#34b At Long Last Love (Wes)

At Long Last Love

So for our second substitute movie for Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag we had to watch At Long Last Love. I’d never heard of this before, but after a quick look on IMDB I quickly learned that Colin was going to hate this movie as it’s a musical and I know his feelings about them. As for me, I love a good musical. I’ll happily admit that I know all the words to Little Shop of Horrors, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Sweeney Todd, A Nightmare Before Christmas and West Side Story (Ok. I only know the words to West Side Story because of the Schlong album – Punk Side Story, but it still counts!). Since this movie is appearing on our list, even if it is as a sub, I suspected that I wouldn’t be learning the words any time soon though…

Set during the Great Depression, heiress Brooke Carter (Cybill Shepherd), meets an Italian gambler, Johnny Spanish (Duilio Del Prente), at a race track. Meanwhile Playboy millionaire Michael Oliver Pritchard III (Burt Reynolds) falls in love with actress Kitty O'Kelly (Madeline Kahn), after nearly running her over. Kitty and Brooke turn out to be old friends who went to public school together, and the two couples hit the town together, along with Elizabeth (Eileen Brennan) and Rodney (John Hillerman), Pritchard’s butler/chauffeur. As Brooke and Pritchard start to fall for each other, Kitty and Johnny try to make them jealous and Elizabeth tries her best to seduce the staid Rodney. Will anyone find true love? Why is everyone singing when talking to each other works just as well, and doesn’t need to rhyme? Was that a talking canary? Seriously what the fuck? A talking canary? Am I missing something her?

I’ve never had to review a musical before, and honestly I’m not even sure where I should start. All movies are a sum of their parts to a degree, but sometimes if the acting is good enough, or the cinematography is really well done or just if it’s really unique and interesting, then a bad movie can become an ok movie, or an ok movie can become a brilliant movie.

Musicals have this strange uniqueness in the cinematic world though, where as well as the usual things like acting, directing, script, costume/sets, cinematography, editing, SFX etc. you now have to add in the songs, the singing, the dancing and the choreography, which have become even more important than everything else and yet are the things most likely to go wrong for a musical. Unfortunately if you get these wrong then whole thing comes crashing down faster than David Hasselhof at a free bar. At Long Last Love resembles a barman that just left the bottle in this analogy.

The songs were written by one of musical theatre’s greats, Cole Porter, which you would think would give them some sort of pedigree, but it seems that when the songs are put into a movie they just don’t work. To make it worse, there are no huge songs that you find yourself humming at odd times. This film is screaming out for a Singin’ in the Rain or a Time Warp, but it just never delivers, and that leaves you with a sour taste as all musicals should have at least one song that gets lodged in your head for months. In short, At Long Last Love was Porter’s Cut the Crap (by The Clash and one of the worst albums ever by one of the greatest bands ever for all the non punk fans).

To make matters worse, Peter Bodganovich decided to make one of the worst decisions it was possible for him to make, and he had the actors sing their performances live. This may have worked better with more experienced musical actors, but for Burt Reynolds and Cybill Shepherd it sounds like Carpool Karaoke with Rebecca Black and Bob Dylan.

Reynolds and Shepherd are hardly Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, in fact as a singing duo they’re more like Fred West and Mr Rogers. Shepherd can just about hold a tune, but her dancing is so out of time that it would make Doctor Who would look on in awe. As for Reynolds, him and singing mix as well as milk and beer (AKA the “cocktail” known as horse jizz...). He is so out of his depth in this movie that he reminds me of Tom Cruise in a paddling pool. Having said that though, they both have a certain onscreen charm that lifts their performances into the realms of tolerable, as do the majority of the cast.

The sets and the costumes are actually superb. They capture the decadence of the 1930s musicals perfectly and make this a very nice film to look at. The editing is also done brilliantly, as is the cinematography and some of the scenes themselves have a really good whimsical humour that suits the film perfectly. If Bodganovich had concentrated as much on the performances of the songs as he clearly did on the visuals of this movie, it could have been much, much better.

Since this movie was a sub, then it really isn’t anywhere near the levels of cinematic depravity we’ve been sinking to recently, but it is still a pretty poor excuse for a movie. Bogdanovich's decision to record everything live really backfired on him. Whilst it genuinely looks good, the awful singing, dancing and songs killed off all the potential this film had and just makes this an embarrassing addition to musical cinema. Less The Sound of Music and more the sound of Cole Porter rolling over in his grave.

#34(b) At Long Last Love (1975) (Colin)

Cast: Burt Reynolds, Cybill Shepherd, Madeline Kahn, Duilio Del Prete, Eileen Brennan, John Hillerman

Director: Peter Bogdanovich

Genre: Musical, Comedy, Romance

I hate musicals. I despise them. I loathe them. So when I found out that the next movie on our list was a musical, I was desperate to get out of it.

I offered to watch 10 Adam Sandler movies in its place; Wes declined. I offered to watch every Meg Ryan film ever made; Wes declined. I put on a fake moustache, thick glasses and said in my best broken French accent, ‘I know not of this Colin you speak about’; Wes told me to stop being silly and then declined.

So there was no avoiding it, I had to watch our next movie, At Long Last Love (1975).

When I looked at the cast, I was pleasantly surprised as it contains a host of stars whose work I enjoyed as a kid growing up in the 80’s.

It stars Burt Reynolds, who to me will always be ‘Bandit’ from Smokey and The Bandit, (1977) and it co-stars Cybill Shepherd, who forever will be Maddie Hayes from Moonlighting, (1985-89).

