By Richard Winters
My Rating: 4 out of 10
4-Word Review: A teen’s first romance.
Jeremy (Robby Benson) is a teen cellist going to a New York school for artistically inclined students. It is there that he meets Susan (Glynnis O’Connor), who is training to be a ballerina, but he’s too shy to ask her out, so his friend Ralph (Len Bari) asks her for him. Eventually the two start dating and after 3-weeks find themselves in a deep and committed relationship only to have happenstance tear them apart.
The film tries hard for realism, at least to some degree, and for that reason it partially succeeds. The best moments are the ones where Jeremy frets about asking Susan out and is unable to get up the nerve to do it, which I enjoyed as few movies deal with this very real issue. In fact a study was done during the 70’s dealing with so-called ‘love-shy’ men and of those over 300 considered this their favorite movie with some having watched it 20 or more times and one individual in his late 30’s having seen it 86 times.
Unfortunately the pace is inconsistent with too much time spent during the first 30-minutes dealing with Jeremy’s cello playing, which is something that by the third act gets forgotten and not even mentioned. There are also two sappy songs that are played, one sung by Robby and the other by Glynnis, and nothing is more annoying than a film that tries to be realistic one minute only to bog things down with needless music montages the next.
Benson’s acting here borders on being excruciating to watch. Shy, awkward teens are fine, but Robby becomes the poster child for it making it almost cringe-worthy. O’Connor is more confident and she should’ve been paired with somebody that would’ve equaled it. I realize that the two in real-life got into a long term relationship during the filming of this and 3 years later appeared together in Ode to Billy Joe where Benson’s acting ability and scrawny physique had improved, but here he’s too much of a caricature and it would’ve been more interesting had the character been someone with a confident facade only to be gun-shy romantically when the pressure was on.
Spoiler Alert!
The third act is a disappointment as it involves Susan and Jeremy being forced to break-up when her father (Ned Wilson) gets a job offer in Detroit. I realize this was before the internet age and long distance relationships can always be a challenge, but I didn’t feel this necessarily had to signify the end of it. They could’ve continued to write letters and talk over the phone and they were only two years away from turning 18 and by then they would be free to move away from their parents and start back together, so this story twist came-off like a cop-out. I would’ve preferred a more concrete reason to why their relationship ended, like realizing once the infatuated puppy-love phase died down that they just weren’t compatible, which is how the majority of relationships ultimately end.
My Rating: 4 out of 10
Released: August 1, 1973
Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes
Rated PG
Director: Arthur Barron
Studio: United Artists
Available: DVD, Amazon Video
Scopophilia 