A Fish in the Bathtub

Sam and Molly have been married for forty years. Their children are grown and living their own lives, leaving the couple alone with a relationship that has settled into habit. The arrangement is upended when Sam brings home a fish and installs it in the bathtub, a decision Molly cannot accept. What begins as a disagreement over the fish becomes a confrontation about the marriage itself, and the two separate. Molly moves out with their son Joel, and before long she is seeing Lou, an old friend. Sam, meanwhile, is left to reckon with the life he has been living and the woman he has shared it with.

Joan Micklin Silver directed the film, her third feature following Crossing Delancey in 1988 and Loverboy in 1989. The screenplay is credited to Raphael D. Silver, John Silverstein and David Chudnovsky, with Raphael D. Silver and Charles Darby producing. Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, married in life as well as on screen, play Sam and Molly. Mark Ruffalo appears as Joel, alongside Jane Adams, Missy Yager and Paul Benedict among a credited cast of forty-five. The film runs 96 minutes.

Audience response has been moderate. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.1 from 775 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.6 from a small number of votes, a gap that reflects how little attention the film has drawn rather than any strong division of opinion.