Scruples
Scruples
| 25 February 1980 (USA)
SEASON & EPISODES
  • 1
  • Reviews
    TrueHello

    Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

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    Fairaher

    The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

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    Doomtomylo

    a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

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    BeSummers

    Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

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    JonathanWalford

    Filmed in 1979, this is great to watch for the high fashions but otherwise, this is truly awful from start to finish. Obviously created to take advantage of the success of the burgeoning nighttime prime-time soap opera movement of the late 70s that Dallas had tapped, Scruples looks rushed into production with an especially bad script and director. I'm not sure what is worst - characters falling in love at the drop of a hat or a murderous male nurse who the main character refuses to help the police capture... Most puzzling is the title - scruples, which implies there are moral dilemmas for the characters to contend with. If there is I don't know what those were... but watch it for the clothes - they're great!

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    justhanginin

    with this movie, a truly wonderful mini-series why is this not yet on DVD, Lindsay Wagner is the queen of the mini-series of that era. I would really like to be able to find this particular mini-series for my own personal collection of this fabulous actress. Lindsay Wagner is the most versatile actress of her time, she can play any role that she needs to, she has you believing in her role, and she can bring any story to the screen. I would like to see more of her films and mini-series brought to DVD. There is not a lot of people who wouldn't love to see this and other movies of Lindsay Wagners brought to the DVD collection. I do have some but would really like to own this one,

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    dwr246

    This is the only Danielle Steele adaptation I've ever watched, and I rather enjoyed it because of Lindsay Wagner. Perhaps because Steele herself has said she never bought Wagner as Billie, I've never been interested in any of the others. Still, I thought this one came to life pretty well.The plot centers on three main characters: Billy (Lindsay Wagner), a plain young woman who is a poor relation of a rich family; Spider Elliot (Barry Bostwick), a roguish photographer; and Valentine O'Neil (Marie-France Pissier), an audacious, but unknown designer. Billy's story is the rise from poor relation of a rich family to wife, and later widow, of powerful and rich businessman, Ellis Ikehorn (Efram Zimbalist, Jr.). After Ellis' death, she opens her own boutique, Scruples, which is how her life intersects with Spider and Valentine. Later she meets up with film director, Vito Orsini (Nick Mancuso), and helps give his career a boost. Spider is a photographer, who has a habit of sleeping with his models. Valentine lives across the hall from him. Sparks fly between them from the first, but it takes the whole movie for them to realize their attraction to each other (plus a little help from Spider's mother, who has to point it out to him). Spider's relationship with up and coming actress Melanie Adams (Kim Catrall) helps her get her first big break, but when she starts getting out of hand, Spider is the only one who can reel her in. In the meantime, Valentine is first pursued by a designer who is using her to hide his homosexuality, something she finds out in a particularly nasty way, and then pursued by corporate lawyer Josh Hillman (Robert Reed), whose passionless pursuit of her eventually fails. Will this trio find happiness while turning Scruples into a commercial success? Typical soap opera fare, where everything is larger than life, and people are surprisingly slow to pick up on the obvious. Particularly hard to swallow is the rapidity with which people claim to be falling in love. I can buy that they would bed each other as quickly as they do, but love usually takes a little more time. But then, the movie wouldn't be much fun if it were more realistic.The acting is okay. Wagner gives her usual committed performance, and makes us like her character. Zimbalist gives a polished performance of a suave and charming man. Bostwick's befuddlement works for the character. Mancuso is also charming in his short screen time. Reed is wooden, and his declarations of love for Valentine just aren't believable. Pissier is annoyingly condescending at times. Graham bristles with malice. Catrall is fabulous as the innocent who quickly learns the ropes. Gene Tierney turns in a nice performance as a lecherous gossip columnist, whose attentions are not turned where you might expect them to be. And Gavin McLeod nicely sheds his good guy image as a nasty studio executive.It's not great movie making. But it is campy fun, and that makes it worth watching.

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    gonnabechef

    This movie is truly, truly awful at times - but has flashes of brilliance. On the plus side, Barry Bostwick's performance is, more often than not, fun to watch. There are scenes that are so well written, you'll swear the production team included a competent (and, sadly, part-time) script doctor. You can also laugh heartily at the incredibly earnest way in which the characters continually fall in love at the drop of a hat. On the not-so-good side: The first African-American actor shows up after about an hour and a half, and he's a waiter serving drinks at a party. Ouch. Also, this film has the dubious distinction of containing the worst car chase I have ever seen.When the writing is good, it's pretty good; when it's bad, it's amazingly bad. Scruples is amazingly bad about 90% of the time. The American Dairy Association would save a fortune if it could harness the power of this much cheese.

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