Not quite as bad as some critics thought when it first came out, this supposed screw-ball comedy fails to it the spot more often than it makes it. The chief problem is Bogdanovich, who fell into the trap of thinking that just because he had a successful film before this, and could command millions of dollars in his budget, he could do anything he felt like. So he takes a plot Howard Hawks could produce in 70 minutes and blows it way out of proportion. Consequently the film lumbers on from set-piece to set-piece until the audience loses interest in just where it's all supposed to be going.
Barbara Streisand is fine, but Ryan O'Neal is no Cary Grant, and appears to have no idea what he's supposed to be doing.
The screw-ball comedy was not really a genre of the 1930s film. Films labeled this were merely romantic comedies with a touch of off-the-wall lunacy. Therefore, there was never any reason to make a "screw-ball comedy" pastiche, since there really wasn't anything to pastiche. All Bogdanovich really had to do was make a romantic comedy and get a little loony.
But he doesn't do this. There IS a romantic comedy buried under here somewhere, but it has been largely buried by Bogdanovich's misguided attempts to pay homage to comedies of the 1930s by interjecting bits that he thinks "ought to be funny" since they were funny once, weren't they? Well, actually, no. "bit" comedy is actually "shtick" comedy, which means that it is really only funny when performed by someone who has done it professionally so often, it can be done sleep-walking. Writer Buck Henry knew this (he was a shtick comic himself) but clearly Bogdanovich didn't. The importance of this misunderstanding is that whatever makes shtick comedy work - whatever makes comedy work - depends entirely on the performer's sense of timing. If you don't have the timing right, nothing's funny.
And since Bogdanovich is taking his sweet time spending his studio's money left and right, of course the timing is way off.
Save yourself the torture; watch Bringing Up Baby instead.
Barbara Streisand is fine, but Ryan O'Neal is no Cary Grant, and appears to have no idea what he's supposed to be doing.
The screw-ball comedy was not really a genre of the 1930s film. Films labeled this were merely romantic comedies with a touch of off-the-wall lunacy. Therefore, there was never any reason to make a "screw-ball comedy" pastiche, since there really wasn't anything to pastiche. All Bogdanovich really had to do was make a romantic comedy and get a little loony.
But he doesn't do this. There IS a romantic comedy buried under here somewhere, but it has been largely buried by Bogdanovich's misguided attempts to pay homage to comedies of the 1930s by interjecting bits that he thinks "ought to be funny" since they were funny once, weren't they? Well, actually, no. "bit" comedy is actually "shtick" comedy, which means that it is really only funny when performed by someone who has done it professionally so often, it can be done sleep-walking. Writer Buck Henry knew this (he was a shtick comic himself) but clearly Bogdanovich didn't. The importance of this misunderstanding is that whatever makes shtick comedy work - whatever makes comedy work - depends entirely on the performer's sense of timing. If you don't have the timing right, nothing's funny.
And since Bogdanovich is taking his sweet time spending his studio's money left and right, of course the timing is way off.
Save yourself the torture; watch Bringing Up Baby instead.