“The Six Wives of Henry Lefay” is a comedy film released in 2009 and is rated PG-13.
Henry Lefay (Tim Allen) is a rich and successful businessman from Ithica, NY. He owns a chain of audio/visual discount stores and does very well at it. In the opening of the film Henry is in Cancun, Mexico getting ready to go out to sea for a para-sailing excursion. He is accompanied by another tourist named Lipshitz. As we watch, Lefay puts the jacket on and gets strapped to the parachute. The camera moves back to the beach, and we see a man fall from the sail into the sea.
Barbara “Barbie” Lefay receives a phone call telling her that her father has died and she should come to New York from California for the funeral. She thinks that it is a prank from he father but finds that it is the truth. She and her boyfriend Lloyd travel to Ithica to attend what is sure to be a circus of a funeral. As it states in the title, Henry Lefay has been married six times, though two of them were to the same woman. As they get ready to leave Barbie recalls the last time that they spoke and we are taken back one year to see the events of that time.
Henry had fooled Barbie into coming home by telling her that he had been in an accident. She arrives to find that he is well and now remarried for the fifth time to a woman named Autumn who happens to be 28 years old, the same age as Barbie. He later tells her that he is now engaged to another woman and wants her to tell Autumn that he wants a divorce, which she refuses to do.
Later she finds that her father’s latest fiancee’ is Sarah Jane, a woman with whom she went to high school and who has always had it in for her. Angry, she leaves and tells him that she never wants to see his “stupid face” again.
Now back in the present time they arrive for the funeral and meet with the various wives, including her own mother Kate (Andie McDowell) who seems to be faring well. Ophelia (Jenna Elfman), the second and fourth wife, is crying when they arrive to her house but she recovers quickly and actually hits on Lloyd while they are there. When everyone goes to the funeral home it is discovered that each wife had a different idea of how Henry wanted his remains to be handled. Ophelia said that he wanted to be cremated, Autumn said he had purchased two plots for them in one cemetery while Veronica said he had two plots for them in a different cemetery. Also joining them is Henry’s first wife, an African American woman he had married while very young and living in Chicago. Their marriage only lasted a few months but he had recently contacted her and they had been emailing each other every day. The others did not even know that she existed as Henry had never spoken of her.
Ophelia tricks the head of the funeral home into cremating Henry and then tries to steal the urn with his ashes. The others chase her into town where the urn gets broken and the ashes scatter into the wind. They get another urn and have the funeral as planned. However, they get a big surprise when Henry walks in playing his harmonica. He is alive and well. It turns out that the other tourist had been the one to fall to his death and he had freaked out and gotten drunk and disappeared for a few days. He finally made it back home just in time to arrive at his own funeral.
Barbie sends her boyfriend home broken hearted. He had proposed many times to her but she had always turned him down. Now she reveals that she may never get married and that she doesn’t want to make a mistake and marry the wrong man. Her mother is sick and goes to the hospital the next day after they have a big argument. She goes to the hospital and sees her father leaving her mother’s room quickly as if he doesn’t want to be seen. After speaking with her mother for a few minutes she realizes that she has made a big mistake with Lloyd , that her father’s many marriages have made it difficult for her to trust the promise made by any man.
At the end of the movie Barbie and Lloyd get married and she and her father dance to their song, “Blue Skies”.
My Recommendation
When I watched this movie I hadn’t read anything about it, I just knew that it starred Tim Allen. I was pleasantly surprised by the cast. Andie McDowell and Jenna Elfman are wonderful in their own rights and Elisha Cuthbert was very good as Barbie.
It was pretty obvious from the beginning that it wasn’t Henry who had fallen to his death but the craziness that was his funeral was still fun to watch. You could say that he was just a cheating husband who couldn’t settle down but I found something more in him than that. He had a big lust for life, as well as women, that couldn’t be denied. He genuinely cared for all of his wives, he just couldn’t stay away from other women, even though he knew he would hurt the one he was with.
I say go ahead and watch it. The cast was great, the storyline was thin but not too bad, and my wife and I both enjoyed the silliness of the women and their relationships with Henry.