Movie Review: The Main Event (1979)

Genre: Romantic Comedy  

Director: Howard Zieff  

Starring: Barbra Streisand, Ryan O'Neal, Patti D'Arbanville  

Running Time: 112 minutes  

Synopsis: Perfume executive Hillary Kramer (Barbra Streisand) is embezzled out of all her wealth, except her tax write-off ownership contract for boxer Eddie "Kid Natural" Scanlon (Ryan O'Neal). They immediately clash when Hillary finds Eddie cashing her cheques but retired from boxing and operating a dingy driving school. To make some money she has to convince him to get back in the ring, but Eddie is in no hurry to risk his health.

What Works Well: The production values are decent, and the few boxing scenes are glitzy.

What Does Not Work As Well: Streisand's character Hillary Kramer is a toxic combination of obtuse and insufferable, torpedoing any pretense of ability to succeed in business or love. She drowns in an ocean of attempted humour best resembling fingernails on a chalkboard, and sucks the movie into a charmless abyss. Her romance with O'Neal's boxer consists of falling into each other's arms after close to two hours of poorly-written bickering. Howard Zieff's artless directing prolongs every bad scene into an excruciating demonstration of incompetence, including sketching-in all the male characters at the Neanderthal level.

Conclusion: This bout is brain dead.



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Movie Review: The Owl And The Pussycat (1970)

A supposed romantic comedy, The Owl And The Pussycat consists of two distinctly unlikable characters screaming at each other for the best part of 95 minutes.

In a New York City apartment building, aspiring author Felix Sherman (George Segal) spots his neighbour Doris (Barbra Streisand) in the middle of a prostitute transaction and gets her evicted. She barges into his unit in the middle of the night and refuses to leave. She professes to be an actress and model and only rarely a hooker, and accuses him of being gay. They argue loudly, and as result of the commotion Felix is also evicted. They both seek refuge at the apartment of his friend Barney, where they continue their incessant verbal sparring.

Some level of cool shock value probably accompanied the transition of The Owl And The Pussycat from stage to screen in 1970, undoubtedly helped by Streisand in a series of risque outfits, but nothing can save the film from a fingernails-on-chalkboard level of awfulness. Being trapped with the meek Felix and insufferable Doris for an hour and a half is a special kind of torture, and director Herbert Ross is unable to salvage any semblance of an engaging narrative to relieve the confined tedium.

Doris is a dimwit gum chewing sex kitten who only stops talking when she starts shouting, Felix is a spineless bookstore clerk pretending to be an author, and the only good thing that can be said about them as a couple is that they deserve to heap misery on each other. However, nothing they say or do is remotely funny, romantic, or worth watching.

Ross repeatedly goes to the same few joke attempts (Doris can't sleep! Felix uses big words that Doris does not understand!) before resorting to the marijuana joint, which only briefly interrupts all the yelling. The film ends where it started, the couple still bickering and trading insults and abuse, but now they may also be in love, a case of unconvincing romance blossoming in a field of utter dross.



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The Movies Of Barbra Streisand

All movies starring Barbra Streisand and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Funny Girl (1968)

The Owl And The Pussycat (1970)

What's Up, Doc? (1972)

The Way We Were (1973)

A Star Is Born (1976)

The Main Event (1979)

The Prince Of Tides (1991, also Director)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: A Star Is Born (1976)

A romantic drama musical, A Star Is Born is primarily a Barbra Streisand concert with a bit of plot thrown in around the sides.

Rock star John Norman Howard (Kris Kristofferson) is rapidly burning out, late to his own concerts, addicted to booze and too jaded to care any more. One night he stumbles into a bar where lounge singer Esther Hoffman (Streisand) is performing, and an attraction develops. He subsequently pushes her onto the stage during a show, where her unrehearsed performance draws raves.

John and Esther get married, her career takes off while his fades away. Their marriage suffers from ups and downs, but his impetuous behaviour isn't conducive to a long-term happy union.

The third screen treatment of the story after the 1937 and 1954 versions, the 1976 film is by far the weakest. Although the decision to relocate the story from the world of film studios to the anarchic rock arena is a good one, the pacing, character development, and relationship dynamics are all poorly handled.

Directed by Frank Pierson and co-produced by Streisand, A Star Is Born gets bogged down early and often in prolonged scenes featuring Streisand belting out a succession of songs, and neither the drama nor the romance are provided an opportunity to gain traction. The cinematography and editing lack dynamism, and the film is surprisingly energy deprived. The love theme Evergreen became an international hit, and the film's soundtrack album was a massive seller, but none of that makes for a good movie.

