By Richard Winters
My Rating: 3 out of 10
4-Word Review: Babs promotes a boxer.
Hillary Kramer (Barbra Streisand) is an owner of a successful perfume company who suddenly finds that all of her financial assets have been stolen by an unscrupulous business manager. The only thing she has left is a contract with a down-and-out boxer named Eddie ‘Kid Natural’ Scanlon (Ryan O’Neal). She decides to become his manager and promote him even though he is through with boxing and much more content at working as a driving instructor.
Barbra is quite enjoyable and the one thing that manages to hold it all together even though I couldn’t stand her frizzy hair look and wished she had just kept it straight, but as a comic character she is good. I was amazed at how much she makes fun of herself including an open bit that takes potshots at her world famous nose. There are other segments that reverse her feminist stance as well where the man, or in this case the O’Neal character, feels like he’s being ‘objectified’ by her and after they sleep together feeling ‘used’ when she isn’t quite ready to get into a relationship. Amazingly she even allows herself to be clad in very tight fitting shorts and in one rather explicit moment bends down in them, which again being the famous feminist that we know she is in real-life seemed surprising, but I liked the fact that she can show a playful side and that she doesn’t take herself too seriously.
Unfortunately O’Neal is the wrong man as her co-star as he is too weak of an actor and cannot keep up with her strong personality. Trying to play these two off as equals doesn’t work as he has no ability to counter her comic punch and his attempts at seeming exacerbated are forced and not funny. Sure they had success earlier with What’s Up Doc? but that was because he played a character that got run over and dominated by hers, which is the only way their contrasting styles would succeed on celluloid.
The film though still manages to be funny and I was ready to give this a 7 until it peters out like air coming out of a tire during the second half. Having the group cooped up in a winter cabin stifles the action as this is the type of story that should’ve stayed permanently on the road. The contrived love angle that gets thrown in is formulaic and not believable. These two could never get along even if they wanted to. They may at some point gain a begrudging respect for the other, but to think they could cohabitate in a lasting relationship is ridiculous and besides it was the bickering between them that was entertaining and once that goes so does the movie.
My Rating: 3 out of 10
Released: June 22, 1979
Runtime: 1Hour 49Minutes
Rated PG
Director: Howard Zieff
Studio: Warner Brothers
Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube
Scopophilia 