Best movie of this year hands down!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Writer-director Blake Edwards vents his frustrations on Hollywood (via Hollywood!) in telling slim story of a filmmaker on the edge after critics have trashed his latest family musical. His solution is to reshoot much of the picture as a blue movie...and have the G-rated star expose her breasts. Great cast struggles through what might have been a sharp satire of Tinsel Town; instead, the film is pseudo-cynical, putting down the movie business (and audiences) while catering to the lowest common denominator (are the changes made to the movie actually meant to appeal to the mass market? Ironically, the most effervescent part of the film is the opening musical number, which is then lambasted for us!). The characters are mostly ciphers, talking all at once, and Harry Stradling, Jr.'s soupy cinematography makes the whole thing look like bad cable. * from ****

One of the curious things about S.O.B. is that while it has an incredibly good name cast, there is no real star of the film. Julie Andrews gets first billing because she's the director/producer's wife and after her William Holden has the biggest marquee name so he's second. But if there's a star in this film it's Richard Mulligan because it's on his troubles that the plot of S.O.B. turns.Mulligan came in for a lot of criticism as the frantic film producer who after a string of hits, totally loses his mind. So much so that his movie star wife, Julie Andrews, is leaving him. The first half of the film involve some hilarious attempts at suicide, the best being when he falls through the floor of his beach house trying to hang himself and flattens nosy gossip columnist Loretta Swit. Julie Andrews is basically cast as a movie star like Julie Andrews who gained her fame and popularity with wholesome entertainment like Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. During an orgy/party that his good friend, cheerfully hedonistic director William Holden has at Mulligan's house while on suicide watch, Mulligan gets a brainstorm and decides to redo his last G rated film as soft core porn with Julie Andrews displaying her glockenspiels. Mulligan gets crazier and crazier as the film now becomes a battle between him and studio head Robert Vaughn for control of the film. It all ends quite wildly indeed. A lot of people say Richard Mulligan overacts and chews the scenery. But that's what the part calls for. He no more does it here than Robin Williams or Jonathan Winters at their zaniest. A little fine tuning in his performance might have helped, but the director who should have done this was busy elsewhere.Instead of Blake Edwards doing it himself, he should have begged Billy Wilder to do this film. S.O.B. is the greatest Billy Wilder film that Billy Wilder never directed.Besides those mentioned such luminaries as Shelley Winters, Robert Webber, Marisa Berenson, Stuart Margolin, Craig Stevens, Paul Stewart, Larry Hagman and Robert Loggia play various Hollywood types. But the best by far in the cast is Robert Preston as the Doctor Feelgood to the stars. It's a variation on the conman Harold Hill he played in The Music Man only he's far more cynical. When Preston is on screen, he dominates the film.S.O.B. was the farewell performance of William Holden. Knowing the senseless way Holden died after completing the film, you twinge when you hear him cheerfully tell Richard Mulligan how he drank enough booze to kill a dozen healthy livers. Still S.O.B. was a good film to leave on for him.I enjoy what Blake Edwards did with the talented bunch he assembled for this film. It would have been perfect if Billy Wilder had done it though.

Miserable, obnoxious, depressing, lazy, and unbearably filthy excuse for a comedy with ne'er a laugh in it. In many ways, it resembles a bad dream.Everything in this picture is aesthetically and conceptually hideous - even the characters' names ("Felix Farmer") - and though Edwards presumably intended S.O.B. as a grand slam against mainstream Hollywood, his sense of humor here is so off that the film immediately becomes physically repellent - it turns one's stomach... again, and again, and again.Richard Mulligan has been quite enjoyable on the small screen (in 'Empty Nest,' and in his brief appearances on 'The Golden Girls') but his performance here is wretched. It stands comparison with his somnambulism in another lousy film, 'Scavenger Hunt,' from two years prior.But the worst aspect of S.O.B. is undoubtedly its complete implausibility. The film within the film, 'Night Wind,' is so ridiculous that it seems impossible - and insults the audience. Are bad films made in Hollywood? Every day. But never one this terrible. Just how unfunny is S.O.B.? I laughed more at 'Ironweed.' I can't think of any director in history, American or otherwise, who is as uneven as Blake Edwards. Hard to believe that the same individual responsible for such classics as 'The Days of Wine and Roses,' 'A Shot in the Dark,' 'Experiment in Terror,' 'Darling Lili,' 'Micki and Maude,' and 'That's Life' could churn out crap on par with this and 'The Trail of the Pink Panther.'

From the opening scene to the final fade out, this movie, for it's genre, is as good as it gets.I noticed when they gave Blake Edwards his lifetime achievement award at the Oscars this past year, they did NOT mention S.O.B. amongst his list of films. Interesting. Could it be that this scathingly witting, brilliant, intelligent ... and, oh yes, HILARIOUS ... film cut too close to home?The cast is top drawer and everyone is at the top of his or her game. From Julie Andrews, playing a delicious parody of herself, to William Holden, who in the course of the movie declaims his own obituary, to Robert Preston (not a shyster ... he is a QUACK), it is wonderful. I'm sure the Hollywood Power Players hated it. Unless you are One Of Them, you will probably love it. It's great.