It is a performances centric movie

Fantastic!

Absolutely brilliant

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Renee Taylor and Joe, I'm full of bologna, star in this film which they both wrote.What's all the excitement here? Basically, this is the story of 2 born-losers from totally dysfunctional families.They meet at a group therapy session. There is definite chemistry between them but all hell breaks loose when they go to his house and meet his Italian family.There is really superb acting here by Olympia Dukakis and Paul Sorvino, as Joe's parents. Outbursts at their table are quite common, but after all, it all seems to boil down to the differences in religion as the two never let go of the fact that Miss Taylor is Jewish.The scene at the Jewish funeral for Taylor's father was absolutely obnoxious.The therapy session seasons are comical, but if this is a biography, the two should not have let their dirty laundry out.

I haven't seen this film since it came out in 1971; my mouth dropped open. One of your reviewers said it is a virtual gem but that's wrong--nothing virtual about it, it's a REAL gem! Maybe the funniest, most intelligent, poignant, true-to-life film I've ever seen. Just a couple of scenes...As the film opens, Joseph Bologna is graduating from Brooklyn College (I think) and is standing, in gown and mortarboard, with his two proud, obviously much less educated Italian-American parents. Being a proud, prickly adolescent, he idiotically uses this joyous landmark family occasion to start a nasty argument in which he rants against his baffled parents, warning them of what is going to happen to people like them when people like him righteously rise up to end the wrongs they have been enduring. The topper is that the viewer notices he is wearing, under his gown, a necklace of shark's teeth, a la Black Panther terrorists (remember them?).Then we meet his girlfriend, Renee Taylor (in real life, co-writer and long-time wife). She is this neurotic, psychoanalytically-oriented, minimally talented, would-be actress. Also a pushy Jewish Brooklyn girl who is Bologna's greatest booster--and would-be wife. She has developed a high-concept (she thinks) act we see her perform in a smoky, low-ceiling Brooklyn dump of a night club. The act is a series of impersonations. Her gimmick is that at the beginning of each, she coyly asks the audience "Who am I?" After each impersonation she asks the audience who the subject was. No one knows the right answer. But, unaware of the magnitude of the disaster, she bravely soldiers on. It is riotously funny yet as painful as Chaplin's dinner in "The Gold Rush" in which, as the evening wears on, it becomes clear that his lovely female guests won't show up.Does anyone know how to buy a DVD of this extraordinary film by two geniuses?

I've loved this movie ever since I saw it when it came out. I have a tape, which is deteriorating, copied off Encore. In general, the film translates well to tape--the biggest loss are car scenes where two-shots become alternating one-shots, and the squabble outside the diner, a three shot in the theater (inscrutable dude leaning against store shutters), now mostly a two-shot, which really removes a lot of the dry wit. I'm writing this because I see that the DVD has been released on September 28 for $4.95, but I haven't found any information on who released it, where I can get it, or anything else. Does someone out there know the answer? I'd like to buy a replacement for my old tape and copies for my friends. Letterbox would be great! But I won't hold my breath.

Great comedy is rarer than the unicorn. Why keep this funniest of funny films from us? How about the initial scene with the encounter group and the hyper-anxiety frazzled to the bone woman complaining about the toilet that has leaked for years on end and has driven her far beyond mad. To which another male group participant meekly offers, "Did you try jiggling the handle?"