benovite

I finally got to see B.S. I Love You in its entirety recently. I had seen part of it before but not the entire thing/travesty/debacle.

I can safely report that the reviewer from Denver is correct: it is indeed a mess. It's shot bad, cast bad, written bad, musically scored bad and just all around bad. Definitely not in the category of 'so bad it's good' either.

Where to begin.. let's see. OK the main character played by Peter Kastner(RIP). It might be difficult to find a more awkward, sweaty, unattractive actor to look at for 90 minutes. Sure you could cast a sickly old man with one eye, but Kastner was available for this blatant Graduate rip-off. Woody Allen isn't always the easiest to look at either, but the key difference is Allen is a cinematic genius.

Now before I proceed further with my review I'd like to provide the link to the New York Times review dated April 1st, 1971: http://tinyurl.com/3exoxpw

(IMDb links to it in the critics review area)

I'm not sure if Howard Thompson's review of BS I Love You was an April Fool's joke or not, but apparently this guy loved the movie, gushing about the "gifted people" people involved in making this "neatly organized morality comedy with bright contemporary trimmings". Keeping in mind that he wrote his review in 1971 when this movie opened, makes me wonder what drugs Mr. Thompson was on when he viewed the movie. He goes on to say that "The best thing about the picture is the funny, blithely warm performance of Peter Kastner".

Wow, really Thompson? Funny? Warm? Kastner comes across like a dead wet fish. He's about as funny and warm as the flu on a hot Summer's day. Thompson goes on to gush about how "appealing" Kastner is and such. Read the review, it's a milestone in up your ass opinions, meaning your opinion is certainly up your ass because that's where you pulled it from. Unless of course it's all an April Fool's gag. I don't know.

What I do know is that BS I Love You is an atrocious film. The classic "what not to do film". For starters, yes it liberally borrows some elements from The Graduate, a movie that apparently Mr. Kastner was up for but thankfully didn't get. Dustin Hoffman won the lead part in that one(whew! can you imagine Kastner's Bejamin Braddock?). Kastner's character sleeps with an older lady and finds out that a young lady that had been pursuing him is her daughter. Whatever. We've seen this before and done infinitely better.

You know what else we've seen before? The ad agency guy that loses the big account etc etc. It's usually done in an interesting way(see every other movie dealing with ad men)

Anyway let me cut to the chase. So Kastner's extremely unappealing and difficult to look at, yet we have to look at him in his angst-ridden, over-emotional behavior, running like an absolutely ninny towards the end of the movie.

The man runs like a ninny. And that's being kind.

Practically every actor is sweating up a storm in every scene. Was there even a makeup person involved in this picture? It's an uncomfortable movie to watch because of all the sweat alone! The crappy dialog from the actors is difficult to hear; thanks sound guy. And to top it off, it's filmed like a really poor student film with really bad lighting(most scenes are very darkly lit) or angles that just don't work(never let shrubbery upstage your actors).

Story-wise you don't care for any of these losers and you have to wonder why a couple of these attractive women would want to be associated with Kastner's character because he's Such. A. Loser!

And the music.. Yikes! They got some local band to sing all the music and it's just wrong, especially when they inject it into practically every scene of the loser life that Kastner lives. A pathetic man appears even more pathetic when back by pathetic sounding music.

If there were a category of movies called "Suicide Movies", movies by which you can commit suicide to, this one would fall safely into that category.

Only to be seen for the morbidly curious, I'll close by adding another quote from the New York Times' Howard Thomspon: "This marks the first feature written and directed by Steven H. Stern, produced by Arthur M. Broidy and photographed in color by David Dans. Nice going, men. Let's have another. Soon."

How about not. Ever.

With all gold stars? No one thought it was ham-fisted, wannabe soap opera-ish, poorly written, acted, directed and shot? So either every reviewer before me is either a 40+ year old divorced woman with a minimum of 3 cats or 60+ year old women with 6 or more cats.

This thing is awful! I understand the gist of it, dead guys comes back to haunt a woman. But everything is else is just plain wrong. I saw this on the fox movie channel recently and I have to admit that I do love this movie.

But not for the reasons anyone else mentioned. This easily falls into the "it's so bad it's good" category of movie. Because it's Bad with a capital B. I think Jan Michael Vincent went straight to Danger Island after this. Bonnie Bedelia(sp?) good lord, I don't know if she was overacting or just plain stoned. Hershal Bernardi was um, overacting. The music is completely uncalled for, like it was made for another movie and shoe-horned into this thing.

And let me get this straight; Bonnie character gets in a car accident and Hershal's character lets her hang around his restaurant. So Bonnie does, FOR EVER. As in she doesn't leave? Shouldn't she have been taken to a hospital? Because you know, she was involved in an ACCIDENT? This movie is mind-blowing. Ly-bad. I will say though that I loved the brief shots of Sunset blvd. and La Cienega circa 1972(when Jan walks out of the bank). I think the filmmakers were doubling Sunset blvd for San Francisco.

Anyway, sure if you get the chance don't miss this movie. Because apparently you'll think it's either the best movie ever made or the worst! Oh and Gary Crosby's character; good lord! Vile.