Nickelodeon

Elric Kane4.0

B & W Directors cut version. This really blew me away and felt so authentic to the time period it’s honoring. I watched the trailer to the color version afterwards and it just looked like an out of time comedy. If someone puts out a Blu of this version I think it’s reputation will become one of his finest films and a great love letter to the era before features. Loved it.

eely 👻3.5

I’m leo staying seated while everyone else gave birth of a nation a standing ovation.

Josh Gillam2.0

In the early years of the silent era, young lawyer Leo Harrigan (Ryan O’Neal) and gunslinger Buck Greenway (Burt Reynolds) both become involved in the burgeoning film industry, but find their partnership tested when they both fall for the same girl, in Peter Bogdanovich’s period comedy co-starring Tatum O’Neal, Jane Hitchcock, John Ritter and Brian Keith. As a former critic, Bogdanovich kept a deep love for cinema history running through his work, here looking at a fascinating time just before Hollywood got underway, when aspiring filmmakers had to make their projects guerrilla-style to dodge the patents companies determined to shut them down. He crafts a frenetic, inventive throwback that plays like a combination of the fast paced energy of What’s Up Doc and the whimsy of Paper Moon, using the style of the early silents to move the plot along. Apparently Bogdanovich heavily rewrote the original script given to him to bring in stories from filmmakers that were there at the time, and according to O’Neal turned it from “a tough little script about Hollywood into a farcical series of precious little jokes”, which definitely explains the scattershot nature of the story. Though the film starts off well it quickly runs out of steam, relying on sketches that never really go anywhere and raising lots of plot threads that are then unceremoniously dropped again. Neither O’Neal or Reynolds seem comfortable with all the slapstick they’re made to do, which makes everything feel very laboured. Keith gives by far the most memorable performance as a tough, straight-shooting producer but even he’s sidelined after the beginning, which wastes the humour he brings to the film. It should have been more of an underdog story about a group of misfits banding together but the story fizzles out quite quickly, going in circles and becoming increasingly repetitive.Maybe Bogdanovich saw something of himself in the maverick young filmmakers being explored, but this enthusiasm for the subject unfortunately doesn’t translate to the finished product. All the pieces that should work don’t ever properly fit together, with the film too bloated and flat to match the wistful nostalgia of the director’s best projects.