Benutzerrezensionen

It seemed a bit dark in '77, but today it may even cheer you up! It takes at least a half-hour to understand what's going on in this movie so here's a head start:

The guy with the hat and goatee (Carroll) is a song-writer/playboy and son of a millionaire. Watch him because he wants to sleep with most of the women in the movie. The crazy woman in the taxi is married to... is that really Harvey Keitel? Yes. You'll never believe it! He is the employee of the millionaire who is, incidentally, Uncle Jessie from the Dukes of Hazard.

If I were Carroll I would have gone for Sissy Spacek, who likes to clean house topless throughout the movie. But he still makes enough tracks to be considered a hero of the sexual revolution.

The music throughout the movie sounds a little like Dan Hill, but it gets you in a good 70's mood so that you can enjoy the atmosphere this movie creates. Look for Sissy Spacek's pants that match the wallpaper and definitely check out Harvey Keitel's pipe!

Well acted but the movie just drones on about people that aren't as smart as they think they are. I lived in L. A. for 10 years and worked at Paramount Studios. I've met these people. Most of them are boring, self-obsessed people., Hutton being the worst of them.

If you saw this film when it came out, the cultural atmosphere would have no nostalgic impact on you, even if you lived in L.A., because it was obviously present day for you.

Which brings us to the main thing that so many of us like about the movie. We like to take in the clothes, cars, landscapes and musical vibe of a bygone era; one which we may have lived for and now long for. For younger people, there may be a fascination for the way part of the world was before they were born.

I was there in L.A. at that time. As a very wide-eyed and impressionable teenybobber, I was standing in the background watching the grown ups and the older kids living out their 70s lifestyle. I was just a tad too young to join. My favorite line in the film is "Daydreams and Traffic," uttered by Keith Carradine, repeating what his blonde real estate agent said L.A. is all about. I totally agree with that vibe. It's addictive in an odd sort of way.

Character development is vitally important to a film, and this one is short on it. For me, at some point, a character has to explain why they are the way there are. Or at least it must come out in related dialogue. It didn't here for the most part.

I say "for the most part," because we do at least see through couplings and facial expressions, and monlogues, that they are lonely people who are not getting the love and devotion they had hoped for from their life partners and families.

Yes, these are mostly shallow,self-indulgent losers, who characterize the worst aspects of their era and area. But it's o.k. to tell a story about losers, if they are the types you are familiar with. Like another reviewer, I too give the makers credit for not including movie people. That would be too easy and too clichéd.

I loved the Richard Baskin music. His slightly off-key delivery made it better than it would be if it were perfect. Songwriters are not necessarily supposed to be great singers. They sing their own stuff with true feeling however, since they know the ethos behind the music better than anyone else. Of course in this movie, maybe the Keith Carradine character was supposed to have written the music.

The nudity did nothing for me. The context was not sexy. I'm not a big fan of big boobs on a super skinny body. I like proportion.

Even though I am a conservative person, I do often wish I could have lived as an adult during a period when everyone was open to one night stands. I love the idea of bonding with a waitress and enjoying an evening together with no strings. I know that makes me a bit of a hypocrite.

I guess I envied the Carradine character's unearned millions, his cool house, his talent, and his ability to bed whomever he chose, whenever he chose. Enough said.

Despite a fabulous cast led by Alan Rudolph regular Keith Carradine, this vacant, flat movie with virtually no plot is easy to classify as a lesser "Nashville" set on the West Coast. I mean, what are the major happenings, Denver Pyle makes Harvey Keitel a partner? Uh . . . that was about it, there's a party.

So, why the heck do I like this so much? I've seen it maybe 30 times, even though it's unavailable on any media, at the moment, at least, and every time I watch it all the way through to the last shot of Carridine looking sideways at the camera. I saw it when it first came out, and it stayed in my mind for decades until it started to show up on the movie channels. I can't explain it, the music is nice (particularly "One Night Stands" and "Welcome to L.A."), but the conversation isn't particularly clever (compare "Choose Me" for example). I can't really defend the film, how could I? There's no message, no plot, no outstanding performances to champion . . . I don't know, I just enjoy watching it. Beats me.

