Author! Author! | Al Pacino, Dyan Cannon | Mixed feelings, some soild points

Author! Author! | Al Pacino, Dyan Cannon | Stop changing these movies

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Author! Author!

	Author! Author! Al Pacino, Dyan Cannon 20th Century Fox, 2007 average customer review:based on 20 reviews view larger image
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Life is getting complicated for Broadway playwright Ivan Travalian (Pacino). His flaky wife Gloria (Weld) is moving in with her lover, his director hates his new play and his leading lady (Cannon) is a terrified movie star who's never been on the stage. With five children to look after (most of them Gloria's), a budding romance with his leading lady, and a producer (King) demanding a rewrite, it's no wonder the emotionally and financially unstable Ivan starts to exhibit all kinds of irrational behavior.

Mixed feelings, some soild points

There are two good things to be said of Arthur Hiller's Author! Author!
(at the Plaza): Tuesday Weld and Dyan Cannon. The former plays Al
Pacino's wife, the latter his mistress. Both are actresses of
distinction. Both look terrific. Both should be reminded that this too
shall pass.

As Broadway playwright Ivan Travalian, an Armenian Neil Simon, Al
Pacino is another matter. Pacino is an actor of distinction, but he
does not look terrific - he looks, in fact, unaccountably dissipated,
like mid- period Leonard Cohen - and he has retained the leaden
lifelessness he brought to Cruising. Because Israel Horovitz's
abominable script was apparently conceived with Richard Dreyfuss in
mind (Ivan Travalian is a twinkly, manic shouter), Pacino's
lugubriousness sabotages whatever infinitesimal chance the movie might
have had for success (it's not what you'd call a great loss).

The much-married Ivan is rearing, $ la Dustin Hoffman's Ted Kramer,
five children abandoned by Ivan's various wives. He is a loving father
and is so devotedly altrustic he is lacking an artist's ego - the
reason this mother hen wants the newest play to become a hit is so
there will be enough money to feed the chicks.

The brood is composed of the most appalling set of exhibitionistic
child actors this side of Eight Is Enough; the delicately modulated
characterizations achieved from the young performers in E.T. and
Poltergeist by Steven Spielberg appear to be the products of another
species.

That this comedy is not funny is bad enough; that it is resolutely and
maliciously anti-female is unforgivable. Miss Weld's witless wife is
so self-absorbed the audience actually applauds when Pacino tells her
to stay out of the ocean and "give the sharks a break," while Miss
Cannon's Broadway actress is so selfish she can't stand more than a
week with the playwright's kiddies. (I know why: as a performer of
sensitivity, she is tortured by the bad acting in the house.) Kramer
vs. Kramer's mild sentimentality about single fathers has become a
full-blown disease in Author! Author!: Israel Horovitz hasn't written a
character; he's put Mother Teresa into a townhouse. Benjamin Miller,
Filmbay Editor.

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Stop changing these movies

First let me say, I am glad that this is finally on DVD. I have been looking for this one. Second what is with these companies. They changed the ending. Ok, not changed it, THEY TOOK IT OUT. I enjoyed this movie when it first came out. It should how a father struggled to make ends meat with 5 kids. Having to deal with a cheating wife, and still write a play. It showed the love that a father has in these kids. Mind you only one is his. The other 4 are his by marriage and he loves them as if they were his own. But to take out the one scene that was fun and touching is stupid. What is wrong with the kids showing there father that, not only is he a success on Braodway but that he is still their Dad. I loved that scene and hoped that when it was released on DVD it would be there. But NO! They took it out and stopped it when he is reading the paper. They really need think. This is not the first movie that has been changed. I now am going to try and get the VHS instead. At least that one, hopefully they didnt change.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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