My Favorite Year
|
Our Price: $67.95 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $40.95 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of My Favorite Year
Movie Review: Slapstick as high art? Well...
Summary: 5 Stars
That said, this film is one of two must own films from O'Toole's later years, the other being the Stunt Man, which I have also reviewed.
What can I say about a perfect film? There are so few made these days. If you like Peter O'Toole's easy style and delivery, you'll love him here.
Mark Linn Baker's debut is a fine example to his comic timing, and virtually everyone was cast perfectly.
Makes you wish for the good old days of live television, when reality was the furthest thing from our minds and television was escapist fare, not an excuse to gross us out or make us watch normal, boring, average people put through stuff we really don't want to watch.
I don't care about reality television. The reality I deal with out in the world is sufficient, thank you very much. Can we please have more fantasy and escapist fare? Pleeeeease?
Yeah, it's that good.
Movie Review: A Dazzling Diamond Among Lumps Of Coal!
Summary: 5 Stars
"My favorite Year" is definitely one of my all-time favorite comedies. A comedy writing masterpiece, showing a brilliant mixture of whit and screw-ball slapstick, Norman Steinberg and Dennis Palumbo show us wonderful romantic look into the world of 1950's New York.
Peter O'Toole shows why he is one of the all-time great actors, playing Swann ("He's plastered!") the ultimate, drunken, Errol Flynn like swashbuckling film hero. The film also features an amazing performance by Mark Linn-Baker, playing Benjamin Stone, a sharp young writer at "King Kaiser's Comedy Cavalcade" (based on...Cid Caesar's Show of Shows). The cast assembled for this film is spectacular.
If you have a hard time finding a good laugh at most comedies, I don't think you will be disappointed in this film. It is filled with great lines and impeccable timing, a true diamond among lumps of coal in film comedy.
Movie Review: Hey, this is for ladies!
Summary: 5 Stars
I have not seen this movie since it was released. Really need to buy the DVD now and see it again and again. But it's so remarkable, I still vividly remember three things that I've repeated over and over in my praise of the film through the years: 1) O'Toole gave an amazing and unexpected comedic performance, 2) Laney Kazaan played basically the same motherly role, though Jewish, in Favorite Year that she played 20 years later, as the Greek maternal counterpart, in My Big Fat Greek Wedding; 3) Greatest dialogue was between the late Selma Diamond and O'Toole in the ladies rest room. When a very intoxicated O'Toole was discovered by Selma in the ladies room, urinating in a commode, she said, "Hey, what are you doing in here? This is for ladies." Without skipping a beat, O'Toole answered, "And so, my dear, is this. But from time to time I must run some water through it." Buy it, you'll love it.Movie Review: It would have been my favorite year, too
Summary: 5 Stars
In the 1950s, a young TV writer (Mark Linn-Baker) must keep his childhood hero, the matinee idol Alan Swann (Peter O'Toole), sober long enough to make his appearance on a live comedy program. Not surprisingly, both men are the better for the experience.
This wonderful comedy is a love letter to the golden age of live television and the quirky personalities that proliferated there. It is also a touching coming-of-age film that made me feel nostalgic for a time that I never experienced. One can probably say that there is more quality on TV in this age of Tivo, DVD, and a thousand cable channels (in real numbers, certainly not as a percentage of programming produced), but this film successfully captures the energy and excitement of a time when the whole country was watching the same thing at the same time and it was happening NOW. A delight from start to finish.
Movie Review: There's a reason everyone gives this 5 stars!
Summary: 5 Stars
A Hallmark card to the golden age of live television, MY FAVORITE YEAR is an absolute gem! O'Toole is a scream, and Linn-Baker gives the best and most earnest performance of his young career. Every scene is funny. You'll be quoting lines from it for years!Rather than take up space with specifics (as so many others have already done anyway, so why be redundant), I'll just say that I have been looking forward to this DVD since the advent of the medium. I've owned the widescreen laserdisc version for years, but the DVD comes with a director's commentary. So I'm buying it mostly for that.
Actor/Director Richard Benjamin also made "The Money Pit" with Tom Hanks, which is also worth buying.
Sadly, Benjamin's other films would not even come close to the homerun he hit with "My Favorite Year".