Health

Never released theatrically in Britain, and widely considered as exemplifying the trap into which Altman's free-wheeling, loosely structured social comedies were sooner or later destined to fall, Health none the less has its admirers who claim that the movie's incidental jokes justify the thinness of the storyline. It's about a health foods convention in Florida, where leading lights from the yoghurt and museli industries are competing for the presidency of the national organisation. Jackson does her butch number, complete with cigar; Bacall plays an 83-year-old virgin (!); Garner contributes his engagingly wry Rockford persona; Burnett and Gibson are reliably wacky. But Altman's character-based, semi-improvised plotting, so successful in Nashville, misses its target more often than it scores.