The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

Adaptation of Mordecai Richler's serio-comic novel about a whizz-kid's no-pause-for-thought dash for the top, with Dreyfuss, playing Duddy like the kid we were all at school with who was already working on his first ulcer, confirming his earlier promise in Dillinger and American Graffiti. Set in the Jewish community of 1948 Montreal, the film has everybody parading their obsessions up front in a manner that too often makes for easy pigeon-holing (voice-of-conscience grandfather, torn Christian girlfriend, etc). Such characterisation serves the film's comic intentions better than its message, most notably in the performances of Denholm Elliott as the drunken English film director requisitioned by Duddy to film Bar Mitzvahs, and Randy Quaid as an innocent simpleton.