{"id":2094,"date":"2024-08-05T22:10:52","date_gmt":"2024-08-05T22:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=2094"},"modified":"2024-10-12T21:36:52","modified_gmt":"2024-10-12T21:36:52","slug":"at-long-last-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/05\/at-long-last-love\/","title":{"rendered":"At Long Last Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"At Long Last Love <\/strong>(1975)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th Century Fox\/Musical-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 123 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated G (some off-color humor, mildly suggestive lyrics)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Peter Bogdanovich\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Peter Bogdanovich\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Cole Porter\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Laszlo Kovacs\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 1, 1975 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Burt Reynolds, Cybill Shepherd, Madeline Kahn, Duilio Del Prete, Eileen Brennan, John Hillerman, Mildred Natwick, Quinn Redeker, Liam Dunn, M. Emmet Walsh, Burton Gilliam, Ned Wertimer, Basil Hoffman.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $1.5M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0When it comes to box office flops, one simply must not ignore the flat-footed musical comedy At Long Last Love<\/strong>. It added literalness to the term \u201cbomb\u201d by nearly torpedoing the career of filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich who appeared to be on the brink of a brilliant directing career with two critically acclaimed and commercially successful films, The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon, under his belt. That is, until Fox let him make his salute to the musical films of the 1930s featuring the music of Cole Porter. Unfortunately, it didn\u2019t come off as well as he hoped.<\/p>\n

\u00a0At Long Last Love<\/strong> was received so poorly by critics and audiences, Bogdanovich wrote an open letter of apology that was printed in newspapers throughout the US. Reviewers criticized the director\u2019s decision to have his cast perform Porter\u2019s songs live (as opposed to lip-synching). He felt it would retain the spontaneity that defined earlier musical films. That\u2019s all well and good except for one thing. None of the leads are known for their singing and dancing abilities except for Cybill Shepherd (Bogdanovich\u2019s then-girlfriend) who recorded an album of Porter songs the year before.<\/p>\n

\u00a0PLOT, WHAT PLOT? Where do you see a plot in At Long Last Love<\/strong>? Trick question, there isn\u2019t one. It\u2019s as slight as movies come. Set in the 30s, it centers on four members of the leisure class- wealthy playboy Michael Oliver Pritchard III (Reynolds, The Longest Yard), spoiled (and broke) heiress Brooke Carter (Shepherd, The Last Picture Show), stage star Kitty O’Kelly (Kahn, Blazing Saddles) and Latin lover-type Johnny Spanish (Del Prete, Daisy Miller), an Italian gambler who pretends to be rich. The happy group also includes Michael\u2019s uptight butler\/chauffeur Rodney (Hillerman, Chinatown) and Brooke\u2019s companion Elizabeth (Brennan, The Sting). Michael meets Kitty when Rodney nearly runs her over with the car. Johnny meets Brooke and Elizabeth at the race track. They all end up at one of Kitty\u2019s performances where Brooke realizes she knows Kitty from their school days. They spend the rest of the movie doing what rich people do, NOTHING! They hang out, go to fancy parties with other bored (and boring) rich people, frequently break out into song and dance, drink champagne by the case and switch romantic partners. That last tidbit is the only thing that qualifies as a plot development here.<\/p>\n

