Charles Shyer helped write comedies that let actors make foolish people understandable. We enjoy the sympathy and the jokes, but his scripts can spend too long reassuring characters who would benefit from being challenged.
Fi1m perspective
Goldie Hawn stands in the rain in Private Benjamin (1980), explaining that she meant to join the Army with the condominiums. She keeps a serious face, and the absurdity needs no further help. We laughed because she believes every word; playing Judy as merely stupid would have killed the joke. The screenplay, written by Shyer with Nancy Meyers and Harvey Miller, gives Hawn a mistaken expectation precise enough to build a performance around. That is Shyer's most useful habit: giving an actor a reason to behave foolishly.
Private Benjamin was his breakthrough as a screenwriter, and he began directing with Irreconcilable Differences (1984). Meyers remained a writing partner on Baby Boom (1987), with Diane Keaton as an executive suddenly caring for an infant. Work and parenthood supplied awkward situations in which a character's usual confidence could become a comic liability. By Father of the Bride (1991), which Shyer directed and co-wrote with Meyers, the attention had settled on a father struggling to accept change.
Steve Martin makes George Banks's panic funny through his willingness to look ridiculous, but the writing repeatedly excuses that panic as paternal love. Shyer and Meyers understand how a celebration can expose a parent's selfishness; we wish they were less anxious to forgive it. The wedding preparations keep returning us to George's discomfort, and the supply of jokes narrows accordingly. Martin Short supplies sharper laughs, but the film remains mild when it could be more testing. As with Private Benjamin, the performers are more dependable than the script as a whole.
The partnership with Meyers continued through The Parent Trap (1998), their final collaboration. Shyer later wrote and directed Alfie (2004), another remake, and the romantic comedy The Noel Diary (2022). It is tempting to remember the earlier films through their performers' best lines, which makes them sound brisker than they are. Start with Hawn in Private Benjamin, and be prepared for the film to grow less funny once it leaves the barracks.
Biography
Charles Shyer was an American screenwriter, director and producer. The son of Melville Shyer, one of the founders of the Directors Guild of America, he began his career in television, writing for series such as The Odd Couple and working as an assistant director before moving into feature films.
Shyer received an Academy Award nomination for the screenplay of Private Benjamin (1980), which he co-wrote with Nancy Meyers and Harvey Miller; he also produced the film. He and Meyers, whom he married in 1980, collaborated on several comedies. Shyer produced and co-wrote the screenplay for the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap. Other credits include directing Father of the Bride (1991) and its 1995 sequel. He also wrote under the pseudonym J.W. Melville.
