Happy Birthday, Wanda June Movie Review

Slaughterhouse-Five excepted, Kurt Vonnegut has had rotten luck with movie versions of his books. Happy Birthday, Wanda June is no exception: It's actually one of his few plays (or possibly his only play, memory fails me...), and it's pedestrian work at best. The story concerns a soldier (Rod Steiger) who returns home after seven years on the front, only to find his family's moved on. He gets a bit uppity about this, with presumably hilarious consequences. Too bad Steiger doesn't do comedy, the acting is stilted and terribly stagey, and overall this mess just collapses within the first 15 minutes.