Grimerlana Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

JasparLamarCrabb What a mess. Michael Winner directed this supposedly affectionate ode to old time Hollywood that unfortunately is a just a woefully unfunny series of run ins with faded movie stars (and not the legendary types like Hepburn, Bacall and Mitchum...instead we get DeCarlo, Blondell and Calhoun!) The plot involves struggling starlet Madeline Kahn befriending an unusually smart German shepherd with both becoming the toast of the town thanks to no talent screenwriter Bruce Dern. Kahn and Dern are fine, but the movie has nary a funny line, cheap production values, and way too many unwelcome cameos. Some old-timers such as William Demerest and Aldo Ray speak more than one line, but most pop up and vanish quickly so if you don't know what the aged Ritz Bros. or Rhonda Fleming look like their appearances will be lost on you. Joan Blondell's cameo is actually pretty clever. Art Carney plays the crusty studio head and Teri Garr is pretty fetching as Kahn's room-mate. The always welcome Billy Barty and Ron Leibman also appear.

ptb-8 Sadly this all star 'comedy' is a monumentally wasted opportunity to put a dozen or more famous old stars into the one film...and then irritatingly give them ALL nothing to do. Some just walk on and off, some have one line, some grunt, some just sit there. Too bad if you wonder what someone like Guy Madison looks like in his final film, you can barely find him. Someone like Madeline Kahn who is just divine and hilarious in everything else she ever did is completely loose and forced here. The film relentlessly sags and there is not much fun to be had at all. The opening night party must have been like a wake! Paramount, instead of opening their treasure vault of Technicolor musicals like Metro did and make a fantastic doco about their history, opted to instead actually make movies about film 30s production; so we got DAY OF THE LOCUST and GABLE AND LOMBARD. Universal made W.C .FIELDS AND ME, Fox made AT LONG LAST LOVE and sadly, crap like THE WORLDS GREATEST LOVER and UA actually did make a doco that nobody saw: the hilarious animal stars pic ITS SHOWTIME. While most of the above are actually interesting, it wasn't what the public wanted and they ALL bombed badly. WB even made one thing called UNDER THE RAINBOW which proved that Billy Barty at the time was the hardest working midget in Hollywood since he not only appeared in about 4 of the above new 1976 films, he even turned up in the genuine items from the 30s (Footlight Parade and the Wizard Of Oz). What the public wanted was the real footage and musical numbers from the past like the three THATS ENTERTAINMENT and THATS DANCING proved. Still to this day we don't have the Fox movie doco about their Technicolor years, or a celebration of CINEMASCOPE, the Universal musicals and sci fi pix epic doco, or Columbia's serial doco. Yes we have THE REPUBLIC PICTURES STORY and the AIP biopic IT CAME FROM Hollywood (I think), but we need a THATS ENTERTAINMENT from each of the major and minor Studios. I'd even cut the MONOGRAM-AA doco for them for free if they let me! The closest we got was the fantastic RKO history TV series narrated by Edward Asner. Won Ton Ton is awful and not worth watching, sad for the tragic sight of pensioner stars warbling one line here and there. Annoying.

Gavno EVERY movie nut has a few in his collection that he hides from his friends... films that "aren't cool", trashy films with no redeeming social value, outrageous films with no importance whatever. Films that you secretly watch from time to time just because they're FUN!I'll come clean here... ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, POOTIE TANG, SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT, CANDY and ROCK & ROLL HIGH SCHOOL are among MY Guilty Pleasures.An outstanding member of my back-of-the-shelf collection is WON TON TON, THE DOG WHO SAVED Hollywood.This one is DEFINITELY for those folks whose knowledge of American cinema goes back a LONG way... back to the Mack Sennett comedies, and to the days before Hollywood became a multibillion dollar Money Machine. It's a sort of Love Letter to the silent screen stars of the 1920's; they appear in a copious number of cameos here. If you don't know who the Ritz Brothers were, you won't get this film!Madelein Kahn literally steals the show from a somewhat dopey German Shepard, a MAJOR achievement for ANY actor or actress! There's an old stage saying that one should NEVER work with kids or animals; they'll steal your scenes every time without even trying. Kahn MORE than held her own, even successfully stealing scenes from the pooch. Check out the scene where the roast chicken falls off of the delivery truck, and Kahn and Won Ton Ton fight over possession of it. She just DUSTED the dog, and overall HE comes off as the comedic straight man!The only other recent actor that comes close to this level of thespian gallantry and sheer talent is Jim Bellushi in his performance in K9... he's ANOTHER screwball comedian who can pull it off successfully.Bruce Dern's performance is somewhat wooden. Dern's persona literally radiates instability and danger... NOT good for comedy. He's gamely going through the motions here; it quickly becomes painfully apparent that Dern, as fine an actor as he is, has NO potential in comedic roles.Art Carney does his usual masterful job of playing a curmudgeonly movie producer, constantly shooting down Dern's half baked movie ideas ("There's this little girl in Kansas, see, and a tornado takes her and her house to this magic land, somewhere over the rainbow...").One of the unsung heros here is Ron Liebman; he shows a flair for subtle comedy that's totally unexpected.It's not a film for everyone; a LOT of folks will HATE it. But.. if you love the REALLY old movies, and you can FIND it, WON TON TON is good for an evening's entertainment.

wolfhell88 This is a nice slapstick-comedy about the good old days in Hollywood and also a hommage to Rin Tin Tin, the most famous silent-movie dog-star. Bruce Dern plays a director who starts to have success after discovering the dog. All-star guest appearances from Milton Berle over Cyd Charisse to Rory Calhoun and Johnny Weissmueller are also included but the best actor is the dog who plays Won Ton Ton. He is fantastic. In some scenes it doesn't work to put the humor and slapstick from the Twenties into the Seventies but this movie is really worth to take a look.