Starting Over
|
List Price: Our Price: $2.30 You Save: $6.69 (74%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $1.60 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Starting Over
Movie Review: Insanely funny romantic comedy
Summary: 5 Stars
I didn't realize how young Burt Reynolds is in this movie....but I love all of his romantic comedies, and was happy that amazon.com had this one. Jill Clayburgh is well cast as the love interest and Candace Bergen is hysterical as Reynolds' soon-to-be ex-wife. No wonder she was so great (later on) as "Murphy Brown." The story is hilarious and yet has its warm fuzzy moments. Great songs, too (when Bergen isn't trying to sing them herself)! Thoroughly enjoyable.Movie Review: Finally on DVD
Summary: 5 Stars
A great, funny movie. At long last, on DVD. Now we need more of Jill Clayburgh with An Unmarried Woman on DVD!!!Movie Review: Bright Comedy with Stellar Cast Shining in Sharp Pakula-Brooks Collaboration
Summary: 4 Stars
Just coming off producing and writing the classic sitcoms, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Taxi", James L. Brooks wrote the screenplay, his first, for this 1979 divorce comedy. Even after all these years and finally out on DVD, it remains funny, perceptive and thoroughly engaging in a way that later crystallized into Brooks' filmmaking trademark in "Terms of Endearment" and "As Good As It Gets". Fortunately, the director is the accomplished Alan J. Pakula, who shows a flair for romantic comedy coaxing excellent performances from the three stars.
The plot centers on Phil Potter, a magazine writer-turned-writing teacher who has been informed by his beautiful but flaky wife Jessica that she wants a divorce. Without much recourse, he seeks solace from his bear-hugging psychiatrist brother Mickey and sister-in-law Marva, who eventually set him up on a blind date with Marilyn, a mild-mannered, rather dowdy nursery schoolteacher. The movie then becomes a clever seesaw of Phil vacillating between his wife and potential new love interest. What remains fresh about the movie is how Pakula and Brooks keep the focus on the flawed characters and less on the predictable cliches about the awkward consequences of divorce.
Even taking into account his comeback turn in Paul Thomas Anderson's 1997 "Boogie Nights", I doubt if Burt Reynolds has given a more subtle, genuinely humane performance than he does here. Cast completely against type (he was in his Smokey/Hooper/Sharkey action phase at the time), he makes Phil's uncertainty feel real - even at the risk of losing audience sympathy in the way he treats Marilyn no matter how inadvertently. In the afterglow of her brilliant work in Paul Mazursky's "An Unmarried Woman", Jill Clayburgh again demonstrates the malleable quality and fierce intelligence to make her deglamorized Marilyn an attractive and credibly cautious woman. In a revelation before her long, successful run as "Murphy Brown", a deadpan Candice Bergen breaks free from her heretofore vacuously decorative roles and supplies the movie's biggest laughs as the narcissistic Jessica, especially when she sings with uproariously tone-deaf panache to seduce Phil in her hotel room.
There is also a terrific supporting cast - Charles Durning bringing out all the unctuous support that Mickey can muster; a scene-stealing Frances Sternhagen as Marva, more than anxious to provide Phil emotional support when he is down and out; Austin Pendleton as a needy member of Phil's divorced men's club, who keeps remarrying his ex-wife; and Mary Kay Place in a funny cameo as Phil's aggressive first post-marital date. Other than Marilyn's unflattering outfits (the orange down jacket is hideous), Marvin Hamlisch's seventies-lite pop music is really the only significant element that dates the movie severely. The divorced men's club meeting scenes are hilarious, and you can see Jay O. Sanders and Wallace Shawn as fellow members. Unlike other romantic comedies of the period full of I'm-OK-You're-OK pop psychology, this one is still well worth viewing. The 2005 DVD has no extras.
Movie Review: Hard to believe this is the same Burt Reynolds we know today.
Summary: 4 Stars
I must admit, I've had this DVD for well over a year sitting in my very small Burt Reynolds DVD collection after picking it up in a 4 for $30 offer being unable to find anything else. I finally decided to watch it and what a surprise this turned out to be. This is a very low key performance from Burt Reynolds. I can't say much more about this movie that has not been said below. I will say that the chemistry and comic timing as noted by other reviewers is seamless. Whether it was a decision by the director to restrain Reynolds from his usual good old boy performances or whether Burt Reynolds decided to play the character as he did lead to Reynolds giving a performance that I don't think has fitted him more at any other time in his career. This is a well written, well acted character piece with a light sprinkling of humor throughout. I love the scenes involving the divorced men's club that Reynolds character attends with some great scenes in Charles During's home who plays Reynolds older brother in the movie. I only have time for a handful of Reynolds movies over his career, 100 Rifles, fuzz, Deliverance, Shamus, White Lightening, The Longest Yard, Hustle, Semi-Tough, Sharky's Machine and Breaking In. I have yet to see Best Friends and Stick. Watching some of the stuff Reynolds is involved in now makes it hard to believe that it is the same person or actor that was involved in some of his best early 70's work. Smokey And The Bandit, his greatest success is also an enjoyable movie but I have always felt that it was probably more than all the flops Reynolds made in the 80's the movie that ended his career because it type cast him in that type of role. In Starting Over, Burt Reynolds showed that he was capable of much more given the right material and a good director who knew what to do with him and it's a shame more people have not seen his performance in this.
Movie Review: Just Like Starting Over
Summary: 4 Stars
"Starting Over" is one of the most true to life movies about break-ups and new relationships that has ever been filmed. Burt Reynolds proves that he can truly portray a painfully human role in this 1979 classic. His character is likable, realistic and at the right times, humorous. Jill Clayburgh is a delight as a seasoned and sensitive single gal. Candice Bergen is the emotional and selfish ex-wife which she plays to the tee.
In the first few minutes of the movie it is evident of how well this movie was cast and produced. The movie was intended to be a romantic comedy which it acheives very well. As an added plus it takes a very realistic approach to the pains of divorce, dating, and everything that comes with being single again.
For those of us that are past 35 and have experienced the "starting over" stage of life, or are currently experiencing it, this is a movie to see. The crazy things we do, the scary and the just plain strange is all here. By watching this we can find a little solace in our feelings and laugh at ourselves as well!! Enjoy!!