Pretty Good

Fresh and Exciting

As Good As It Gets

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Plot in a nutshell: An anti-social poet (Sean Connery) short on cash and suffering from writer's block is sent to a shrink by his wife (Joanne Woodward). Naturally, things only get worse. Polarizing mid-60s screwball comedy has some very funny bits here and there, but suffers from over-length and some very dated "to the moon, Alice!" style humor that will undoubtedly rub modern audiences the wrong way. Connery gives his all in a go for broke performance that he probably hoped would help off-set his James Bond image (never mind that his self-destructive poet still fools around with women despite claiming he doesn't like them) but the character is so unlikable that some of the humor falls flat. Other reviewers on here have said that comedy was not old Sean's strong point as a performer; I don't really agree with that (he was after all hilarious as the bumbling father of Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade) but feel it was really more that the character was a hard sell to begin with - and would have been for any actor. The rest of the cast do the best they can with what's there. It's a little sad watching the late Jean Seberg in this film, seeing her so young, so beautiful, so obviously a fine actress wasting what little time she was going to have in such an unsatisfying comedy as the desperate, sexually frustrated housewife of the primary doctor who finds an afternoon's delight with Connery - and is later hilariously horrified (admittedly one of the film's better moments) to find that he seriously expects her to just roommate with him and his unhappy wife when she expresses an interest in trying to be something more.Of interest mostly for fans of the stars and fans of the 60s.

The idea that free-spirited creativity is a social disorder that must be cured by a well-meaning but thoroughly incompetent psychiatric establishment is the theme here, and one quite familiar to anybody who has seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Sean Connery was a great choice to play a blocked, womanizing writer at the core of the drama and he centers the film with his amiable exuberance. Comparisons to Cuckoo's Nest are inevitable, and this film lacks the other's stifling power and resonance, but it shares a common vision of the psychiatric profession acting as a microcosm of authoritarian abuses in society at large. Still, this is a funny and charming, much lighter satire on the same subject, energetically directed by Irvin Kirschner, and enjoyable for Connery fans in any case.

Sean Connery did make about half a dozen excellent non-James Bond Films. This is not one of them. They include "The Man Who Would Be King," "Robin and Mariam," "The Name of the Rose," "The Untouchables," "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," and "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." He is 80 years old now, and it would be nice if the Motion Picture Academy honored him with a lifetime achievement award (as the American Film Institute did in 2006).Here's the positive side. There are some pretty shots of New York City circa 1966, giving the film a bit of a Neil Simon-Woody Allen look. The first half hour is fine. We get a good introduction of the characters. Connery messing up a Lady's Club invitation to read his poetry is not as funny as it should have been, but is the funniest scene in the film.Unfortunately the film goes nowhere after that. There's no character development and almost every comedy bit and scene falls flat. Many scenes are punctuated and underscored by loud, energetic music. This seems to be done on purpose to distract the audience from thinking, "What? Why is that supposed to be funny?" The name of Connery's character is Samson Shillitoe. I assume that the name has something to do with the famous writer Stirling Silliphant. I'm not sure if the character had anything to do with the man.I do think Sean Connery and Joanne Woodward deserve some credit for developing their characters as much as they do. They are working hard, one might say frantically, to make something out of the script. Everybody else, including Jean Seberg, Patrick O'Neil, Coleen Dewhurst and Zohra Lampert are wasted in non-roles that should have been played by less talented actors.Altogether, not an enjoyable film, but possibly worth a look as an example of a bad New York City mid-60's comedy. It'll make you appreciate "Barefoot in the Park" that much more.

Female actors have to look back on their roles from days of yore and shake their heads. Things have certainly changed since the advent of The Pill. In this "wacky" comedy, Joanne Woodward plays a role that today would be unplayable, probably unwritable even by a hack like Elliott Baker Cohen. She is Rhoda, the long-suffering partner of mad poet Samson Shillitoe. I have met Shillitoes, and they all dream of owning a Rhoda, but today such a creature has to be ordered by mail from the Philippines, because they ain't makin' em any more round here. Rhoda runs after Shillitoe, shouting, then she runs after a shrink, shouting, then she runs after Shillitoe, shouting, some more. Finally, she tells him she's pregnant and he socks her in the head. In between, he beds several susceptible females who yearn for his life-force. Shillitoe never really exists, he's just Life Force write large, and Sean Connery blunders through the part just adequately. Rhoda is a fantasy, and Joanne Woodward --- well, I bet Joanne never pulls this movie off her shelf. The lovely Jean Seberg is totally wasted and delivers nothing except a rather titivating gusset-shot when her husband's friend tries to rape her. At least this movie pays lip-service to literature, but the sexism is too much to take.