Outside of "Pete n' Tillie" and her cameo in "The Front Page", Carol Burnett and Walter Matthau (who seemed made to order as a screen couple) only worked together again in this sweet TV movie about a recent widower who tries to find happiness with a widow of four tears, struggling to gain acceptance from his family when they decide to get married. Their love story is seen through the eyes of his handsome and charming son John Stamos who is against his father getting remarried. Not only that, he has another son with a wife Matthau (and most likely the audience) automatically dislikes, an obnoxious and demanding female who does nothing but complain and cause trouble. Stamos has troubles in his own personal life, so there's plenty of conflict to go around.

A sweet and mostly likeable ensemble (outside of Johanna Beck's character),this was one of Matthau's last films, and he's far from his typical grumpy old man. Son Charlie is the poor fictional son stuck with Beck, and beautiful Teri Polo is very good as the latest one in Stamos's string of women who could just be the one. When Matthau tells demos that he's obviously just a confirmed bachelor, it's obviously more than because he's a playboy. He obviously was more affected by the fact that his parents were extremely happy and afraid that he could never be that happy. It's nice to see his character come around, especially since Burnett turns out to be such a great catch for his dad. Most people only find this kind of happiness once in their life, and so this ends up being a sweet drama with moments of light comedy and showing two of the masters of humor at their very best without the broadness.

"The Marriage Fool" (also known as "Love After Death") is an excellent made for TV movie. Much of this is because it addresses an important topic that is seldom talked about...widowers remarrying. Often, their children react very badly to 'new mom' and do a lot to undermine these second marriages...and so it's nice to see this addressed here.

The story begins when Frank (Walter Matthau) is attending his wife's funeral. Soon after, his son, Robert (John Stamos) convinces him to get out and have fun...and Frank does that. In fact, he soon meets Florence (Carol Burnett) and after whirlwind courtship, they decide to get married...and Frank's kids are, at best, ambivalent towards this.

At the same time, Robert begins realizing that despite his looks and success on the job, he's lonely....and he has a phobia about commitment. So, the story is not about Frank's journey but Robert's.

This is a very sweet film and it's nice to see Matthau in his penultimate movie. The cast is quite good and while the story has no huge surprises, it's sweet and well worth seeing. And, I also noticed that Stamos is quite nice here...one of his better performances. Overall, a very enjoyable film which will likely leave you feeling happy.

We watched this the other night with a few glasses of wine and came away entertained and happy. Although the film may be typical of the type actors make when in their latter years, with Walter Matthau heading the cast it was always going to be above average. Great support from Carol Burnett as the new lady in his life and John Stamos as the hesitant son, both playing it with just enough without going over the top. I would never have known this was made as a TV movie if I hadn't read about it, it seems to have production values and talent way above the usual TV fare. One point - a number of rather crass paintings of clowns appear in the film and one of them looks just like Matthau's old partner Jack Lemmon, I wonder if this was deliberate? Recommended without hesitation.