Nickelodeon

If director Peter Bogdanovich hadn't used such a heavy-handed slapstick treatment of his little epic about early film-making called NICKELODEON, there might have emerged a fond tribute to the pioneering days of silent films in the early part of the 20th Century.

But instead, he has filled NICKELODEON with a whole series of non-stop sight gags that become tiresome and repetitious, even more so because none of the characters involved really come to life. As the pretty heroine of the piece, JANE HITCHCOCK has very limited abilities beyond staring wide-eyed into the camera lens for comic effect. BURT REYNOLDS at least does derive several good chuckles from his comedy efforts as a reluctant participant in RYAN O'NEAL's troupe of silent film actors.

O'Neal has obviously chosen to play his role as though he has just watched a Harold Lloyd film, wearing spectacles for his first entrance and doing the bumbling sight gags on cue, as hapless a hero as Lloyd was in all his comedies. He's not too bad, but is never as funny as he was in WHAT'S UP DOC?, an earlier Bogdanovich film.

Tecbnically, the film is handsomely produced and pleasing to look at in color, but STELLA STEVENS is given little to do in what amounts to a supporting role. JOHN RITTER doesn't have too much opportunity to display his comic gifts. Entirely too much footage is devoted to a rough and tumble fight between Reynolds and O'Neal that takes up too much time with too many slapstick pratfalls to emerge as anything more than filler.

The film plods along without the benefit of a tight script or a really compelling story and suffers, mainly, from the heavy-handed approach to comedy.

Oddly this is a film that I have always liked and still make a point to watch when it is televised. I say "oddly" because I find Peter Bogdanovich and Ryan O'Neal excellent examples of two people pretty much clueless about their chosen professions. Bogdanovich was a journalist/critic/film theorist turned director (who had the bad taste to be involved with Cybill Shepperd) and O'Neal was a Hollywood personality who occasionally acted (who had the good taste to marry Leigh Taylor-Young).

Jane Hitchcock is the most interesting thing about "Nickelodeon". Hitchcock was a magazine model who Bogdanovich hoped to groom into a star. Bogdanovich historically has had a weakness for beautiful women of marginal talent (Shepherd and Dorothy Stratten's sister come to mind). Unlike the others, Hitchcock was quickly turned off by both Bogdanovich and the movie game-she already had a lucrative modeling career and didn't have to put up with the Hollywood starlet system. Whether Hitchcock would have made it big in movies is hard to tell, but in "Nickelodeon's" "Kathleen Cooke" she found a character she could play with wide-eyed innocence and complete sincerity. While it doesn't hurt that Hitchcock is drop dead gorgeous, her Kathleen Cooke character is more than gorgeous, she is absolutely captivating. Which makes her completely believable as the object of the movie's love triangle and elevates her to the top of my list of the all-time most irresistible screen heroines (even ahead of Fay Wray's "Ann Darrow" and Clara's Bow's "Mary Preston").

But "Kathleen Cooke" is not the only good thing about "Nickelodeon". It has one of cinema's all time funniest sequences. O'Neal arrives by train at a remote shooting location out west. He steps off the train at a watering stop and looks out over the desert to the movie set 500 yards away. The sun is high overhead baking the desert landscape and O'Neal is not enthusiastic about the prospect of walking that far in such heat. A tiny dog with the movie company spots him from that distance and begins running toward him. The dog is making a bee-line for him, as it gets closer we wait for the happy reunion, but when it arrives it immediately bites his leg. The dog hates him so much that it was willing to run that far in the hot sun just for the opportunity to attack him.

It also is an excellent and generally accurate history lesson about the early days of movies and the serendipity that determined who became involved with the new industry. Serendipity is the theme of the film and the source of most of its comedy, as the expanding talent needs of the new movie industry were often met by whoever they happened to encounter at a particular moment and not through any systematic process. Thus Burt Reynolds (in his best comic performance) becomes a stunt man only because at that moment they need a stunt man and he needs a job. A running gag is his boastful declaration with each new job that the job title (whatever it might be) is his middle name. Also a great take on how milestones like "Birth of a Nation" periodically set the bar higher throughout film history and inspired those within the industry to stretch themselves to do better work.

Ryan O'Neal is fairly low-key and therefore tolerable. In addition to Hitchcock and Reynolds, Bogdanovich gets excellent performances from Tatum O'Neal (great negotiating sequences), John Ritter, Stella Stevens and Brian Keith.

The main problem with "Nickelodeon" is that the depth and breathe of early film history is too complicated for a small comedic treatment. As a film historian Bogdanovich was dealing with a subject near and dear to his heart. He appears to have borrowed heavily from Fellini's "Variety Lights" and "White Sheik" to construct his company of players but could not integrate the intimate and light-hearted flavor of those films with the huge historical subject he was documenting. "Nickelodeon" is still entertaining and informative but the whole is less that the sum of its parts.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

This expensive 70's flop is not nearly as bad as its reputation indicates. Leonard Maltin's review is pretty accurate. And it's got some fine performances by a good cast which includes- Ryan O'neal, Burt Reynolds, Tatum O neal, John Ritter, Stella Stevens and (especially) Brian Keith. Two highlights- Tatum's negotiating and Brian Keith's speech at the end. It's got some dull stretches and the slapstick gets wearying,overall not bad.

I had no idea this film cost so much. As charming and entertaining as it is, it is a million more than STAR WARS of 1977(and even THE BETSY...., sorry,) and 3 million more than Bogdanovich's previous film AT LONG LAST LOVE. At the time it was severely criticised by purists for lifting gags from his own 1972 comedy WHAT'S UP DOC? and for not really making a funny film about a topic falling all over itself with possibilities. Viewed THIRTY years later (Jeez!) NICKELODEON is an almost masterpiece of film craft and highly evocative, and I would like to say, as maligned as some other Bogdanovich films. It does stand the test of time and for a new audience, uneducated on silent films, would be a refreshing and often hilarious comedic revelation. Well, compared with Adam Sandler films and common day multiplex cine-stupidity, NICKELODEON is hilarious. It actually has production values, sight gags, engaging characters, actors and actually IS funny and endearing. It deserves re appraisal and I recommend it above CHAPLIN ....SINGIN IN THE RAIN it ain't, but PERILS OF PAULINE it is close................... NICKELODEON is well made fun.

The critical "view" of this film is that it's a dog. But that's only true if you want to see films through the eyes of critics; and when this one came out, the critics were gunning for Bogdanovich. Why? Who knows. They were gunning for Spielberg when "1941" came out, the difference being that Spielberg bounced back. Bogdanovich never really did, but that doesn't make "Nickelodeon" a bad film. True, it has no appreciable story, but it's a nifty little love letter to the makers of those early movies; which is why it has equal parts slapstick and straight drama. It's affectionate rather than melodramatic, and has a convincing evocation of what it must have been like to be around, scuffling on the edges of fame and fortune with this weird new invention, motion pictures. It's not going to scare you, or thrill you with wall to wall CGI pyrotechnics, it doesn't have a cast of thousands, and it didn't bankrupt a studio to make it. It's a good little film, well made, solidly cast and directed, and in general, well acted. A lot of what we like in film depends on our expectations. The critics were gunning for Bogdanovich because they were expecting Art with a capital A; instead what they got were a lifelong film fan's notes. Enjoy.