This kind of casting can't help but give the movie an intimate, familiar feeling, and maybe that's why the comedy works as human comedy and not just manufactured laughs.
Minnie and Moskowitz could easily be retitled as “Men Who Yell at Gena Rowlands About Why They Should Be an Item”. But with John Cassavetes script, the yelling is fun.
The sculptural physicality of the images, a 3-D explosion without glasses, embodies that violence while preserving the antagonists’ innocent grace; love smooths things out to a dreamy and reflective shine.
It’s a funny film, and it’s even charming in a shaggy way, but there isn’t a light moment in it—Cassavetes demands that comedy be played as passionately as drama.
Mr. Cassavetes's use of exaggerated slapstick gestures to underscore the loneliness and fears of his characters is more interesting in theory than funny or moving in actual fact.
Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel play the title roles in Minnie And Moskowitz, an oppressive and irritating film in which a shrill and numbing hysteria of acting and direction soon kills any empathy for the loneliness of the main characters. John Cassavetes wrote and directed in his now-familiar home-movie improvisational and indulgent style.