At Long Last Love

This is definitely a case of people running around saying a film is terrible they've probably never seen. Upon release, the film was trashed, probably partially because of its type of cinema being out of favor (this was Scorsese/Altman time) and because of people's annoyance with Bogdanovich and Shepard on talk shows and such. But with time as a distancer, watch this film and dare to tell me it isn't superiour to "Everyone Says I Love You" in every way! I LIKE "Everyone says..." but this film, with its cinematography, and its use of Cole Porter tunes to advance the plot, while uneven, is much more ambitious than the charming Allen film. If you didn't like the Allen film, you may well not like this -- but Reynolds, Shepard, Eileen Brennan singing, which got trashed upon release, is just as good as Roberts, Norton et al warbling in "Everyone." This is a funny, unique work that does occasionally suffer from the cutes -- but so what? Polly Platt, Bogdanovich's ex-wife, always talks about this as one of his "he's no good after he left me" examples, but at least his musical retains its music (she's one of the creators of James L. Brooks' "I'll Do Anything"). This film is a target from so many for no good reason. I recommend this and "Nickelodeon", another overlooked Bogdanovich picture, to be rediscovered as the just plain good films they are!

An homage to 30s musicals, this vastly underrated film features tongue-in-cheek performances by Cybill Shepherd and Burt Reynolds, and terrific comedy turns by Eileen Brennan and Madeline Kahn.

Kahn does a great, obscure Cole Porter (all music in this film) called "Find Me a Primitive Man"; Brennan shines in the "Gentlemen Don't Want Love" number. Duilio del Prete, Mildred Natwick, and John Hillerman are also quite good.

Many obscure Porter songs and a few well-known ones. The costumes and sets are nice and evoke the 30s with the star blacks and whites with hints of beige. While the dancing may be a little rough, the stars more than make up for it in their zest and obvious enjoyment of the material.

The entire cast has fun with this slight story of changing partners until each finds at long last love. Reynolds might be a tad too silly but Shepherd has fun and display a great set of pipes. Ultimately, Brennan and Kahn make this one worth catching.

Peter Bogdanovitch is obviously in love stars and being among them - the starrier, the better.After a while, some of his films like this one seem to feel like "us" (the stars) vs "them", (the unanointed audience). He seems to have assembled a sure-fire formula for success - the glitziest supported by a Cole Porter score. The problem, of course, is that the singers can't sing or dance at all. What in the world was in the mind of the director. He was star-struck - that much is completely obvious - but it ended up that the stars were stuck. So was the audience.

Curtis Stotlar

Remember the scene in the remake of "The Fly" when Gena Davis and Jeff Goldblum are tasting a steak and then tasting a steak that has been sent through the molecular transporter? The reaction is that the transported steak tastes "synthetic", like a computer's "interpretation" of what a steak is. That's the same sensation you get with "At Long Last Love". Bogdanovich, heady with success and power, decided that he could make a "live" musical, the way they had to make them in the Thirties. "Hey, I know what Musicals are made of!" you can imagine him saying. What he didn't understand was casting and historical context. His musical is plastic, inept, and grotesquely embarrassing. It is a "must-see" for your All-Time Worst Movies list, along with John Boorman's "The Heretic: Exorcist II". It's that bad.

Burt Reynolds is not a musical entertainer, and this is not to say that people who aren't professional singers can't be charming in a musical setting. He just simply has no charm here. He is awkward, and he looks ill-at-ease. Likewise, Cybill Shepherd, who in Last Picture Show has a certain charm and presence is not charming in this movie at all.

I'm also sorry to say that the situations where the songs come out seem contrived. This is not to bash Bogdanovich, or musicals, it's simply to say that a project that he had dreams and aspirations for didn't work out. It's not just a case of bad casting though, because the script is terrible and the jokes fall flat. Bogdonavich wrote the script, but why didn't he simply get a good writer? Just because you're a good director, it's not automatic you're also an Algonquin roundtable wit. I think what Bogdanovich was aiming for was something like the early sound musical films of Ernest Lubitsch. Those were all done with live singing on the set, and that is what he was trying to reproduce, but it's simply impossible when you don't have the talent, the script, and the same lightning-in-a-bottle that Lubitsch had to put it all across. At Long Last Love wanted to be charming and magical, but to me, it completely misses the mark, plus it's boring.

I'd always heard that this film ruined the first incarnation of Cybil Shepherd's acting career, but I looked it up and she didn't take a break from acting until the early 1980s. This for sure didn't hurt Burt Reynolds' career. The whole story of it does rather remind me of the old 1984 film "Irreconcilable Differences" in which a rising Hollywood director abandons his wife for the up-and-coming star of his big hit film, makes a musical version of Gone With The Wind that bombs starring his new girlfriend, and winds up losing his shirt, his career, and his girlfriend. I wonder if this film was an inspiration for portions of that film? Hmmm.