I Can't Get Started (1985) User Reviews

Has success gone to Robert Marks' head?

[uds3 · 8 November 2001]

Totally innocuous little flick here.

Stalwart aussie actor John Waters is wannabe-novelist Robert Marks. No one can fault his persistence and application in the past - he really wants the big-time bad. The day comes however when he realises his dream and with the royalties flooding in, new friends, a ramp-up in status and not the least, recognition as a precocious new talent, his life style changes.

It's not the only thing to change however. He finds he's lost his creativity, the adrenalin has dried up. Is it writer's block or is he simply a one-hit wonder?

Very capable supporting cast keep the story moving and the underplayed nature of the film itself makes it thoroughly watchable. Many worse than this to be sure!

Mildly interesting film with a great cast

[PeterM27 · 5/10 · 6 March 2024]

This is a mildly interesting gentle drama about a mildly interesting middle class Sydney couple, who are struggling to find personal and professional satisfaction. Robert, the central character is fed up with his indolent life, with his conspicuously successful wife, and most of all with himself, and his inability to produce a followup novel in over ten years.

He's a bit of a pain, to tell the truth, but he is given endless support by his wife, his friends, his father-in-law and eventually by the young woman Jill, who takes him in after he leaves his wife.

It's a great cast, and the film probably should have been better, but like many Australian films of the 1980s, it's all a bit predictable and the characters remain a bit incomplete. Overall, it is most interesting as a snapshot of middle class Australia in the 1980s.