Muito Riso e Muita Alegria

I suppose we're lucky that this film ever got out at all for the movie going public to see. With the tragic murder of Dorothy Stratten all set to break out into a film career and her connection with director Peter Bogdanovich the big studios thought the whole thing all to sordid. Bogdanovich went bankrupt buying the film from 20th Century Fox and getting it released as best he could.

It was his work and a labor of love in every sense of the word. They All Laughed is a story about a detective agency where the operators just can't stop mixing business with pleasure. They're spying on several women and then get involved with all of them. I mean they are a fetching lot, but apparently no one puts their libido on hold.

The biggest names in the cast are Ben Gazzara and Audrey Hepburn who had co-starred previously in Bloodlines, a truly mediocre film. But this is an ensemble piece and having the biggest box office names doesn't translate into screen time. Gazzara as a detective gets as much time it seems as John Ritter and Blaine Novak. These guys are spying on Hepburn, Stratten, and Colleen Camp. Around as a girl Friday is Patti Hansen who drives a cab and seems always available for the operatives of George Morfogen's agency.

Some lovely viewing of Manhattan during the year 1980 including the once and future twin towers. One thing that made no sense was Colleen Camp as a country singer. Now having lived in New York for almost 50 years I can say that there are no country type bars in Manhattan that have even middle line singers like Camp. Maybe Bogdanovich should have had Camp be a piano bar performer or changed the locale to a city like Houston.

There was also certainly not enough Hepburn. This was an improvement over Bloodlines, but They All Laughed will never rank as one of Audrey Hepburn's great films.

This film is worth watching. Screwball comedy stylings brought up-to-date... ie 80's New York.

Perhaps this'll move some of you: it made Quentin Tarantino's list of his Top Ten Films of All-Time in 2002.

Who are these "They"- the actors? the filmmakers? Certainly couldn't be the audience- this is among the most air-puffed productions in existence. It's the kind of movie that looks like it was a lot of fun to shoot— TOO much fun, nobody is getting any actual work done, and that almost always makes for a movie that's no fun to watch.

Ritter dons glasses so as to hammer home his character's status as a sort of doppleganger of the bespectacled Bogdanovich; the scenes with the breezy Ms. Stratten are sweet, but have an embarrassing, look-guys-I'm-dating-the-prom-queen feel to them. Ben Gazzara sports his usual cat's-got-canary grin in a futile attempt to elevate the meager plot, which requires him to pursue Audrey Hepburn with all the interest of a narcoleptic at an insomnia clinic. In the meantime, the budding couple's respective children (nepotism alert: Bogdanovich's daughters) spew cute and pick up some fairly disturbing pointers on 'love' while observing their parents. (Ms. Hepburn, drawing on her dignity, manages to rise above the proceedings- but she has the monumental challenge of playing herself, ostensibly.) Everybody looks great, but so what? It's a movie and we can expect that much, if that's what you're looking for you'd be better off picking up a copy of Vogue.

Oh- and it has to be mentioned that Colleen Camp thoroughly annoys, even apart from her singing, which, while competent, is wholly unconvincing... the country and western numbers are woefully mismatched with the standards on the soundtrack. Surely this is NOT what Gershwin (who wrote the song from which the movie's title is derived) had in mind; his stage musicals of the 20's may have been slight, but at least they were long on charm. "They All Laughed" tries to coast on its good intentions, but nobody- least of all Peter Bogdanovich - has the good sense to put on the brakes.

Due in no small part to the tragic death of Dorothy Stratten, this movie has a special place in the heart of Mr. Bogdanovich- he even bought it back from its producers, then distributed it on his own and went bankrupt when it didn't prove popular. His rise and fall is among the more sympathetic and tragic of Hollywood stories, so there's no joy in criticizing the film... there _is_ real emotional investment in Ms. Stratten's scenes. But "Laughed" is a faint echo of "The Last Picture Show", "Paper Moon" or "What's Up, Doc"- following "Daisy Miller" and "At Long Last Love", it was a thundering confirmation of the phase from which P.B. has never emerged.

