Plantiana Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Curt Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

quarterwavevertical Gilbert and Sullivan were well-known for poking fun at the celebrities and public officials of their day. They did so in a number of well-crafted operettas (e. g., "HMS Pinafor" and "The Mikado") to the delight of audiences. I've heard that many of those lampooned, satirized, or otherwise pilloried in those works considered it an honour to be treated in that fashion.Regrettably, the movie "S.O.B." is far below that standard. It has all the subtlety of a head-on collision and, worse, is haphazard and unfunny in its presentation.I imagine that it was meant to be some sort of inside joke as it seemed that many of the characters were based on real people, some of which were, presumably, easily recognized by those in Hollywood. Since most of us lead real lives in the real world, just who the targets of the director's barbs actually were is never made clear nor is there any attempt to explain who they are to the audience.The whole movie comes off as a two-hour long temper tantrum by director Blake Edwards. How DARE Hollywood not regard everything he does as pure genius? The fact of the matter is that artistic misfires have happened for centuries. Beethoven, for example, revised his opera "Leonora" three times before he finally had success after making major changes, including renaming it as "Fidelio".But this isn't the first time that Edwards satirized Hollywood. About 15 years earlier, he made the movie "The Party" with Peter Sellers in the lead. Although that film didn't have much of a plot, it was certainly more polished than this clunker of a film.For the most part, the actors drift through their parts, almost as if they knew it was a paycheque movie. The only character that's interesting is the phoney-baloney physician played by Robert Preston, but most of the rest are redundant as they contribute next to nothing to the overall story. Why, for example, was Marisa Berenson's character included? (Why is she even in the movie to begin with as she certainly isn't much of an actress. Watch her in "Barry Lyndon" and you'll know why I made that comment.)In addition, there are details in the movie that are absolutely unimportant and could easily have been deleted. I mean, does the audience really need to know about Robert Vaughn's character's personal habits?Not even the ending is particularly original. The funeral arrangements appear to have been lifted from the movies "The Loved One" and "The Vikings".It pained me to see William Holden in this clunker. It was to be his last movie and his performance was quite disappointing, considering that his finest role was probably that of Pike Bishop in "The Wild Bunch". He certainly didn't look at all well in "S.O.B." and died soon after it was released.I first saw this movie on cable TV about a year after it was in the theatres. I thought it was dreadful back then. I saw it again recently and it hasn't improved with time.Avoid this one and watch "The Party" instead.

mark.waltz A black comedy about how Hollywood rewards success and damns disaster. Having had a few of his own, writer/director Blake Edwards got digs in at the whole system of Hollywood big shots, managers, publicity agents, gossip columnists and the all around selfishness of the industry. Just a decade before, he had tried to change Julie Andrews' image with "Darling Lili", a sophisticated musical comedy that dared to show her being sweet and sexy; a spy, yes, but still sweet and sexy. It flopped, gained a bit of notoriety and eventually a slight cult following. In this often irritating spoof of Hollywood bad taste, Andrews is a Peter Pan imaged goodie goodie, and a victim of her first flop. Director husband Richard Mulligan is personally blamed for the disaster, with suicide his first priority. But a shock brings him back to life, determined to turn it into a hit by adding a shot of the virgin star's" boobies". Yep, that's it in a clam shell bra, and for the former Mary Poppins and Maria von Trapp, it's a nice pair, too.There are ramifications, but they don't really matter after the "unveiling". The script though is witty and filled with gem one-liners, mostly uttered by the hysterical Robert Preston in a role that pre- dated his "Victor/Victoria" Toddy by one year. Shelley Winters spoofs agent Sue Mengers (then unknown, but later made infamous by Bette Midler on Broadway), and Loretta Swit gets tossed around and justifiably abused as a much hated gossip columnist. William Holden adds a third Hollywood slam onto his resume, having starred in the first film to puncture a hole on Hollyweird's tire in "Sunset Blvd." and the lesser known "Fedora".Then, there's Larry Hagman as the studio head who is as ruthless as J.R. Ewing, Robert Vaughan, Robert Webber and Robert Loggia as other ruthless members of the Hollywood cog. A bittersweet cut away plot has a has been actor dying on the beach in front of Mulligan's house and nobody noticing him, just his grief stricken dog. This gives a bittersweet theme to the film, but oh, that ending, which left many people cold. So many great moments mixed up together in a stew that went bad even with refrigeration.

slcagnina Edwards and his wife Julie Andrews wanted to make a kiss-off to Hollywood. This is not a bad inspiration for a film. But the result is a muddle.Edwards can be an uneven director; sometimes he's hilarious, sometimes he's not funny at all (and his Asian caricatures from Breakfast at Tiffany's to this film make me wonder if Edwards understands that playing racial stereotypes without irony is not funny).In this film, his best and worst are often in the same scene. It's hard to understand what Edwards is condemning because he doesn't put forth a realistic central character or premise (even in 1981, re-shooting a failed film as bad as the one he presents here by putting in sex sex sex wouldn't bring you instant box office). William Holden and Robert Preston are excellent in the film as old time cynics with a heart. But they're not the central focus of the film -- that would be Mulligan, a funny actor but not one to present the conflicted portrait of a gifted director gone bad. Edwards never takes Mulligan's Felix Farmer's plight seriously -- which undercuts the comedy. Why was his film so bad in the beginning? If he had shown the execs causing the problems, then that would have made Mulligan's actions more plausible -- if not in the realm of realism. Another narrative mistake with Felix, Edwards tells us this was Felix's first failure. Would a multimillionaire successful Hollywood guy with a giant ego go suicidal insane over one failure?That's the problem. Felix's downfall isn't understandable -- and he appears so inept his previous success isn't understandable; and the loyalty he inspires in Holden and Preston's characters isn't understandable, because we don't see why they'd have affection for Felix as a person or a filmmaker. If we're supposed to feel bad because Felix loses his movie, we don't, because we don't know how a man with so little talent got a 30 million dollar (1981 dollars) budget in the first place. If Edwards had drawn a realistic Felix character, and cut down on some of the slapstick elements, he might have had a good, if clichéd, Hollywood cautionary tale. Instead, he made a hollow film about a hollow business. In the end, this makes Edwards as bad as the ones he's trying to eviscerate.

ww1buff65 I "discovered" this movie on cable in the mid-late 80's and immediately fell in love with it. It's witty, scathingly funny and some of it is so rapid-fire that it requires viewing multiple times to catch all that is being said. I heard some Hollywood type espousing once that "stereotypes are only stereotypes because they're true." We've all seen the stereotypical, ego-centric Hollywood agents and other sycophants portrayed in various movies/shows/etc. but rarely have they all been assembled in one hysterical place and portrayed by such a star-studded rogues gallery! Robert Preston is my favorite as the perpetually drunk/stoned quack doctor, and William Holden's last performance as the aged, burned-out director is particularly poignant when he gives a brief speech of "encouragement" to Felix (Richard Mulligan) about consciously trying to kill himself with drugs, booze and sexual excesses for the past 40 years. So some of the "moments of truth" are not just realizations about the business itself, but about the actors playing the roles. An all-around great movie.