Despite the bloated 140 minutes of running time, the narrative is delivered in plot-challenged shorthand. The few exchanges of intelligible dialogue contain contrived and painfully bad lines that fuel often ridiculous emotional vacillations. The supporting cast is non-existent (Gary Busey and Paul Mazursky fade in and mostly out of the background), and Streisand the actress never comes close to convincing as an undiscovered talent.

A montage sequence features artistic scenes of passionate romance, and Kristofferson is often the best thing on view, delivering a sinewy performance propelled by copious amounts of booze and filled with implied self-hate. But his character doesn't get the opportunity to complete even one song. Instead the screen is filled with Streisand for long periods in a display of unchecked egotism. At the climax, she gets about 10 minutes of uninterrupted close-up time encompassing her final performance and the end credits.

A Star Is Born unabashedly celebrates Streisand as a star chanteuse, but as a movie experience, it offers big hair and precious little else.

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Movie Review: What's Up, Doc? (1972)

A modernized screwball comedy and romance, What's Up, Doc? features no plot to speak off but an excellent cast and plenty of loony situations.

Four similar plaid handbags converge at a San Francisco hotel. Dr. Howard Bannister (Ryan O'Neal) is an unassuming professor of musicology and his bag is filled with rocks. Bannister is attending a conference where he is nominated for a research prize, and is traveling with his domineering fiancée Eunice Burns (Madeline Kahn). Mr. Smith's bag hides top secret documents, and he is pursued by Mr. Jones. The third bag contains the jewelry of a hotel guest, and she is the target of theft. The fourth bag holds the personal items of Judy Maxwell (Barbra Streisand).

Highly educated but completely kooky, Judy sets her sights on Howard as a romantic conquest and elbows her way into his conference program, sidelining Eunice. Howard is befuddled by Judy's behaviour as he tries to make a good impression on award sponsor Frederick Larrabee (Austin Pendleton) and fend off the boorish other nominee Hugh Simon (Kenneth Mars). Meanwhile a series of hotel room break-ins result in all four bags falling into the wrong hands, and a madcap chase.

Co-written, directed and produced by Peter Bogdanovich, What's Up, Doc? does not even try to pretend that it is anything more than an adult playground for nutty comedy of the cartoonish kind. An homage of sorts to the screwball classics of the 1940s, Bogdanovich includes even less story and less romance than expected. What's Up, Doc? has the same depth as a Bugs Bunny short, but does feature an all-in cast and one terrific highlight.

The film demands the suspension of any attempt to follow an actual narrative. Bogdanovich burns many minutes with scene after scene of characters skulking in and out of hotel rooms, as the ubiquitous plaid handbags repeatedly change locations, hiding places and hands. None of the characters are defined beyond their presence at the hotel to engage in the prevailing shenanigans, with people like Mr. Smith, Mr. Jones and the jewel thieves receiving plenty of screen time but hardly any dialogue.

But the actors fully invest in the prevailing anarchy, turning the exercise into an amusing romp. Barbra Streisand is the engine that powers events well past normal, and she nails the combination of revved-up cool, Judy laser-focused on winning Howard's heart and seemingly unaware of the commotion in her wake. As the clueless midwest professor of obscure music theories, Ryan O'Neal finds a role that suits his rather blank persona, and he provides the empty canvas for Judy to paint on. And in her full-length big screen debut, Madeline Kahn is suitably irritating as Howard's too-desperate wannabe wife.

The film's climax is a prolonged chase through the streets of San Francisco that reaches hysterical levels of madness. Bogdanovich constructs a finely crafted sequence involving a delivery bike, multiple vehicles and a Chinese dragon racing up and down the city's ridiculously steep streets, with a highlight featuring one tall ladder, two workmen and a large pane of glass.

What's Up, Doc? may lack substance, but it doubles down on pandemonium.

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Movie Review: The Prince Of Tides (1991)

A romantic melodrama, The Prince Of Tides spares no familial agony in search of emotional scar tissue, and delivers a patchy exercise in pop psychology.

Unemployed teacher and football coach Tom Wingo (Nick Nolte) of South Carolina endured a tough rural childhood, with his parents Lila (Kate Nelligan) and Henry (Brad Sullivan), a shrimp farmer, locked in a vicious cycle of spousal abuse. Tom's older brother Luke has since died, while his sister Savannah (Melinda Dillon) is depressed and suicidal. Tom is now facing a crisis of his own, with his marriage to Sally (Blythe Danner) seemingly drifting to an end due to his emotional neglect.