All in all, though, the movie is harmless, only a waste of rental. I want to watch people having a good time, I'll go to the park on a sunny day. For filmic expressions of joy and love, I'll stick to Ernest Lubitsch and Jaques Demy...

Screwball comedy about romantic mismatches in New York City. Peter Bogdanovich is obviously in love with all the women in his picture--he reveres them--yet Audrey Hepburn is (naturally) put a notch above the others because, after all, she's the princess Bogdanovich probably fell in love with at the movies 30 years prior. He shoots her in loving close-ups, gets right in the sheets between her and a wonderfully hard-boiled/soft-boiled Ben Gazzara, and allows her room to sparkle throughout. The love-connections made in the course of the film are fast and amusing, though I did tire of John Ritter's TV-styled klutziness. Colleen Camp, Dorothy Stratten, and the grounded, earthy-sensual Patti Hansen are all exciting to watch. But it's really Hepburn's valentine and she absolutely glows. *** from ****

There is a certain French farcical charm, however calculated, about director Peter Bogdanovich's 1981 urban valentine to romantic entanglements in Manhattan; but just released on DVD a quarter-century later, the film still feels half-baked in execution. Perhaps because Bogdanovich has too innate a familiarity with Hollywood's golden era, there is just too much pastiche and not enough depth to the shenanigans of three private eyes, their put-upon boss and the various women with whom they intertwine most predictably. The characters come in and out of this omnibus tale like Robert Altman's "Nashville" and Jean Renoir's "Rules of the Game", but the results are not nearly as resonant.

Unfortunately, the movie was jinxed immediately when co-star Dorothy Stratten, who became romantically involved with Bogdanovich during filming, was infamously murdered by her husband right after its completion. If the film was meant as the director's launching pad for Stratten as he did previously for Cybill Shepherd in "The Last Picture Show", he is only partially successful this time as the pretty starlet makes a comparatively modest impression as Dolores, the innocent object of obsession for bumbling detective Charles. These two are part of a larger ensemble, which includes Arthur, a long-haired shamus constantly on roller skates, and John, the veteran investigator who finds himself drawn to Angela Niotes, the possibly philandering wife of an Italian industrialist.

Bogdanovich had the good fortune of casting Audrey Hepburn, in her last feature film starring role, as Angela. Even though her story does not even get going until an hour into the movie, a fiftyish Hepburn looks radiantly stylish and is the epitome of resigned grace as an unhappily married woman. In an apparent nod to Bogie, Ben Gazzara performs too close to the vest as world-weary John, while a young, bespectacled John Ritter seems to regale in all his slapstick business as the smitten Charles. Less successful are Blaine Novak as the overly hip Arthur, model Patti Hansen (long since married to Rolling Stone Keith Richards) as bromide-spouting taxi driver "Sam", and a particularly unctuous Colleen Camp as motor-mouthed country singer Christy Miller insinuating herself into everyone else's lives.

Much like a Jacques Demy film ("The Young Girls of Rochefort" comes immediately to mind), the plot unfolds after a long wordless introduction, and character motivations get filled in on an as-needed basis until the film gains some gravitas and then whimpers away. On the DVD's main extra, Bogdanovich states emphatically that this is the favorite of his films in an interview conducted with director Wes Anderson, who also admires the film (as does Quentin Tarantino, who makes it one of his top ten in "Halliwell's Top 1000" book). The details of the location shooting are interesting, as much was done on a modest scale with a minimum of extras, and Bogdanovich gratefully does not belabor the sensationalistic aspects of Stratten's death. He also provides a solid commentary track, and the print transfer on the DVD is relatively clean. I'm not sure the film is completely worthy of rediscovery in a vaunted 25th Anniversary Edition except for Hepburn's near-valedictory work and any lingering curiosity about Stratten.