Wealthy Beverly Hills socialite Trish Rawlings (Lily Tomlin) is currently residing in a beach side residence as she engages in a separation from her husband Stu (Bert Kramer) following his extramarital affair. While in town shopping she encounters drifter Strip (John Travolta) who remembers her from a valet parking job where she took responsibility for a dent in the car her husband blamed on him. Strip makes flirtatious advances towards Trish which are initially unwelcome, but as she encounters him on the beach she begins to develop feelings for him.
Moment by Moment was the third film starring John Travolta made by producer Robert Stigwood following the successes of both Saturday Night Fever and Grease. The film was set to co-star Lily Tomlin who'd scored two well regarded features with Nashville earning her an Academy Award Nomination and The Late Show also garnering strong critical praise. The project moved forward with Tomlin's partner and future wife, Jane Wagner, taking writing and direction duties for the film. While both Tomlin and Travolta had a pleasant experience working together, both were blindsided by the end product of the movie. Word had gotten out that the chemistry between leads Tomlin and Travolta rivaled that of "Menachem Begin and Yassar Arafat" and Universal hired Saturday Night Fever DP Ralf D. Bode to co-direct with Wagner but credited him as "technical advisor". Stigwood even tried to have Wagner fired from the movie at one point but backed down after resistance from both Tomlin and Travolta. When the movie was released it was eviscerated by critics and audiences with many citing the lack of chemistry between the leads. Box office was also quite underwhelming with the film making $10 million against its $8 million budget falling well short of the standards of Saturday Night Fever or Grease. Moment by Moment is a blot on the careers of both Tomlin and Travolta, but one they were easily able to move past with Travolta scoring a hit with Urban Cowboy and Tomlin getting success with 9 to 5. Moment by Moment however is still as uncomfortable and awkward as it was when first released.
While the movie is titled "Moment by Moment", a more proper title would be "Just Go Away Already", because most of the first part of this movie is Travolta's character strip making advances towards Tomlin's Trish while she keeps rejecting him but he keeps showing back up because he either has "friends nearby" or conveniently forgets little articles he has to return for. The movie is mostly just scenes of Tomlin and Travolta together with few extras and minimal supporting characters so the movie basically lives or dies solely on the chemistry of our leads. The movie's basically a parade of scenes with our characters taking turns getting annoyed at one another with the pendulum shifting back and forth between who's annoyed by whom. There's minor subplots or background elements in the movie such as Strip's never seen best friend Gregg who's only ever mentioned by Strip and we never actually see any of the things surrounding that character, or things going on with Trish's social circle such as a party scene with a theme of pictures of feet called, no joke, "footography". I don't know if this is satire of something specific, but whatever purpose it had back in the day wasn't all that resonant and it's only gotten more confusing with the passage of time. I'll say the music and cinematography is well done, but the fact this movie costs $2 million more than Grease is absurd because this feels like this should be $4 million at most especially with how most of the time it's just Tomlin and Travolta pratting about.
Moment by Moment is a romance with two leads who exude anti-chemistry. Both are fantastic actors and on paper it seems like a winning combo, but an awkward delivery devoid of sexual energy just kills the movie from being engaging on that level. There's probably been worse love stories that were either more bland, toxic, or preposterous, but more often than not they at least give you additional elements beyond the core romance to make up for those shortcomings. Moment by Moment doesn't have any additional elements to fall back on and is just being stuck with two people who are as annoyed with each other as we are by them.