After another attempt by Savannah to kill herself, Tom travels to New York City to meet with her psychiatrist Dr. Susan Lowenstein (Barbra Streisand), who is trying to unlock the hidden traumas in Savannah's early life. Tom obliges, and start to reveal episodes from his childhood while falling in love with Susan. He establishes a friendship with her brooding teenage son Bernard (Jason Gould) and uncovers Susan's unhappy marriage to violin maestro Herbert Woodruff (Jeroen Krabbé).

An adaptation of the Pat Conroy novel directed by Streisand, The Prince Of Tides takes itself far too seriously as it wades into some laughable territory. There is no doubting the slick quality of the production, and Streisand constructs an elaborate journey into a thick jungle of overlapping psychological catastrophes spanning two generations. There are enough damaged souls and cracked psyches to fill an academic treatise on familial disasters, and the never ending revelations make for compelling viewing of the train wreck variety.

But the premise of a psychiatrist arm-twisting the brother of her patient into revealing childhood memories is fundamentally shaky, and the fiery hot and cold interactions between them never ring true. Tom's big breakdown scene on Susan's couch falls flat, and overall the film loses its way in pretty spectacular fashion in the final stages. The romance elements pour thick syrup over all else, and the original narrative drivers are effectively forgotten.

Regardless, there is enough value to maintain engagement. Nick Nolte delivers one of his better career performances, and Tom's excessive use of cynicism and humour to cover up a childhood of hurt is the one emotional part of the film that does work. The relationship between Tom and his wife Sally contains compelling nuggets of carnage, and more of the film should have been invested in their rocky marriage. Finally the flashback scenes are the foundations of the film and what Streisand does present is sharp and effective, but this is another aspect of Tom's story that suffers from increasing neglect as the film progresses.

A fly on the psychiatrist's wall, The Prince Of Tides is sometimes provocative but just as often cringe worthy.

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Movie Review: The Way We Were (1973)

A heart-felt romantic drama with a vigorous political undercurrent, The Way We Were tugs at all the tender strings as it spans a 20 year period before, during and after the Second World War.

It's the mid 1930s, and Katie Morosky (Barbra Streisand) is an energetic college student with strong communist ideals, globally oriented, embracing various causes, and politically engaged. Other than fellow-radical Frankie (James Woods), Katie is also friendless. The dashing Hubbell Gardiner (Robert Redford) is athletic, ridiculously attractive, and enjoying the carefree life of a student, often with occasional girlfriend Carol Ann (Lois Chiles). But he displays potential as a serious writer, and that along with his inherent sensitivity eventually results in something resembling a tentative friendship with Katie, before they go their separate ways.

Several years later, World War Two is coming to an end, Hubbell is serving in the Navy, and Katie is working at a radio station. They meet at a party and an exhausted Hubbell crashes at Katie's apartment. That night they make love, although Hubbell remembers nothing of the encounter. Katie pro-actively pursues a serious relationship, and despite their significantly different outlooks on life, they eventually get married and move to Hollywood. As Hubbell struggles to write a movie script based on his one published book, the emerging threat of the McCarthy witch-hunt against left-leaning Hollywood talent reignites Katie's political activism, piling renewed strain on the marriage.

At at its core, The Way We Were explores one of the fundamental differences in the way men and women often stumble into troubled relationships. Hubbell struggles to decide if he can accept and love Katie the way she is. Katie loves Hubbell for his potential: she wants to inspire him to become something better, and is willing to tolerate his current ordinariness to try and help him unlock his possible greatness.

With the passing years they both do grow up somewhat past their college identities. Katie does mature and become more tolerant of life's joys rather than always seeking the next battle. Hubbell does give his writing career a go. But neither will change substantially, and the relationship conflict points most apparent in the initial stages of the romance persist and re-emerge, sometimes in magnified form as the theories of student beliefs give way to life's realities.

The Way We Were is primarily a Barbra Streisand showcase, and she does not disappoint. The character of Katie may be marginally exaggerated, but Streisand throws herself fully into the role and creates one of the most memorable leads in the history of romantic dramas. Several scenes capture Streisand at the pinnacle of acting, not least when she slips into bed next to a sleeping Hubble and wakes him just enough to make love to her, fully aware that in his semi-conscious state he does not even know who she is. Later, after a break-up, Katie phones Hubble and begs for his companionship as a best friend, in another memorable and emotionally draining scene.

