A Little Late, At Long Last Love

At Long Last Love (1975)

Runtime: 118 minutes

Directed by: Peter Bogdanovich

Starring: Burt Reynolds, Cybill Shepherd, Madeline Kahn, Eileen Brennan, John Hillerman

From: 20th Century Fox

Imagine my surprise when Tuesday night I was looking through my cable guide and this film came up as being played at midnight on Fox Movie Channel. After all, this is a movie that got such a bad reception when it was released, it was never put out on VHS tape, let alone DVD. That’s it despite it being directed by a famous name and starring some famous people. Maybe it being a musical (yep, Burt and Cybill sing), it being a very “white” environment-I’m not talking about race; rather, most of the sets are that color-and the actors sing “live” on stage rather than lip-synching has something to do with that reputation, but I was glad to finally see this movie. I understand it was on Netflix earlier in the year, but I don’t use that crap.

This movie is just like one of those musicals from the 1930’s. The plot… well, it isn’t too important, believe me. It’s stringed together from a bunch of old Cole Porter songs, and it’s couples falling in and out of love, couple-swapping, and so on and so forth. It’s a lot of arguing going on too amongst all the singing, which you get a LOT of. As I heard someone once say, musicals would be a lot better if they didn’t have all that damn singing. I tend to agree with that; most things in that genre I don’t really care for. That sort of taints this review, but that’s just my opinion.

As for the movie, I didn’t care for any of the characters or their machinations, the songs weren’t terrible but it was clear as day Kahn was the only trained singer (hearing old Burt try to sing was pretty surreal, although I’ve heard the likes of Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood try to warble a tune also), and I just thought the movie didn’t work. I wouldn’t say it was awful and deserving of getting pulled from its theatrical run and the director doing the rare thing and apologizing for his own movie; however, it’s not all that good and it’s best as a strange curio, a failed experiment from a famous director. I mean, casting the two leads to both sing AND dance when they aren’t too good at either task is asking for problems.

At least I can say that the film looks nice, from the sets to the photography (by famed cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs) and everything else. Hillerman (yeah, Higgins from Magnum P.I.) sings and romances Brennan, which is an interesting sight. It’s just that the too-long film has a threadbare plot and you don’t care about what happens; if you enjoy musicals you may enjoy it more, though. If you want to, you can watch it on YouTube.

I'll be back Wednesday night.