Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Aussie Stud If you happen to catch this movie, it could easily be mistaken for the pilot episode of an 80's prime-time soap. How the producers thought that anyone would seriously pay good money to watch this midday made-for-TV movie at the theater is incredibly hilarious.Kirk Douglas surprisingly headlines this incestuous melodrama where his daughter January (Deborah Raffin) harbors some sort of daddy-complex since the day she was born. I would have loved to have sat through a theater screening of this and observed the faces of the audience around me. I don't know if I would have seen smirks or looks of discomfort, like someone shouldn't have eaten those bad tacos for lunch.The movie is very outdated. It's lifted right from a Jacqueline Susann novel (or basically take your pick from any Harlequin read) and plays out just like it on the small screen. Most of the close-ups are shot through a filter, the soundtrack is hijacked by Henry Mancini's orchestrated strings, and all the actresses parade themselves with such high camp you'll find it hard not to fall in love with this atrocity.Most hilarious is January's attraction to David Janssen's character. Talk about taking the daddy-complex to the next level! Brenda Vaccaro who received an Oscar nomination(!!!) for her portrayal of a man-hungry sex-starved magazine editor is absolutely stunning. She delivered plain awful dialog with perfect snap, "He laid me, and then he fired me!" and also managing to keep a straight face at the same time, she definitely deserved the nomination.The best line comes out of the mouth of Douglas' long-suffering housekeeper, Mabel (Lillian Randolph), "For twelve years, it's just been a parade of poon-tang!", as she boards the bus to Santa Monica.Throw in a closeted lesbian millionaire engaging in a secret relationship with a reclusive Hispanic actress (where else could you view an interracial middle-aged lesbian sex scene!!), gratuitous shots of Gary Conway (portraying an astronaut LOL!) running in short shorts on a beach and Deborah Raffin staring blankly into the camera as if she were doped on percosets, and you have the ultimate camp classic of 1975.There was a scene with Raffin's character walking blankly across the road (nearly getting run over by a taxi) after she is devastated by Janssen's character, and yet I still could not determine any difference in her acting from that scene to the entire film.Vaccaro is definitely the one thing that holds this movie together, although her character isn't necessary to the story. She seemed to express more personality than all of the other characters combined that it was a joy to watch her self-diagnosing, "Sleeping with men makes me feel better!" It made me feel better too.

Poseidon-3 It's true....Only the skeleton of Ms. Susann's novel remains in this bland, dreary screen treatment. All the truly racy parts are sanitized out partly or completely. Still, there's something irresistible about this film in a good/bad way. The stellar cast tiptoeing its way around such sordid subjects as casual sex, incestuous feelings, loss of virginity, lesbianism et al provides curiosity appeal. Aside from the bleaching of the story elements, the biggest flaw is the time spent on Raffin. She is almost adequate in the film, but her character is not very easy to identify with and can be pretty annoying. She, unfortunately, is the primary focus of the story. Douglas carries her along pretty well, but even he doesn't get the screen time one might like and does disappear for a large chunk of it. The major interest comes from the more colorful and vivid supporting cast. Vaccaro got a lot of attention as the man-hungry, plain-speaking magazine editor. She adds a lot of zing to a very sedate film. Hamilton is his usual suave self but fades out quietly, Janssen gives a thoughtful if drowsy performance and can almost be understood at times through his growl, Mercouri is barely seen at all (her story was all but snipped out of the script) and Conway has, literally, nothing to do but look handsome. The chief reason for sitting through all the melodrama and angst (aside from witnessing Conway running on the beach in the teeniest cutoff sweat pants) is to witness the wry, slick, surprising performance of Smith. Her character is a fascinating blend of haughty arrogance, vulnerability, style, elegance and bawdiness. She plays a part that would have made her old boss Jack Warner keel over from shock. Moss Mabry decked Ms. Smith in the latest (now hilariously dated) styles and with her regal air and frosted pageboy, she RUNS the film while she's on screen. Most unforgettable is her backgammon partner "Joyce". The title music by Mancini sounds like a dry run for the TV series "Hotel". He basically switched a few notes around, dusted it off and "Abrakadabra"! ...a TV theme song was born! Most excruciating for anyone who sat through the film and didn't like it (which is probably 80% of the viewing audience) is the ending, in which "highlights" of the film are reviewed (and reviewed!) over more of the title music--this time sung by generic crooners who may as well be singing about mouthwash and who probably worked on 1973's "Lost Horizon" in some cruel attempt to end film-making forever! This is a special brand of glamorously produced, but insipid, film-making. It's an acquired taste, but delicious to those who like it. One nagging question remains...... Among Douglas, Janssen, Hamilton and Conway, they chose to show Janssen's naked behind???? Assault with a deadly weapon.

Vince-5 Jacqueline Susann's glamorous, emotional, highly personal novels always lost something in their translation to the screen. Once Is Not Enough is another prime example. But it doesn't have the unintended hilarity of Valley of the Dolls, nor the compelling sleaziness of The Love Machine. The most outrageous and memorable elements of the book are excised completely, and the result is two hours of sudsy romantic nothingness. Without the pills, vitamin shots, wild sex (including an acid-fueled orgy), and disturbing violence that infused the compelling novel, the story is as flat as week-old ginger ale.It's a slick production with an all-star cast, including the engaging Deborah Raffin as January, but the material is awful. The filmmakers' were obviously trying for a "respectable" approach, and the results are just plain boring. Case in point: Jackie provided the book with a surreal, escapist conclusion that's wholly amazing, whereas the movie just...ends. The book was about a naive girl trying to deal with life, and the movie is about--say it with me now!--LOOOOOOOVE! And it's like every other mediocre movie on the subject.However, things are brightened by Brenda Vaccaro in her Golden Globe-winning, Oscar-nominated turn as uninhibited magazine editor Linda Riggs. She's the perfect realization of Susann's character (albeit with toned-down material) and provides a lot more spirit than this tepid production deserves. Her performance alone merits a viewing, but everything else is a daytime-TV-style mess. About as shocking as a trip to the supermarket--perhaps even less so.

nunculus Wackadoo slice of late Susann--the most swanky I-love-daddy fantasy ever committed to celluloid. Little princess Deborah Raffin can't get over those warm, tingly feelings she has for Daddy (Kirk Douglas), a worn-out Hollywood producer reduced to marrying a lesbian billionaire (Alexis Smith) to keep Princess in cashmere. When she feels her special place has been taken by the sapphic capitalist, she shifts to a handy incest-surrogate--a soused genius novelist (David Janssen) who seems to be modeled after Norman Mailer. In a stroke of sublime Susann fantasy, Mailer-Janssen is impotent--cured by the nubile caresses of Princess. Throw in Brenda Vaccaro as a man-eating fashion editor and you have a mound of trash with as much fragrance as a New York sanitation strike.The saddest credits on this number: "Producer--Howard Koch. Assistant Director--Howard Koch, Jr." Imagine the agony of poor Guy Green, an aging British yeoman who had just finished work on a biography of Martin Luther, as he struggled with the correct way to shoot a sex scene between Alexis Smith and Melina Mercouri. It's all not quite as peacocklike as it sounds, but Susann certainly had a pop style--the raspy voice of an old Broadway bawd telling an ingenue (i.e., her hausfrau-ly reader), how it really is in the big, ugly, grown-up world. The freaky, non-contradictory mix of camp, obsession and melodrama a la fromage has a sweetness a half century later: the biggest-selling woman author of all time really did just want to be a pampered shiksa teenager stroking some graying temples.