Redford is no match for Streisand in the acting department, but here he does not need to be. Redford plays Hubbell as who he is, a man generally content with life, welcoming a few earnest moments but generally well aware that whether or not he worries about politics will not really matter. But Hubbell represents a project for Katie, this time involving her head and her heart. She sees him as malleable material, someone she can form into her own image of serious thinker, discussion companion, and heroic writer. That he stays true to himself, and Redford keeps Hubbell at an even keel through the years, is the most serious fault-line in the relationship. Notwithstanding the disparity in acting talent, both Streisand and Redford shine in the touching final scene, in which the past, filled with the way things were, is silently triumphant over any future.

The theme song, delivered with crystal emotion by Streisand, is a classic tragic-romantic tune and underpins the key moments of the film. Slightly but not unexpectedly over-used, it nevertheless enriches the depiction of the relationship between Katie and Hubbell.

The Way We Were survived a turbulent production process, the Arthur Laurents script passing through the hands of numerous writers and countless rewrites. Director Sydney Pollack finally cobbled together a product that, ironically, no one was fully satisfied with at the time. Over the years, the movie has proved to be an enduring and resplendent romance, resonating with each successive generation. For many lovers, the adversities at the core of The Way We Were remain a true reflection of the way it is.

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Movie Review: Funny Girl (1968)

A grand musical love story, Funny Girl is ambitious in scope and stellar in execution. Barbra Streisand turns in a star-making performance in her movie debut, recreating her Broadway role as Fanny Brice, and Omar Sharif provides able support.

The film starts with Brice established as a New York stage superstar, but all the events take place in one long flashback, with the story starting early in the 20th century. Born and raised in a humble Jewish neighbourhood, Brice never had the looks of a star, but she more than made up for the lack of glamour with talent and sheer gutso. She grabs an opportunity to perform at the local vaudeville theatre, where she immediately attracts the attention of the suave Nicky Arnstein (Sharif), an international gambler.

Brice's burgeoning reputation lands her a deal with the most famous of Broadway musical impresarios, Florenz Ziegfield (Walter Pidgeon). Brice is just as scrappy and outspoken with the revered Ziegfield as she is with everyone else, risking his wrath but earning his respect. She becomes a star; her romance with Arnstein blossoms, and after a night of seduction in Baltimore and a gambling triumph at the poker tables, they marry. But Arnstein soon runs into significant money problems, and he finds himself unable to handle Brice's continued dazzling popularity. Eventually he turns to illegal activities that undermine the marriage.

Loosely based on the real-life romance between Brice and her first husband, William Wyler directs Funny Girl (his first musical) with equal respect for the music and drama, and provides Streisand with every opportunity to seize her destiny as a star actress and singer with impeccable timing. Funny Girl is Streisand's show from beginning to end, her opening line of "Hello, gorgeous", delivered to her mirror image, immediately welcoming a new supernova to the Hollywood galaxy. She makes the role and the movie her own with a powerful mixture of self-depreciation, extroversion, determination and ridiculous talent. It is one of the defining debut performances in the history of the movies.

With a running length of 155 minutes, Wyler does have to work hard to maintain interest in a draggy final third, as the Isobel Lennart script (based on her book) becomes entrenched in strict drama land, the love story turning to a slow-motion wreck. Wyler brings out Streisand's flashes of showmanship to generate forward momentum at critical moments, with the timing never more perfect than when Brice, immediately after a performance, has to face a horde of reporters following the arrest of Arnstein for embezzlement. Streisand plays the scene with perfect doses of superstar bravado and earnest sensitivity.

Opposite Streisand, Omar Sharif brings just enough aristocratic je ne sais quoi to hold his own as Nicky Arnstein. Already a confident and established star after Lawrence Of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, Sharif effortlessly breezes through the dramatic moments but struggles with the musical numbers, and fortunately for him his singing requirements are kept to a minimum.

Given the epic length of the movie, the supporting cast is surprisingly lacklustre, only Walter Pidgeon bringing any sense of scope to his engaging turn as Flo Ziegfield. The set designs and costumes do look gorgeous, although they tip into clean-scrubbed theatre territory where some back-alley locational grime would have occasionally been welcome.

The success of Funny Girl hinged on the single performance of Barbra Streisand in the central role. Her triumph was complete and spectacular, creating an instant legend and a classic, timelessly entertaining movie.

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