Hottoceame The Age of Commercialism

BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Bill Goode This plot leads no where. There is really little comedy here. Even Gene Hackman seemed bored with his role through the first half of the film.Both Gene Hackman and Barbara Streisand are terrific comedic actors, but here they offer no comedy. It starts off in the first scene with a chair going thru the window, but there is no attempt to follow that up with comedic dialog. There are some attempts at slapstick while Hackman works his night job, but those are pretty poor.The plot is pretty confusing and one is not sure who is with who. Streisand does look pretty sexy here, but she doesn't offer the one-liners she has in other comedic roles.

dwpollar 1st watched 4/14/2007, 3 out of 10(Dir-Jean-Claude Tramont): Unfocused comedy, romantic drama starring the wonderful Gene Hackman in an offbeat un-realistic role as a walked-on drugstore employee who chucks it all for an unpredictable life with a middle-aged married woman, played by Barbra Streisand. This movie starts out as a possible promising comedy with Dennis Quaid as Hackman's son, a goofball who first gets hooked up with the Streisand character after painting her bedroom. Hackman tries to discourage this, considering the fact that she's married and a 4th cousin, which of course wouldn't look right, but then gets involved himself and just decides that nothing really matters and everything should be laid out for all to see. This attitude doesn't go well with everyone, including Streisand's character initially, even though this is kind of the way she seemed to be living her life to those around her. For the rest of the movie we watch Hackman waddle thru this existence, and Streisand doesn't entice the audience much either with her watered-down character and what we have is a pretty boring overall experience. This movie would have been better if it decided a direction -- all out comedy, all out romance, or all out drama but instead we get what we get. A pretty meaningless experience, overall; despite the talent involved.

robb_772 A huge box office bomb upon release, ALL NIGHT LONG has been criticized by many for it's uncomfortable mix of odd-ball comedy and quaint slice-of-life drama. Though it received some positive reviews (most notably from Pauline Kael and ROLLING STONE magazine), most mainstream critics hated it and audiences all but completely ignored it. It is also often cited by most of Streisand's die-hard fans as their least favorite film of the actress. While the film is certainly not without it's flaws, I have interestingly always thought ALL NIGHT LONG contained somewhat of a bizarre charm, and I've always wished it would receive a re-evaluation from the film-going public.As mentioned before, the film has it's problems. It's paced too leisurely (it's only 90-minutes in length, but feels more like two-and-a-half hours), Jean-Claude Tramont's direction is too light (the film needs more of a thematic punch in several scenes), and much of it's humor is surprisingly too subtle (odd seeing that most film comedies have the opposite problem). Having said all of that, the film is still worth checking out. Though Tramont's direction may be a tad too limp, his skewed perception of the American dream gives the film a dreamy, almost art house-like feel that makes the film more inherently interesting than the screen play would merit alone.Also, the varied cast is a lot of fun, almost all of them playing against type. Gene Hackman brings a equal mix of unusual serenity and touching pathos to his role of the would-be inventor who manages to find his true self by losing nearly everything that was once-important in his life. In an early role, Dennis Quaid throws himself completely into part of Hackman's airheaded son, making the intelligent personae he would develop in later films like DREAMSCAPE and THE BIG EASY even more impressive. Barbra Streisand is clearly miscast the role of the bimbo housewife who woos both Hackman and Quaid (Streisand replaced Lisa Eichhorn, who was fired from the film after two weeks of production), but her performance is still worth catching. Though she's never totally believable as Cheryl (a role that was poorly-defined in the screenplay to begin with), she is still a very likable, always watchable, and occasionally an endearing presence in a unusual little film that deserves a second chance.

filmguy9 Hackman is a demoted chain store executive who is banished to the grave yard shift at one of the chain's drug stores. Just when it seems things couldn't get any worse for him he discovers his teenage son (Dennis Quaid) is having an affair with a sexy relative (Streisand). When Streisand starts making the moves on an already depressed Hackman it's only a matter of time before his jealous son let's the cat out of the bag. This is a very dark comedy. There are no real laughs. It is also not one of Barbra's best performances. She even sings a song purposely bad. Not one for the time capsule, though members of the Streisand Fan Club may make excuses for it.