a reminder of what a fine actress Keaton is.

Nora Ephron and Rob Reiner reworked the morose Jew with flighty shiksa angle for “When Harry Met Sally...” (which will always be “Annie Hall” Lite to me); but though Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan had obvious chemistry, they never made another movie together. Ryan did make three movies with Tom Hanks, but, oddly, except for “Joe vs. the Volcano,” they don’t have many scenes together, and thus it’s hard to gauge their chemistry. The last of these, “You’ve Got Mail,” is more love letter to 1990s corporate America and already an embarrassment.

The 1990s also gave us two Julia Roberts-Richard Gere match-ups, but I’d rather watch the two Adam Sandler-Drew Barrymore romances, where the romance at least feels real (and doesn’t involve payment) and where the personas are more archetypical: he’s a klutz in love, she’s sweet and might be persuaded. What more is there?

Clooney and Pitt
So are some actors not suited for on-screen teams? Maybe. Tom Cruise always feels guarded and solitary — although Rob Reiner helped thaw him a bit for “A Few Good Men.” Other actors have a playful inclusiveness that just works. George Clooney has it (Jennifer Lopez, Catherine Zeta-Jones), Brad Pitt has it (Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie), and they have it with each other (their few scenes together in the ensemble “Oceans” movies). So why not a Clooney-Pitt match-up? Don’t they deserve a movie of their own? Or more accurately: Don’t we?

Erik Lundegaard would never join a club that would have someone like him for a member. He can be reached at:

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