Fledgling comic Benjy Stone can't believe his luck when his childhood hero, the swashbuckling matinee idol Alan Swann, gets booked to appear on the variety show he writes for. But when Swann arrives, he fails to live up to his silver screen image. Instead, he's a drunken womanizer who suffers from stage fright. Benjy is assigned to look after him before the show, and it's all he can do to keep his former idol from going completely off the rails.
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Reviews
This 1982 comedy has some very comic set pieces however there is not enough to save the viewer from wandering "How Much Longer".Benjy Stone (Mark Linn-Baker), the narrator, tells of the summer (in his "favorite year" of 1954) he met his idol, swashbuckling actor Alan Swann. Who is past his prime (Peter O'Toole). Alan also has a massive drinking problem and lack of empathy for everyone around him. Keep in mind the time period this takes place in means is the early days of television. Television was Taboo for "Movie stars" and television was also live!The main character is Benjy who works as a junior comedy writer for a variety show called Comedy Cavalcade starring Stan "King" Kaiser (Joseph Bologna) broadcast live from the NBC studios at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. As a special upcoming guest, they get the still-famous but in reality he is a hasbeen! Great performances! Great Cast! However with the bases load this film fails to deliver a grand slam. It hits a double and only two runners score! Good enough to watch once!
Screwball. Deft. Not an unpleasant bone in its body, even when it dips into human frailties. One of those comedies that feels as if everybody got everything right, as in just what they were looking for. Wonderful character actors at work. Without them, it would have been insipidly corny. O'Toole as an Errol Flynn type is just about perfect. Excellent music choices.
Solid, well-written comedy that makes making a solid, well-written comedy seem easy. There are so many fine character parts that it's hard to say who the star is. Of course there's Peter O'Toole but he only plays the star. This cornucopia of comedy includes so many well-blended styles it amounts to a lexicon of laughter. There's slapstick, sarcasm, deadpan, bathroom, droll, farcical and more. There are even a couple of touches of heartwarming schmaltz.Again to make the 10 line limit:Solid, well-written comedy that makes making a solid, well-written comedy seem easy. There are so many fine character parts that it's hard to say who the star is. Of course there's Peter O'Toole but he only plays the star. This cornucopia of comedy includes so many well-blended styles it amounts to a lexicon of laughter. There's slapstick, sarcasm, deadpan, bathroom, droll, farcical and more. There are even a couple of touches of heartwarming schmaltz.
Sometimes it's quite surprising to find out about a movie that no one has ever told you off before but turns out to be a real hidden treasure. "My Favorite Year" is a more than great comedy, that is fun, as well as funny to watch.Key to what makes this a great movie to watch, is that it's being a fun one throughout. It's a fast going, snappy comedy, that doesn't necessarily force or exaggerate its comedy, to any extreme forms. It's playing things more subtly and more often relies on its dialog and actors, rather than on any comical situations. It makes the movie very pleasant and likable, also because it manages to maintain its good quick pace throughout its entire running time.The story really doesn't matter all that much for this movie, other than taking the characters from the one place and situation to the other. I'm not saying that it isn't any good but to me it just wasn't important for what this movie was all about and trying to do. Even the weaker moments in this movie and its story still work out well, thanks to its characters and the actors portraying them.Peter O'Toole plays Errol Flynn, even though his character is named differently in the movie. But he is Flynn and even plays some of the sequences out of some classic Errol Flynn movies. This all was great fun to watch and his presence truly adds a lot to this movie as well. He's perfectly classy and often despicable at the same time. But Mark Linn-Baker was also truly great! Whatever went wrong with his career? He was not only a great comedy actor but simply just a great actor in general as well. The movie has a more old fashioned type of comedy vibe to it, like a '40's production, which is also the time period this movie is being set in (well, the '50's but still), so it's no big surprise or a coincidence all. If you are a fan of these type of snappy and screwball like comedies, from the '40's mostly, changes are you will also absolutely love this movie as well!Anyway, this movie is an extremely fun and recommendable one, for everybody!8/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/
