See Something You Like, Buddy? (Movie Review)

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Where's the best place to hide from a crazy family member? Obviously, a gay bathhouse.

[00:00:06]This is essentially the premise for 1976's The Ritz, >> [music] >> starring Jack Weston and Jerry Stiller, about a man whose brother-in-law is out to terminate [music] him. So, he gets a recommendation from a cab driver to go hide at a gay bathhouse, and the story just gets crazier from there.

[00:00:24]And being that this film came out in 1976, I was really curious how gay people would come off in it, and I was surprised how unoffensive this film ended up being, even though there are a few dated jokes here and there. But, this is very much like a film through the heterosexual experience going into a gay environment. But, I do think there was enough here to make it worth watching, especially from a historical standpoint.

[00:00:51]>> You mean to tell me that everybody here is IS UM YAY! NOW, I'M going to be talking about The Ritz in depth, but if you stick around to the end of the video, I have another gay film that you might be interested in that was filmed in a real bathhouse. Now, the story for The Ritz is really crazy. The story starts at a funeral with a brother and sister, and they're seeing their father who is about to pass away, but he has these final words and these final wishes, and he wants the husband of the sister's character to be terminated. And the brother character takes this very seriously, and so he sets to terminate the brother-in-law, and that sets the story in motion, and the brother-in-law gets a recommendation from this cab driver to go to the gay bathhouse to hide from his brother-in-law. At this point, if you're not going along with the way the story is, you are not going to like this film, but it is very much a over-the-top exaggeration, and that's just how the story goes. This leads us to our major first set piece of the film that takes place in this entryway just before you get to the bathhouse. And this is where we get to meet all of our characters. Of course, we have the Jack Weston character who is in disguise, and he is having trouble getting in to the bathhouse because of that. And then you have the Rita Moreno character who comes in, and she plays this over-the-top stage performer who's really excited that night because she thinks there's going to be a producer there. And then we see the private eye character who is out looking for the Jack Weston character, and he has this very strange idiosyncrasy in his voice because it's very high-pitched.

[00:02:32]I'd like a room, please.

[00:02:34]And then we have the gay character in the film played [snorts] by F. Murray Abraham, who plays this average everyday normal gay guy who is a frequent at this bathhouse, but as we will learn, will get entangled in this whole plot. And also, I found a very peculiar thing about the way that the clerk would announce numbers as they're coming into the bathhouse. I'm not sure if that was something that was normal at gay bathhouses, but it was an interesting little thing where he would tell the people there that oh, number such and such is coming in, so maybe they would know them by their number, but I I'm not sure how that if that was just part of this film or if that was actually based in some reality. And finally, when we go into this gay bathhouse, even though it's not a real bathhouse, it was made for the movie, it's beautiful. And there's this beautiful lobby with a fountain, and there's this really cool shot showing all the stairs and all the rooms leading up to the stairs. If this was a real place, it would be something that would be worth visiting. But of course, also the clerk at the front tells the audience what all the things that are in this gay bathhouse, and it's pretty crazy all the things that he says, especially there being a nightclub in there where there are performances.

[00:03:45]And it very much wasn't like a scary bathhouse idea of what you think it was.

[00:03:49]It was very much like a social-looking place. Of course, you have the stuff that you expect like gay men in towels just in the background talking to each other in pools. I wasn't around obviously in the heyday of the gay bathhouses. So, seeing this film is just a good kind of glimpse into the past of how things were. And once the story goes into the bathhouse, it just moves around from character to character and we get to see their different scenarios that they're going in. The main Jack Weston character is being followed by this character that is called like a chubby chaser and there's that whole thing he's dealing with. Then we get to find out that this performer that hypes herself up so much is not good at her performing at all and that's a whole thing too. And then we also begin to learn about the private eye and how he's trying to investigate and see where the Jack Weston character is and who he is because this is back before they had, you know, phones. You couldn't have a picture of somebody easily. So, he doesn't even know what the guy looks like. And of course, we have the F.

[00:04:52]Murray Abraham character who's just He's just looking for love. He's just got all these vibes and he's just hoping to find somebody that night just to have a good time with. And the the film does a good job just kind of letting us sit with these characters before the main plot kind of pushes in. And when the main, you know, plot starts to go in motion, it's when the Jerry Stiller character shows up and then [music] things start to get messy and all these storylines start to intermingle. There's something about Jerry Stiller and if you don't know who Jerry Stiller is, he is the father [music] of Ben Stiller. But it's just the way he gets angry that just makes me laugh. He's He's got this really good funny presence whenever he's angry. And a lot of this humor during [music] this part of the film is very much like Three's Company where there's a lot of miscommunications [music] and misidentity and a lot of the humor derives from that. And I'm not good with character names. Obviously, I'm saying like Jack Weston's character. I don't remember character names. But um and that's kind of a problem because I got confused sometimes when they were mentioning characters' names that I I didn't know who they were talking about, but eventually I picked up on what was going on. Now, taking place in the '70s, uh, obviously there was a lot of progress that was going on for the gay community in the '70s, but it was very much also behind in where, uh, and how gay depictions were, um, at that time, especially in the cinema. So, I was worried about how gay people would come off in this, but it's surprisingly pretty okay. Um, there are moments there that are played just for the sake of, oh, they're gay and they're doing gay things. Like, there's one, uh, moment that happens where F. Murray Abraham goes into a steam room, and then the Jack Weston character goes into, and then he comes out and he's and he's just shocked at what he saw, and then I guess that's supposed to be a funny moment, but, um, I mean, that that's a little bit dated, but it's not, in my opinion, something that's really egregious or something that's really homophobic or anything like that. And the film is playing with this idea of straight people in this gay environment and how funny that is, how weird these people are. But, I didn't get this whole like, ick, sort of thing, how they weren't trying to vilify gay people in a certain way. They're just They just showed the kind of differences between the communities.

[00:07:05]Um, there is a shot in this film, near the end of the film, that represents to me, though, what the film is, and it shows like mostly the gay characters, not all of them, but most of the gay characters on one side, and then the straight storyline that, you know, imposed itself in this environment, and that really represents what this film is. It's just this story that had to be put in this otherworldly environment in order to create this comedy around it.

[00:07:32]There are some genuine moments that made me laugh, like there is a moment where F. Murray Abraham character picks up a ringing phone and just like screams into it.

[00:07:43]>> [screaming] >> I thought that was pretty funny. But other than that and there are some good lines here, pretty funny wit in the lines and stuff. Are you two 10?

[00:07:53]Yeah, something like that. No, I meant your room. Oh, so did I. There are there's some contemporary stuff that I just didn't understand, but I think [music] it still works and it's still an enjoyable experience, but it's not something that I would I was really hyped up about after I saw, [music] but it was definitely not something that I regret watching.

[00:08:13]Watching these films gives me some [music] good insight to the gay bath scene and what that was all like. Of course, I've already seen Cruising and I saw this other film called Saturday Night [music] at the Baths that you might be interested in watching my video on it because it was actually filmed at a real bathhouse >> [music] >> and the gay and bisexual characters are at the center of it and it is a much more deep better deep dive [music] into gay characters and bisexual characters than The Ritz was even though they kind of have a good double feature [music] like potential because of how similar they are in the setting. So, if you're interested in learning more about Saturday Night at the Baths, I have a video all about that.