In one of the first experiments with digital photography, the head of Geraldine Chaplin was digitally positioned on the body of a model ( a former Penthouse Pet) for her nude scene to avoid embarrassing her father (Charlie Chaplin) prior to his demise. Although she was anxious to perform in the nude, director Alan Rudolph feared the loss of financing if Lion's Gate Films and producer Robert Altman fell into disfavor with the World Famous Film Icon. Ultimately, Geraldine Chaplin performed the scene in a nude body stocking and it took almost an entire month, using antiquated production equipment, to digitally transfer the nude body to the head of Chaplin. In turn, this put the production way overbudget and as a result, John Wayne was replaced by Denver Pyle as the father of Keith Carradine.

"Welcome To LA" is a dated film involving ten characters whose only shared trait seems to be loneliness. The movie plays like a moody tone poem, and there are no comedic, dramatic, or action-filled sequences... just a bunch of urban sun-bums looking lost and hopelessly mellow.

Keith Carradine redefines the term "slacker" for the Me Generation, as he wanders around LA with a soul patch having intercourse with a score of women while never once changing his expression. He's supposedly an artist, with troubles in his romantic life and familial relationships, but he is so centered, so serene, so placid, that he comes off more as a Buddhist monk or Jedi Knight.

He has occasional flashbacks to his former lover played by Diahnne Abbott, and I have to believe that no man would ever forget this woman. In her wordless seconds of screen time here, just like her tiny roles in "Taxi Driver" and "New York, New York," you can see that this is one of the most gorgeous, sexual women ever to walk the Earth... she's got the jungle in her, and this is the type of woman men kill other men to be with. She was my favorite part of the movie.

Between stories involving the grating Geraldine Chaplin and the sexy Sally Kellerman we keep cutting back to Richard Baskin as a singer/songwriter recording his album in a studio. These songs and the montages cut around them- which were presumably meant to be the heart of the film- are rendered unlistenable by the foul, nails-on-blackboard voice of Baskin. The fact that this man was ever allowed behind a microphone is a crime against the eardrum. Instead of the soulful, contemplative center of the story, we get a talentless drone warbling clichéd lyrics while the leads bemoan their fate. Nothing makes the heart ache like sunshine.

The only other bright spot is Sissy Spacek, a woman of unbelievable beauty and depth, who effortlessly steals the show whenever she's on screen. Ms. Spacek can be a naive little girl one minute, an intellectual adult the next, and a lusty sexpot only seconds later. If you love her like I do check out "Violets Are Blue" in which she plays a woman so irresistible you cannot help but fall in love.

"Welcome To LA" is supposed to show the isolation and loneliness that exists even in the hedonistic, superficial world of La-La Land... the trouble is we wind up with a movie that confirms our worst beliefs about the place: These characters have no right to be this bummed... it's shallow, narcissistic self-pity. But it makes for a great late-night movie.

Grade: C

A gauzy, perfume advertisement-styled depiction of Los Angeles as a carousel of lonely, emotionally needy people has a great cast of actors, yet is so self-conscious about its theme that it leaves everyone wilting in a sterile vacuum. Debuting director Alan Rudolph, who also penned the screenplay, is so narcissistic over these hapless characters that self-absorption is just a starting point--does he think these people are reflective of modern human lives? Keith Carradine plays a songwriter whom women want but can't get (he's mired in alienation); Geraldine Chaplin is an unloved housewife who roams the streets; Lauren Hutton (at her most attractive) is a photographer specializing in pictures of empty rooms, and so on. Rudolph and producer Robert Altman, trying--one assumes--for a West Coast "Nashville", take the edge off everything, so that the movie is a smoothly banal experience, passive and bland. Despite a minute or two of honest emotional despair, the film quickly becomes a pity party for the apathetic. *1/2 from ****