The supporting cast is not too shabby either, with Eileen Brennan, who is best know to me as Capt. Doreen Lewis in Private Benjamin, (1980) and John Hillerman, who will always be known to me as Higgins from Magnum PI, (1980-88).

With such a familiar cast, I felt in safe hands. You know what?  Maybe I was judging this movie too harshly, maybe, just maybe there was a musical out there that I could actually enjoy…….

It’s the 1930’s and Michael Oliver Pritchard III is a millionaire who likes nothing more than to quaff champagne, gamble and enjoy life. He also enjoys holding onto the side of his car whilst butler, Rodney James, (John Hillerman), drives around at whopping 10mph.

When Michael loses his grip, flies off the car and tumbles into Kitty O’Kelly, (Madeline Kahn), it’s love at first sight. Or so it seems….

Meanwhile, at a horse race event, single heiress, Brooke Carter, (Cybill Shepherd), meets and falls for a young Italian gentleman called Johnny Spanish, (Duilio Del Prete). Again it appears to be love at first sight. Or is it?........

It turns out Brooke and Kitty are old school friends and eventually all 4 meet. They party around town and are joined by Brooke’s maid, Elizabeth, (Eileen Brennan), who falls instantly for Rodney.

At a dance, Brooke and Kitty swap partners and there is an instant spark between Brooke and Michael. When the pair step outside to talk, Kitty and Johnny spot them and decide to pretend to fall in love to make Brooke and Michael jealous, but all doesn’t go to plan when Kitty and Johnny realise they may have feelings for each other…….

Will Brooke find love with Michael or Johnny? Will Kitty find love with Johnny or Michael? Will Elizabeth find love with Rodney? Watch this stupendously tedious long movie to find out!

OK, let’s get the positives out of the way. The costume and set design are good and I can not deny that this does look and feel like a 1930’s musical, so job done on that account.

Also some of the quick exchanges between the characters, particularly Michael and others, can be quite fun and some of the lines contain genuine intelligence and humour. This made some scenes watchable but invariably they were spoilt by someone bursting into spontaneous song and that, I’m afraid, is where they lose me.

If I was ever in a situation whereby I am having a nice little chat with someone and they then broke out into song and then everyone around them joined in and then they started dancing around me with perfectly choreographed moves, I would let out a little Tommy squeaker from my bottom and shuffle toward the exit. To me, this is the stuff of nightmares and is up there with spiders, clowns and Piers Morgan.

I do realise that this is a personal preference, but there are things about this film which I am sure we can all agree make this a truly bad movie.

Firstly, for some reason director Peter Bogdanovich decided that all the actors should sing live. Now I will admit I am the first one to tut loudly when Britney Spears is badly lip syncing to some dross she is peddling out on X-Factor, but when it comes to shooting a movie, I can see why the need to overdub the singing is preferable, especially after watching this movie.

The cast are predominately actors, not singers or musical performers and so singing and walking does not come naturally. What little tune they can hold goes out of the window when left foot has to go in front of right foot and what we end up with is something that resembles an off-key shop mannequin with a broom up it's behind.

Then there is the fact that we can hear the background noise whilst they are singing. In one especially annoying moment, Elizabeth and Rodney are making the morning breakfast in the kitchen and are pouring coffee and moving plates around. The noise is so loud, that the singing is barely audible, (not a bad thing, I grant you), and it sounds like I'm trying to listen to someone's ringtone in the middle of a canteen.

Why did Bogdanovich insist on doing this? Would it not have been better to record the songs in a studio and dub over the movie?

The songs themselves are unoriginal and were all previously written by Cole Porter, a composer and songwriter who was big in the 1930's. Having died in 1964, Porter was not involved in this movie but his work has largely been ripped off for the film. Whether or not these are good covers of the original songs, I do not know, but I can say that this movie's version of 'You're The Top' seems to have Charlie Brown's teacher as backing vocals.

In fact 'At Long Last Love' was taken from Cole Porter's song of the same name and this leads me to my biggest problem with this movie. It is to all intent and purposes Cole Porter's movie, with a very shallow storyline sellotaped in between songs which Bogdanovich then passes of as his own.

I find this disgraceful, Porter did all the hard work for Bogdanovich by writing all the songs and all Bogdanovich had to do was to create a half interesting storyline to tie them all together, which he failed miserably at. This is another movie which could have been tweeted and did not need 2 hours of my time to be wasted!

If I was to use Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, then in between songs write a story about a man's indecision as to which curtains to buy and then if I was then to call the movie 'Any Colour You Like', I could hardly expect to ethically pass this off as my own work.

At the very least, Bogdanovich should have asked someone to write songs which were a nod to the 1930's musicals of the time; a celebration but something original.

And so my worse fears were confirmed, I did not find a musical that I could actually enjoy. The script was sparse, the actors could not sing, it was poorly executed, directed and in the end Bogdanovich was, in my opinion, lazy.

I do have some respect for Bogdanovich though, after the movies poor reception he did write a letter to the national newspapers apologising for the film. He did cite issues with the studio which contributed to the disaster and I believe him. His apology seemed sincere and I see no reason why the excuse was not either.

But the fact is, this movie was made and is still out there; all 2 bloody hours of it!

So if you like Cole Porter, give it a go, if you like musicals, give it a go, if you like 80's TV, give it a go, but I think you'll all be as disappointed as I was and will all be saying the same thing when it's over:

'At Long Last, the end credits!'.