Word: bogdanovich
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...Long Last Love. The movie would be quite bad enough without her But her clodhopper dancing and mynah bird singing contribute substantially to the downfall of the film. Her co-star, Burt Reynolds, is just as bad--he whispers rather than sings and his dancing is so inept that Bogdanovich has cropped his body at the knee most of the time. The rest of the cast--Bogdanovich standbys like Madeline Kahn and Mildred Natwick--do better, and Eileen Brennan is even good. It's a pity she didn't get top billing...
...movie is basically another Bogdanovich nostalgia trip--this time to the world of the 1930's movie musical, with songs by Cole Porter. Since At Long Last Love has been universally panned, and the theaters it shows at are generally empty, the suckers sitting in the audience can lessen the pain somewhat by singing along with "You're the Top." "Lot's Misbehave" and other Porter masterpieces. The plot is a typical romantic quadrangle between Shepherd, 'Reynolds, Kahn and a stereotyped greasy Italian gambler played by Diullio del Prete. They cavort between two hotel rooms, one mansion, several parks...
...Bogdanovich hasn't captured the style that made Astaire and Rogers so special. He user the overblown sets and casts of thousands that helped to kill of movie musicals in the late 60's when Fred and Ginger started dancing, all the people and furniture disappeared. Cybill and Burt, on the other hand, come dangerously close to bashing into a number of white silk couches--and also the other dancers...
...thing that held together the stupid plots of 1930's musicals was the sharp, witty give-and-take between characters--Aline MacMahon fighting with Guy Kibbee, for example. But the pace is so slow in Bogdanovich's film--most of the time the actors shout to each other from across a room--that the little wit he put into the script gets swallowed up by the chandeliers. And Astaire needed the foil of stupid, stuffy Edward Everett Horton to show off his own urbanity. Reynold's counterpart to Horton is his mother, normally silly Mildred Natwick, who breezes...
...problem is tha Bogdanovich has overblown the whole thing. The scale he uses is far too large, the little that is clever in the script or acting gets swamped, and the acting, singing and dancing aren't good enough to even begin to make...