This film, Alan Rudolph's first and BEST (along with Choose Me 7 years later) had gotten a bum rap. Some people hate the music of Richard Baskin or think the variety of characters are a pretentious and boring lot. I think just the opposite! Harvey Keitel was never more amusing and pathetic. Sissy Spacek is a doll (in probably her easiest role) and brighter than some would think. Geraldine Chaplin is finally put to good use. Keith Carradine seemed to relax more after his Nashville experience and is very subtle. Sally Kellerman at her most beautiful and hungry. Viveca Lindfors creates a memorable "older" woman and John Considine is hilarious. Denver Pyle supplies stability.

After a while the music grows on you, when you finally actually hear what he's saying. Needless to say, I'm a big Altman fan, and once in a while Rudolph hits the mark as well. A 9 out of 10. Best performance = Sally Kellerman. Worth a visit as L.A. is explored and exposed in a new light!

Wow, what a bunch of drivel. Self absorbed Hollywood celebrities acting like they are all that. It can't get any worse than this, bad acting, bad directing, bad singing, bad lighting, just bad Los Angeles.

I saw this movie late at night. I was sitting in front of the TV with headphones on because my girlfriend was already sleeping. Although I had to sit in a rather uncomfortable position in front of the TV and it was already 2.00 in the morning I was fascinated from the beginning and completely forgot about being tired and just wanted to enjoy the atmosphere of the film.

I loved this movie, maybe because I have a fascination for California and LA myself. I don't have much else to say which hasn't been posted in the other comments but the I never have read so different opinions on any movie. There seem to be a great amount of people who love it (like me) and some who think its the worst film of all time. It reminds me of the way people talk about LA itself.

They way this film polarizes makes it an outstanding piece of art, definitely worth seeing - like the city itself.

As I said - one of my favourites - cant wait to see it again on TV.

You can't help but compare it to the other big L.A. Statement Movies--Altman's SHORT CUTS, and P.T. Anderson's MAGNOLIA. I like Rudolph's way better than either of those: it's gentler, humbler, more observant, truer. Limiting himself to a dozen or so L.A. habitues, Rudolph starts with one funny, correct move: no movie people. The dances of disconnection, attempted connection, failed connection, and--stunning!--connection accomplished are as tender and as finely, thinly observed as Rudolph has ever pulled off. So many beautiful moments here: the best comes when Keith Carradine, as a dupe of his sleepy-stud character from NASHVILLE, breaks up a romance to go on a healing mission with a half-crazy housewife (Geraldine Chaplin). When his philandering with her rescues her marriage during a tense phone call in his apartment, Carradine's face spreads with gladness and relief. The rightness and the unexpectedness of the moment is fantastic. Even more than the goofy, enjoyably romantic CHOOSE ME, this is the one where Rudolph got it all right. And no other movie captures L.A.'s peculiar loneliness like this one: he doesn't hype anything or play to the tourist mentality--something that could not always be said for his mentor, and the movie's producer, Robert Altman.

Rudolph made a few decent films. This is not one of them. In fact, I'd say it is the worst Rudolph movie I've seen. It's like some kind of third rate wannabe Altman movie, which isn't surprising considering Altman produced it.

The characters are all incredibly shallow, annoying flakes. It's so bad it's almost like a parody of flakey 70's people. They sit around and smoke 24/7 and sleep with each other at the drop of a hat. They have the charisma of a wet rag, but they all think they are the greatest things since sliced bread. I really can't fathom how Altman or Rudolph thought this was good. It's almost like it was made by an alien from a distant star system, who was trying to approximate the behavior of empty humans during the 1970s.

Keith Carradine looks ridiculous with the goatee and bowtie, but every woman he meets wants to jump in bed with him, even though he has the charisma of a sponge. Another irritating aspect of his character was the fact that he was swigging booze whenever he would drive around town. Then there's Harvey Keitel and his idiotic pipe, and his wife Geraldine Chaplin and her coughing fits.

