Purely Joyful Movie!

Overrated

Lack of good storyline.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Felix Farmer (Richard Mulligan) is a highly successful producer. He goes crazy when his latest release is a colossal bomb. The star is his wife Sally Miles (Julie Andrews) with a squeaky clean G-rated image. She wants a divorce but her team talks her out of it. Felix snaps out of it and buys Sally's next movie intending to turn it into an erotic musical. Sally is angry at Felix for using all of their money and reluctantly takes the risk of doing a nudie. It becomes a highly sought after property.It's a bit scattered in the beginning following a lot of characters. The heart of this is a dark biting satire. The comedy isn't always the funniest but it takes really sharp jabs at Hollywood. I was starting to really like this movie and then it takes a turn into Weekend at Bernie's territories. I love Blake Edwards taking dark comedic turns on Hollywood but some of it doesn't work.

I "discovered" this movie on cable in the mid-late 80's and immediately fell in love with it. It's witty, scathingly funny and some of it is so rapid-fire that it requires viewing multiple times to catch all that is being said. I heard some Hollywood type espousing once that "stereotypes are only stereotypes because they're true." We've all seen the stereotypical, ego-centric Hollywood agents and other sycophants portrayed in various movies/shows/etc. but rarely have they all been assembled in one hysterical place and portrayed by such a star-studded rogues gallery! Robert Preston is my favorite as the perpetually drunk/stoned quack doctor, and William Holden's last performance as the aged, burned-out director is particularly poignant when he gives a brief speech of "encouragement" to Felix (Richard Mulligan) about consciously trying to kill himself with drugs, booze and sexual excesses for the past 40 years. So some of the "moments of truth" are not just realizations about the business itself, but about the actors playing the roles. An all-around great movie.

Blake Edwards, "S.O.B.," is one of the funniest satires of the vicious machine known as Hollywood ever made. Felix Farmer (Richard Mulligan)is one of Hollywood's most popular directors. All his films were box-office hits and everyone loved him...until his latest family oriented film is a HUGE flop. Farmer's life then goes down the toilet. His wife Sally Miles, America's Sweetheart(Julie Andrews),leaves him. Felix has a nervous breakdown, which gives in to suicidal tendencies. His 3 friends (William Holden, Robert Preston, and Robert Webber)try to keep his body and soul together. It's during a party at Felix's house (That turns into a orgy)that Felix comes up with an idea to save his flop: buy back his film and turn it into a sexcapade, which includes a nude scene with his estranged wife.Throughout the film, you see the backstabbing that goes on when Felix is re-working his film: studio heads that try to steal his film when it looks like it will be a sure-fire hit, assistants that try to get their foot in the door, youth pushing out the old, and sensationalism is the norm. It's also incredibly sad because it also shows that the Hollywood machine has no mercy: stars and directors are put onto pedestals, only for those pedestals to be cruelly yanked from underneath them (The once-famous star that drops dead on a beach, and remains on the beach for a few days, unknown and unloved). Felix soon becomes a victim of the Hollywood machine when they underhandedly steal his film, and goes through desperate measures to get it back. The result turns into one of the most poignant endings I have ever seen.The lines in the film are sharp enough to draw blood. Robert Preston practically steals the film away from the fact that you see Julie Andrews pretty much kill her "Mary Poppins" image by showing her boobs, swearing and being a total witch! This would make a great double feature with "The Player." Check it out!

I first saw S.O.B. in its original theatrical release in 1981, when I was 15 (yes, we snuck in). Not having cultivated a taste for dark comedy yet, I thought the film was in extremely bad taste, including the "defloration" of Julie Andrews.Well, 24 years later (was it REALLY that long ago?), I picked up a used and badly battered copy of the videotape at a junk sale and watched it again. How could I have completely missed such subtlety? It's "Sunset Boulevard" on laughing gas, complete with William Holden in his last screen appearance.The setting is then-contemporary Hollywood and its environs, which in and of itself adds a few unintended laughs. After a big-budget family film flops, and its director's suicide attempt and nervous breakdown are treated with barbiturates, the director seizes upon the brilliant idea to re-cut the film to suit the adult tastes of the average viewing audience.As in "Boulevard", "The Player" and myriad other movies about the inner workings of the film industry, a tapestry of cross-allegiances begins its delicate ballet, first to blackball the errant director, then to woo his wholesome actress-singer wife into a nude scene, and finally, when the re-cut film is a smash, to steal the film from the director via his estranged and newly emboldened wife.The jokes still work, and since Hollywood's only changes since shooting wrapped seem to be cosmetic, the wry commentary on the selfishness and fickleness of the film industry and its larger players still holds true.