Paul Mazursky’s Down and Out in Beverly Hills is pushing 40 years old, which may explain why it seems half-forgotten by audiences today. At the time it was a sizeable commercial hit, offering Richard Dreyfuss and Bette Midler paths back into Hollywood after prolonged fallow periods and giving co-star Nick Nolte a rare opportunity to show off his comic talents. These days it forms part of the extensive back catalogue on streamer Disney+: a small reflection of the mid-1980s, and the company’s segue from family entertainment to more adult pictures.

Disney’s attempts to launch more adult features from the late 1970s floundered because the studio’s overwhelming reputation was for cartoons and children’s films. It was only with the introduction of the Touchstone Films label in 1984 – Ron Howard’s Splash was the first release – that Disney started to find any traction beyond family entertainment at all. Down and Out in Beverly Hills spearheaded the label’s second year of films, and let a host of subsequent hit films for Touchstone starring either Dreyfuss or Midler.

The film showcases the troubled Whiteman family: coat hanger tycoon Dave (Dreyfuss), his wife Barbara (Midler), and their children Jenny (Tracy Nelson) and Max (Evan Richards). Dave and Barbara have drifted apart. Dave is sleeping with the live-in maid Carmen (Elizabeth Peña), Jenny has moved out of home, and Max is secretly experiencing a gender identity crisis. The lives of all five residents is up-ended by the arrival of Jerry Baskin (Nolte), a suicidal homeless man that tries to commit suicide in their swimming pool.

The film draws from a French play and film adaptation, but comfortably makes its own identity out of runaway capitalism culture in Reagan-era America. Dave saves Jerry’s life, much to the palpable horror of his nouveau riche household, and impulsively offers to let Jerry stay for free in their luxurious cabana. He cannot help boasting of his wealth no matter how he tries to help Jerry. He drives him in a Rolls Royce convertible to buy an expensive new wardrobe. He offers Jerry a job in his coat ranger factory – showing off its commercial success at the same time. Barbara, meanwhile, bristles at Jerry’s presence in her perfectly constructed, faux spiritual environment.

Jerry, on the other hand, is just Jerry. He accepts the roof over his head, and the free food and drink on offer, and quickly goes about carving an opportunistic path through the whole family. It is not about manipulation: instead it is more about taking what is offered to him because it is easier than being proud about it. The whole film is a chain of events where rich people make themselves feel better at the expense of a bemused, somewhat disinterested lower class.

Mazursky’s real achievement here is that he constructs a genuinely funny comedy without ever resorting to distinct or constructed ‘jokes’. The film is funny because the characters act in amusing ways, and the contrasts between them often seem absurd. One winds up laughing, and laughing a lot, but if you were asked to point to a specific gag or moment that inspired that mirth it would be hard to pin down.

The performances sell the picture, and for the most part they come from playing against type. Dreyfuss’ pent-up frustration pays off even bigger dividends when repeated in Frank Oz’s What About Bob? a few years later. Midler’s expressions of empty, frustrated wealth contrast nicely with her earlier roles and musical persona. There is even a sensational supporting character – a record-producing neighbour – for singer and musician Little Richard, whose bitter complaints that Dave and Barbara’s police responses are faster than his because they’re white. (The surname Whiteman is clearly deliberate.)

Mazursky developed something genuinely funny and addictively watchable with Down and Out. A lot of people watched it back in the 1980s, and likely keep fond memories of it. Today it is a hugely effective time capsule of 1980s America, and the culture of the time. Here it sits, ripe for rediscovery for some of us and ready to be seen the first time for others. It is well worth the effort.