I have to make special mention of the godawful music in the film. This is some of the most worthless, annoying singer-songwriter crud I've ever heard. No wonder Richard Baskin's career never went anywhere, his music and singing are annoying beyond belief. It was like a cliched parody of coked-up 70s Geffen singer-songwriters. I felt like kicking in the TV every time he opened his mouth. And those lyrics! Sometimes I wonder if Altman and Rudolph deliberately did their best to try and make some of their movies as irritating as possible. I really find it unfathomable how anyone with a working brain could give this movie a good review.

The protégé of Robert Altman, Alan Rudolph tried to copy the formula of Nashville and failed.

In Welcome to L. A., soulless characters deal with relationship issues. All the women in the movie hook up with one man.

There were a few useless characters, especially Lauren Hutton's' character. I believe she just put into the movie as eye candy.

Keith Carradine played the same character from Nashville.

The father and prodigal son dynamic wasn't fully explored.

Denver Pyle (whom I remember as playing Uncle Jesse on The Dukes of Hazard) deserved better.

The only interesting about the film was the married couple's(Geraldine Chapline and Harvey Keitel) domestic issues. I wish the entire movie was about them.

The music was awful!

i am in love with this film and i cannot explain why.

my uncle thinks i'm a nutcase for loving this film so much. but i can't help it.

People diss the music. I love it. The ambiance. The swingin' seventies. Sissy Spacek. Sally Kellermen, so vulnerable yet strangely sexy. Keith. This film endeared me to Keith Carradine, whom I now see precious little of.

Such a great character... sure, a little pretentiously boho, but the poor guy has a father that can't express his love...

The Greta Garbo scene with Geraldine Chaplin. Classic. The slow act of leaning onto the pool table; her tortured, self-absorbed, self-pitying character, intriguing, passive aggressive, unable to express herself, caught in a loveless relationship with a young Harvey Keitel, who was great in this flick. Slimy. The way he talks to Spacek about taking the relationship far beyond your average man/ woman relationship. Wow.

Nice tempo, too. A bit languid. The film is more about atmosphere than fast tempo plot. The bits with Carol Barber chugging back "steamboat", watching Eric Wood play his songs, sinking into the background, while his dad's young girlfriend (who takes pictures of corners - classic) eyes him; intrigued.

Swingin' sex, corny yet endearing music ("Livin' in a city of one night stands, sleepin' next to pity and it's crazy"), and Keith Carradine with a love patch. What more could you want?

A film that is easy to hate, in many respects, but I just can't do it. It's a guilty pleasure. A guilty, delightful pleasure.

This is a bad movie. It wouldn't be worth saying so, except that Alan Rudolph is capable of making moderately entertaining movies (The Moderns, Mrs. Parker, Equinox), and even one very good movie (Choose Me). For a movie about people to work, the characters must either be nice or interesting--an ordinary person may charm us, and even a villain may fascinate us. But this movie has about a dozen characters, none of whom give us any reason either to like them or hate them or be interested in them. A few are given artificial eccentricities, but we can see through the false effort. They wander aimlessly through random meaningless sexual couplings in suburban Los Angeles, accompanied by an unremittingly dreary soundtrack. This is a one-note movie, in which the one note is a sour one.

This film has a users' rating of precisely the mean average between the lowest of "1" and the highest of "10" -- "5.5." Put me at the very top. Charting the interaction among the sizable cast of characters would look like one of those illustrations of the structure of a molecule or chemical compound. Everybody interacts with multiple others, often in different relationships, and occasionally with the knowledge of, say, the other's spouse or significant other, usually not. Keith Caradine's character certainly knows well his father, and his father's prime business right-hand man, played by Harvey Keitel - but neither of these is aware of his romantic interaction with Dad's girl friend or Harvey's wife. Keith has a lot on his hands in this film, between all of the women interested in him, and his music. Sissy Spacek cleans for him (topless yet, and is one of the few females with whom he is platonic); Sally Kellerman is interested in Keith, and Sally's husband is interested in Sissy (oh, and Harvey is interested in Sally)... and on, and on. Thoroughly fascinating film, with Altman's fingerprints all over it, and (in my opinion, to the contrary of some others) great music. An interesting romp, and the Carradine character is so strange, he completes the full circle away from "normal" so that he almost gets back there, and becomes someone with whom you can empathize.

