Monday, Mar. 09, 1981
Superlatives
By RICHARD CORLISS
ALL NIGHT LONG
Directed by Jean-Claude Tramont
Screenplay by W.D. Richter
With Oscar night approaching, the mind begins to swim in superlatives. This new comedy, starring Gene Hackman as a middle-aged man shadowboxing an identity crisis and Barbra Streisand as the kooky love interest, is a film of firsts and worsts, leasts and mosts:
First Streisand film in which she does not receive top billing (Hackman gets it); first American feature directed by the husband of Hollywood's most powerful agent (Jean-Claude Tramont, spouse to Sue Mengers); first Hollywood movie in ages to end with the legend THE END.
Worst miscasting of Streisand, in a role vacated by Lisa Eichhorn and suitable only for the young Minnie Pearl: worst script by W.D. Richter (Slither, Brubaker); worst-looking meal ever served to a prospective lover (by Streisand to Hackman)--it looks like poured concrete on toast.
Least felicitous use of that hoary double-play literary device, the doppelganger. Hackman plays a man named George Dupler, whose latest invention is a reverse-image mirror.
Most cumbersome ideological baggage for a light comedy: Dupler's employer is a supermarket chain called UltraSave (U.S., get it?), whose aisles are patrolled by emasculated wimps and homicidal amazons, where the security guard is trigger-happy and a toy helicopter strafes and devastates the store.
Toughest review :
--By Richard Corliss
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