Excellent, Without a doubt!!

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Quite fabulous, actually, and very well done how one man unintentionally changes the lives of so many people. It truly is laugh-out-loud hilarious at times. A very good cast does a wonderful job in creating a feel-good comedy classic! The dog, Matisse, steals the show, though!

Paul Mazursky's southern California update of Jean Renoir's 1932 comedy 'Boudo Saved From Drowning' stars Nick Nolte as a skid row derelict rescued from attempting suicide in the backyard swimming pool of upscale executive Richard Dreyfuss. Installed quite suddenly in the lap of luxury, Nolte begins exerting unusual influence over his benefactors, but the ambiguity of the character and his intentions is needlessly destroyed in the final scenes. Mazursky is on familiar ground for most of the movie, as always at his best when mocking the lifestyles of the rich and trendy, but it's a shame that he felt compelled to combine scenes of near sublime social satire with indiscriminate numbskull farce. Someone should have told him that seeing people fall fully clothed into a swimming pool (as most of the cast is required to do at the film's climax) is only funny when you're there to witness it firsthand.

One of the charms of Down and Out is it's "dated" quality. Paul Mazursky has a great talent for capturing an era in popular culture and some of his movies, such as Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice are incredible historical records of their times as well as durable entertainment. Down and Out jump-started Richard Dreyfuss' flagging career, as well as Bette Midler's as a movie actress and Little Richard as a popular singer. This is something modern audiences probably don't know, just a historical side note. Nick Nolte prepared for the part by actually living on the street and not bathing for a month. An actor who takes his parts seriously.Another fun quality of Mazursky's films is that he puts his friends and family into his movies. Don Muhich, the dog psychiatrist, was Paul's psychotherapist in the '70s and has that role in two other Mazursky movies (B&C&T&A and Blume in Love)

I visited a deli on Rodeo Drive just before this movie was released and was staggered by the uniformity in grooming. It was like a small-town high school in the 1950s. All the women looked alike. Beautiful. Their long hair fluffy, each strand curled like Top Ramen. (Okay, okay. I lack the vocabulary. Excuse me.) They all seemed to wear the same dark rough-knit long-sleeved sweaters, tight Levis, and leather boots. This is what one kills for? The privilege of wearing a uniform? Paul Mazursky has got the milieu down pat and he skewers it. I haven't seen the French original but, though it may be different, it's probably not funnier than this version.I'll skip the story except to say that it's about a homeless man (Nick Nolte) who is taken in by a wealthy dysfunctional family, and he straightens everyone out by giving them what they want -- as he puts it. Some gags are funnier than others, helped along by Mazursky's direction. When the spoiled, bored wife has an orgasm with the bum, she screams so loudly that the neighbors a block away turn to listen. A flock of pigeons is frightened out of its tree. I can't think of another movie that features a psychiatric veterinarian.The climax, unfortunately, is more silly than funny, as if nobody could think of an ending that would stop what's already gone by. Mazursky had the same problem with "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice," at the end of which the sting of genuine phoniness gives way completely to fantasy and everyone does a ring dance to "What The World Needs Now Is Love..." In "Down and Out in Beverley Hills," a party ends with the accidental setting off of a fireworks display and everyone jumping into the pool. You almost wince at the desperation behind this scene.And then, in a denouement, when the bum decides to leave with the family dog, the whole family and their servants follow him into the mews behind the mansion and beg him with their eyes to come back, which he does quickly enough. Sure, it's a happy ending, but just exactly what is going to happen when Nolte returns after he's been exposed as a lying, manipulative, lazy scuzzbag who has given the son permission to be a transvestite and has been doing both his host's wife and daughter? All he had with him when he first entered the family was a pocket full of rocks. This time he's got a lot of baggage.Still, it's a light-hearted and engaging comedy, and none of the acting hurts a bit. Aside from the doggy's psychiatrist, I thought Little Richard was the most memorable character, especially when he complains about how much longer it takes the police to respond to HIS emergency alarm than his white neighbors'. (The dog chases him away, tearing at his golden robe.) Dreyfus is quite good too, reminding me of his performance as the exasperated and finally mad psychiatrist in "What About Bob?" Mazursky wisely avoided any attempt to insinuate overt signs of "seriousness" into the screenplay. A comedy doesn't need dark undertones to be successful, and this is successful.