This feels like a film by someone trying to imitate Robert Altman and failing spectacularly. This was a struggle to finish and had to turn the sound down whenever one of those horrible songs played. It was ear bleeding drek that I was not sure was intended to be a parody of this "style" of music that stank up music world or if it was supposed to be good. I hated every single character, except for Sissy Spacek who is always a charming presence. She drifts in out of this "story". About midway through I just gave up. These were hopelessly boring and vapid people who were never interesting enough to carry a film. I am familiar with Alan Rudolph's films and found them vastly better than this one. Apart from a briefly topless Sissy Spacek it is a wholly forgettable film. Three stars is a generous rating. It is a film of its time and now looks pretentious and to enamoured with it's quirky nature.

When Karen Hood (Geraldine Chaplin) tells Carroll Barber (Keith Carradine) "I love Greta Garbo," he responds with the slightly cryptic "Yeah, she's nice when you're by yourself."

Profound, but too offhand to be a predictable rejoinder. It's very striking, one of the most original of the film.

Especially do you get the flavour of the upper-middle-class world-weary young disappointed in Baskin's lyric:

"At first I loved your sweet complexion, your tawny cheeks and lip confections--they photographed you for your style.

your body held me for a while; you could disguise with such beguile

now lying her remembering it better than it used to be is loneliness, but it doesn't really matter now, I never really loved you much, I guess."

That's from the title song.

From "The Best Temptation of all" there is "there's so many bodies and scenes...so many faces and feelings...dreams...wet tasting dreams

when those silky infatuations come, enticin' me...invitin' me..excitin' me.."

The world of "bodies and pleasures" that was Michel Foucault's vision of the future of sexuality in the first volume of THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY was being lived out in L.A. in particular before he even wrote that it would come to this.

At a Malibu party where Carroll and his wealthy father Carl (marvelously played by Denver Pyle) confront each other, Carl's mistress Nona (Lauren Hutton) spends some stylized, posturing time with Carroll up the stairs overlooking the stylized party, the kind of party in stark white stylized modern LA houses where being comfortable must be impossible, and being controlled is an impossible necessity; and he says to her "Do you really care about that old man?" She says, knowing it won't do to say anything "less," "He sure seems to care a lot about me."

Earlier, before Carroll sees Susan (Viveca Lindfors) for the first time since his return, she says on the telephone "don't you want to see me?" and he says "I've seen you." As the older woman, somewhat desperately clinging to an unshared wish, she says "I've seen you too. I liked it."

To the love-and/or sex-starved real estate salesgirl Anne Goode (Sally Kellerman), Susan says, when she makes the arrangements for Carroll's apartment, "I pictured you plump and tiny with curly black hair--AGGRESSIVE. And here you are--soft and blonde and pretty." Anne, always trying to hard to please: "And here you are so beautiful."

Kellerman drives Carradine to his new Silverlake digs.

She says "this is Hollywood. I just love it. I don't know a thing about it, but I love it...(long pause)....does that sound like a line?...I didn't mean it to..I guess everything sounds like a line these days...Shameless, aren't I?...what are you thinking?....

Carradine: "About your shame."

************************************************************************

"People deceive themselves here, don't you think? Yes. And that's how they fall in love. And then, when everything is over, it's the other person that gets deceived. Am I right? Yeah. Van Nuys Boulevard...(long pause)..I don't need to be loved by anyone...I don't mind waiting...it's how you wait that's important, anyway..I think.. but everyone gets deceived...don't they..."

