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Bookmark this pageThe Fortune (1974)
Director: Mike Nichols
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
This starts promisingly as a sardonic comedy about an absurd ménage-à-trois, the mechanics of sex in the '20s, and the men's bewilderment about matters female. Beatty and Nicholson, as the sleazy lounge lizard and halfwit accomplice who conspire to run away with an heiress, send up their own images as though indulging a private joke, but still manage a couple of delirious moments. Their flight west (incognito, but with Nicholson constantly drawing attention to them) throws away its gags shamelessly, but once in California lethargy settles in. The film becomes almost static, a series of stagy, glossy tableaux: such lack of momentum may be an adequate assessment of the characters' limited capacity for development, but it has a disastrous effect on the film's pacing. Events degenerate into miscalculated farce and underline Nichols' continuing slick superficiality. Adrien Joyce's much hacked-about script sounds as though it was once excellent: a pity everyone treats it so off-handedly.Author: CPe
User reviews of this film
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- mr.mike said...
- Posted on Jan 07 2008 18:30 Slightly better than "Ishtar" and "Goin' South"
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Cast & crew
Director: Mike Nichols
Producer: Mike Nichols, Don Devlin
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Stockard Channing, Florence Stanley, Richard B Shull, Tom Newman, Scatman Crothers, Dub Taylor full cast
Genre(s): Comedy
Duration: 88 mins
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