The End (1978)

Sonny (Burt Reynolds, rocking a beard that makes him look like country singer Kenny Rogers, not a good look for Burt) receives a terminal diagnosis and decides to kill himself. But first we watch him harass a funeral procession, try to confess, and visit his ditzy girlfriend (Sally Field), his ex-wife, his parents, and his teenage daughter. Most of his "loved" ones he doesn't tell, except Field, and that seems mostly to convince her to have sex with him in an attempt to make him feel better. 

Emotionally, I mean. I don't think he's actually expecting sex to cure a toxic blood disease, and they spend more time discussing whether he was able to bring her to orgasm (No.)

Finally, over 40 minutes in, he actually takes a bunch of pills, and wakes up in a mental hospital, where he's immediately latched onto by a paranoid schizophrenic (Dom DeLuise, how many movies did he and Reynolds make together in the '70s?!), who agrees to help Sonny kill himself. Except they'll try something, Sonny will get cold feet, Marlon will relent, Sonny then berates Marlon for relenting.

The staff at this hospital are not very alert, or perhaps they just don't care, because the last 15-20 minutes, Sonny swipes a landscaping truck, flees the hospital to retrieve a gun from his girlfriend, but then drives to the ocean to drown himself. All the while, Marlon's in pursuit.

There's not many bits that are very funny. Sonny's bargaining with God at the very end ('I know you saved me, but you also gave me this disease!') Parts of his initial conversation with Marlon, who claims to be writing a book on suicides and has compiled statistics on them ('100% of failed suicides express a need to pee.')

But mostly, the attempts at humor fall flat. Reynolds plays Sonny as a self-centered, dramatic coward, who wants to dictate how everyone processes this - without explaining why, he asks his daughter to agree that they won't ever be mad at each other, in some attempt to try and make her think well of him after he's dead - but can't stop acting like such a shit that I imagine most of them would be secretly glad when he's dead. Every interaction with Field's character comes back to his frustration he couldn't bring her to orgasm, and that this is proof she doesn't love him as much as he loves her, because she won't really let herself go with him. Well it's probably difficult with his ego taking up all the space in the room.

The most interesting/surprising bit was Myrna Loy - who played opposite William Powell in the Thin Man movies - is in here for about 5 minutes as Sonny's elderly mother. I hadn't given any thought to whether she'd still be alive in the late-'70s, but I certainly didn't expect her to show up in a movie like this. It could have used more of her, frankly. I'd imagine she could still bring a wit and energy to the movie that would have made it more entertaining.