These are the opening lines of the film, which Chaplin intones in a cab going through L.A., riding all over it as she does every day, all dressed up in fur and pearl earrings and hat all for herself's own formality in the anonymity of a taxi ride.

I knew a number of people like this in 1976 and 1977. They were over-sophisticated and living in the strange limbo between the volatile, but vital 60's and the beginning of the carnage and sterization that began to open its fully tarnished flower with the Reagan era and has escalated to the deafening roar we have only 24 years later.

Bars were full of people who weren't on cellphones all the time.

They weren't ever on cell phones--even the ones you can still see.

Curious little artifact for those who wish to pin down a certain microcosm of Los Angeles subculture circa 1975. The clothes, the "pads", the attitudes are all pretty authentic in their shallow superciliousness. Who ever cared about these people? Possibly only Alan Rudolph & Robert Altman who made endless paeans to them.

I saw this movie in 1978 and I recall HATING it. Sissy Spacek was the only enjoyable performance. Much as I adore her, I wouldn't recommend watching this awful film just to see her open her Christmas present (as only she could do). Avoid seeing this one.

The wealthy "Carl" (Denver Pyle) is reluctantly estranged from his musician son "Carroll" (Keith Carradine) who is, himself, a rather introspective womaniser who has no interest in committing to any of the women who have touched his life as he philanders around Los Angeles. Quite what any of these women could ever see in this man is beyond me, but he seems to have them hooked and that's the excuse auteur Alan Rudolph uses to take us on a trip through his dirty linen, and boy is it absurd. Peppered by full-scale and over-produced ballads - complete with on-screen orchestra, we follow a series of uninteresting peccadilloes that bamboozle all the more because the likes of Harvey Keitel - his dad's factotum; Geraldine Chaplin, Lauren Hutton and Sissy Spacek have given this house-room. The latter of these household names stands out, I suppose, but she and her feather duster aren't really here anywhere near enough to give this meandering exercise in familial discord and self-indulgence any real sense of purpose. Bed-hopping can be a fun basis for a film if it's a comedy or if there is some depth to the story and/or the characterisations, but here it is if we are being presented with some amateur revolving-stage histrionics designed to alienate and disinterest us rather than engage. Who cares what happens to any of them? I didn't, sorry.

I saw this movie some years ago and never forgot it. I really like the way the characters are developed. They are quirky and flawed, but understandably human. It has an excellent sound track also which I found hauntingly flowed throughout the move and added to the story line. I recently saw another movie by Robert Altman called "Nashville" which again reminded me of "Welcome to LA". It has many of the same actors and the same piano player, Richard Baskin. Again I find the characters very interesting with interwoven plots as part of the story line. Just like real life we see the good and bad in people. I also enjoy the parady of typical character types. It is obvious but in my opinion, not overdone.

Aimless, pointless and heavy handed drama about several unlikeable people jumping in and out of the sack with each other. To paraphrase a quote from another (native) Los Angeleno "there's nothing wrong with any of them $100 won't fix".

Nobody really makes it out of these ensemble proceedings with their good name as intact as it was going in but Keith Carradine and Sissy Spacek do manage to find a little meat left on the bones of their poorly thought out characters and subsequently appear to be the only to people here actually have some some fun. Kellerman mopes around vacant eyed, Keitel is simply not believable as a company man toady, Hutton & Lindfors have nothing to do and Chaplin is a dime store sketch representation of mid 70s urban ennui. I believe she's meant to be the soul of the movie which is telling as the pall hanging over this film is all but visible. Hammering another nail in its coffin is the character played by Richard Baskin, a singer laying down a studio album that serves as a meeting place for several characters. I hated every word that came out of the guy's mouth and his voice which sounded like Gil Scott-Heron with a case of terminal whiteness.

It's easy to take guilt free pot shots at a movie like as everyone involved is so immensely talented and had been or would go on to much, much greener pastures. Rudolph and Chaplin themselves would make the masterpiece "Remember My Name" just two years later. But this one just doesn't work unfortunately.