Kattiera Nana I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Kamila Bell 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.

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Syl Burt Reynolds played Phil Potter, a Boston publishing executive. In this film, he and his wife, Jessica, split up. She wants to pursue a singing career. Candice Bergen earned an Academy Award nomination for her performance as Jessica Potter. Phil meets Marilyn Holmburg, a school teacher, who helps him deal with the breakup. Jill Clayburgh earned an Academy Award nomination for her performance as Marilyn. Reynolds, Clayburgh and Bergen did earn Golden Globe nominations for their roles in this film. The film is a nice romantic comedy about mature adults. They don't make films like this anymore. Burt Reynolds can act aside from action films. He is totally a different character here.

Wuchak Released in 1979, "Starting Over" is a romantic dramedy about a recently divorced man, Phil Potter (Burt Reynolds), who tries to get back into dating and finds a new potential mate (Jill Clayburgh) while the ex-wife still hovers (Candice Bergen). Charles Durning and Frances Sternhagen are on hand as the protagonist's brother and sister-in-law.Who knew Burt could do drama? This movie proves it; and the first hour is quite entertaining, as far as romcoms go. Bergen is stunning and it's hard to see Phil settling for Clayburgh's character. In any case, amusing moments abound. Unfortunately, the last 45 minutes morph into a slow-moving bore. It's almost like they hired someone else to write the third act. If it weren't for the dull third act I'd easily give this a grade of "B" or 7/10. Still, this is a must-see if you're a fan of Reynolds (or Bergen, even though her role plays second fiddle to Clayburgh). The film runs 105 minutes and was shot in the Boston area.GRADE: C+

thekesslerboy I loved Burt Reynolds when I was wee. And performances like this, for me, are what he was best at. Here's the scoop: he is normal, we are normal, but the world is a bit crazy, and us normal guys have got to navigate it and find true, terrific, wonderful love.This is a romantic comedy, a genre which seldom produces a great film, and indeed this is not a great film. That said, it is an above - average, very enjoyable film of it's type, which is genuinely LOL funny in places, and has not dated at all. And, it has a nice Christmas-time thing going on, which may or not be relevant to your interest. Slightly wonky (New York / Bostony) music is fitting, and I would defo give Bergen a cuddle with that see-through blouse thing on.When the end credits come up, with another cheesy song, you might feel that you know a wee bit more about humanity, and more again about what love really is, and isn't.

Ed Uyeshima Just coming off producing and writing the classic sitcoms, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Taxi", James L. Brooks wrote the screenplay, his first, for this 1979 divorce comedy. Even after all these years and finally out on DVD, it remains funny, perceptive and thoroughly engaging in a way that later crystallized into Brooks' film-making trademark in "Terms of Endearment" and "As Good As It Gets". Fortunately, the director is the accomplished Alan J. Pakula, who shows a flair for romantic comedy coaxing excellent performances from the three stars.The plot centers on Phil Potter, a magazine writer-turned-writing teacher who has been informed by his beautiful but flaky wife Jessica that she wants a divorce. Without much recourse, he seeks solace from his bear-hugging psychiatrist brother Mickey and sister-in-law Marva, who eventually set him up on a blind date with Marilyn, a mild-mannered, rather dowdy nursery schoolteacher. The movie then becomes a clever seesaw of Phil vacillating between his wife and potential new love interest. What remains fresh about the movie is how Pakula and Brooks keep the focus on the flawed characters and less on the predictable clichés about the awkward consequences of divorce.Even taking into account his comeback turn in Paul Thomas Anderson's 1997 "Boogie Nights", I doubt if Burt Reynolds has given a more subtle, genuinely humane performance than he does here. Cast completely against type (he was in his Smokey/Hooper/Sharkey action phase at the time), he makes Phil's uncertainty feel real - even at the risk of losing audience sympathy in the way he treats Marilyn no matter how inadvertently. In the afterglow of her brilliant work in Paul Mazursky's "An Unmarried Woman", Jill Clayburgh again demonstrates the malleable quality and fierce intelligence to make her deglamorized Marilyn an attractive and credibly cautious woman. In a revelation before her long, successful run as "Murphy Brown", a deadpan Candice Bergen breaks free from her heretofore vacuously decorative roles and supplies the movie's biggest laughs as the narcissistic Jessica, especially when she sings with uproariously tone-deaf panache to seduce Phil in her hotel room.There is also a terrific supporting cast - Charles Durning bringing out all the unctuous support that Mickey can muster; a scene-stealing Frances Sternhagen as Marva, more than anxious to provide Phil emotional support when he is down and out; Austin Pendleton as a needy member of Phil's divorced men's club, who keeps remarrying his ex-wife; and Mary Kay Place in a funny cameo as Phil's aggressive first post-marital date. Other than Marilyn's unflattering outfits (the orange down jacket is hideous), Marvin Hamlisch's seventies-lite pop music is really the only significant element that dates the movie severely. The divorced men's club meeting scenes are hilarious, and you can see Jay O. Sanders and Wallace Shawn as fellow members. Unlike other romantic comedies of the period full of I'm-OK-You're-OK pop psychology, this one is still well worth viewing.