Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Cooktopi The acting in this movie is really good.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

drednm Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna wrote and star in this story of two hopelessly lost souls who find one another. Each is the product of a dysfunctional home and each has struggled to find an anchor in this world. Their adult years are filled with failure and heartache and endless searching ... until they find each other.This comedy/drama is a showcase for Renee Taylor who mines much of her own life for the character of Panda Gold, a hilariously untalented woman yearning to become a star and with a stage mother (Helen Verbit) to end all stage mothers. Bologna stars as Giggy Panimba, the coddled mama's boy who also fails at everything he tries ... including entering a seminary ... with his mama (Olympia Dukakis) right behind him.They meet in a group therapy session and form an on-and-off alliance against the world that may or may not lead to a happy ending.Taylor is funny and heartbreaking as she haplessly veers from job to job, always sure stardom and happiness await her. Her night club act in which she asks the coy question, "who am I now"? while doing a terrible impersonation of Rita Hayworth singing "Fire Down Below" is so bad it's funny. Bologna is appalled and tells her the act is terrible, but nothing penetrates, and she persists in thinking herself supremely talented. Audiences are just too dumb to get her act.Co-stars include Paul Sorvino and Louis Zorich as the fathers, Peggy Pope, Ron Carey, Despo, and Norman Shelley as group members. Look fast for Adam Arkin, Candy Azzara, Eddie Barth, and Nancy Andrews.In real life, the couple won an Oscar nomination and Writer's Guild nomination for the film version of their play "Lovers and Other Strangers" and earned another Writer's Guild nomination for this film.Wonderful film.

kkentuckywoman I saw this as a half of a double feature on a double date in the 1970s. Three of the four of us preferred the other film ("Marriage of a Young Stockbroker"?), but I liked this one and went back to see it again. It IS a funny film, but also a believable love story with (understandably) good chemistry between the two leads. And no other reviewer has mentioned that Bologna was pretty hot back in the day if you like those Big types. It is borderline painful to watch Renee Taylor's various "acts" as she skates close to some sort of showbiz fame--sort of a proto-Bridget Jones--but you have to admire the candor of these two writers in filming this autobiographical material, warts and all.

Ron in LA Quirky, comic love story starring Joseph Bologna and Renee Taylor as neurotic misfits who meet at a group therapy encounter session and reluctantly fall in love. Over-the-top satire is used to needle the touchy-feely psychotherapy process, as well as the surrealistic dysfunctional families that created the intensely flawed central characters.Through angry encounters, the two lovers begin vomiting out uncomfortable truths, and then settle into a warm zone of mutual acceptance and intimacy. Near the end, Bologna blurts out that 'I love you, but I don't want to love you. I want to love someone prettier than you and smarter than you. But that person may never come along so I have to settle for you.' The real plot resolution does not come until the film's final frozen frame, when you see the two look at each other with an amused, knowing smile. The real happy ending is when you find out that Bologna and Taylor were married for six years at the time they both wrote and starred in the film, and that as of 2005 they have still been married for 40 years.Happy anniversary, congratulations, and thanks for a great film.

GBIRD I saw this film once when it can out in 1971 and it has been in the back of my mind all these years. A super comedy that is all the more funny because it deals with real people like you and I. No fancy settings or beautiful people, two "misfits" careen through life tied together by the bonds of love, surviving all that the world can dish out. A real jewel of a film, wish it were on VHS.