\u00a0At Long Last Love<\/strong> is an extreme example of a minimalist plot. It\u2019s so insubstantial; it can\u2019t even rightfully be called a plot. Let\u2019s call it an idea. Whatever it is, Bogdanovich manages to stretch it out to a shade over two hours. It\u2019s a rocky ride to say the least. Obviously, the main attraction is the musical numbers. It features 18 of Cole Porter\u2019s songs, one of which is surprisingly NOT \u201cLet\u2019s Do It, Let\u2019s Fall in Love\u201d. \u00a0He\u2019s one of the greatest songwriters of all time; his lyrics perfectly capture a more innocent and frivolous time. His songs call for the royal treatment which they don\u2019t get here. Instead, they get clumsy choreography, club-footed dancing and actors that can barely carry a tune. That\u2019s one of the things I like about At Long Last Love<\/strong>. I actually enjoyed a few of the numbers, \u201cFriendship\u201d in particular. It\u2019s a fun number with all six principals packed into Michael\u2019s Rolls Royce singing away. I also liked \u201cYou\u2019re the Top\u201d (Reynolds-Kahn and Del Prete-Shepherd), \u201cBut in the Morning, No\u201d (Hillerman-Brennan) and \u201cMost Gentlemen Don\u2019t Like Love\u201d (Brennan, Kahn and Shepherd). The last one is belted out in the ladies\u2019 lounge in a Lord & Taylor department store. The songs are vibrant and full of life, but some of the bigger ones- e.g. \u201cLet\u2019s Misbehave\u201d (Shepherd)- are handled as throwaway numbers.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The name cast doesn\u2019t exactly evoke the musical genre. To be fair, it was the studio\u2019s idea to hire Reynolds after Elliott Gould dropped out of the project. He\u2019s neither a singer nor a dancer, but he doesn\u2019t do an awful job in At Long Last Love<\/strong>. Kahn, who gets to perform a ridiculous stage number (\u201cFind Me a Primitive Man\u201d) surrounded by dancers dressed as cavemen, has an unusual voice. She used it to better effect in Blazing Saddles as Marlene Dietrich stand-in Lily Von Shtupp. At times, Shepherd acts like she\u2019s above the action and the material. As for Del Prete, this role did NOT make him a big star in America.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Brennan has a brash style that compensates for her lack of musical skills. If I\u2019m being fair, she and Hillerman are the true stand-outs. Their romance, defined by Elizabeth brazenly throwing herself at the reserved Rodney, is the best part of At Long Last Love<\/strong>. They get off this great first exchange:<\/p>\n

Elizabeth: \u201cWell, what do they call you, big boy?\u201d<\/p>\n

Rodney: \u201cRodney James\u201d<\/p>\n

Elizabeth: \u201cRod.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rodney: \u201cThat, I\u2019m afraid, is the diminutive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elizabeth: \u201cWell, I\u2019ll bet you ain\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll give the cast credit for trying. None of them phone it in. In fact, they look like they\u2019re having fun acting like fools in a silly, empty-headed movie musical.<\/p>\n

\u00a0One thing about At Long Last Love<\/strong> won\u2019t escape ANY viewer, the art direction. It features an overabundance of black and white (mostly white). In fact, those are the only colors in the movie. Bogdanovich called it \u201cblack and white in color\u201d. Everything, from the clothing to the furniture to the Art Deco sets, is rendered in black and white (mostly white). It\u2019s an interesting look that gives the movie an otherworldly appearance, like time stopped in 1935. HOWEVER, it underlies the fact that At Long Last Love<\/strong> is more of an exercise in style than an actual movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The truth is At Long Last Love<\/strong> isn\u2019t all that bad. No, let me rephrase that. It\u2019s bad in all the right ways. It\u2019s funny, but not in the way Bogdanovich intended. The hubris with which it\u2019s made is hysterical. It goes wrong in so many ways, yet it still entertains. It\u2019s fun to watch the actors embarrass themselves in this weightless movie. If you think their dancing is clumsy, wait until you get a load of their attempts at comedy. The apex of humor appears to be the scene of Reynolds accidentally sprinkling after shave into his eyes and blindly stumbling into Shepherd\u2019s bedroom (in his underwear, of course). Was this even funny in the days of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers?<\/p>\n

\u00a0This is more or less how I felt about At Long Last Love<\/strong> when I saw it for the first time in summer \u201997. I wanted to see it ever since I read about it in the Michael and Harry Medved book The Golden Turkey Awards where it won the prize for \u201cThe Worst Musical Extravaganza in Hollywood History\u201d beating out equally deserving titles like Song of Norway, Lost Horizon and Sgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band. To be fair, it\u2019s not a complete fiasco like Sgt. Pepper, but it still earns its rightful place among cinematic turkeys like Heaven\u2019s Gate and Ishtar. For me, it\u2019s a musical guilty pleasure like Can\u2019t Stop the Music, Xanadu and Grease 2. If you groove on bad movies, you owe it to yourself to see At Long Last Love <\/strong>at least once in your life.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At Long Last Love (1975)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th Century Fox\/Musical-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 123 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated G (some off-color humor, mildly suggestive lyrics)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Peter Bogdanovich\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Peter Bogdanovich\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Cole Porter\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Laszlo Kovacs\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 1, 1975 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Burt Reynolds, Cybill Shepherd, Madeline Kahn, Duilio Del Prete, Eileen Brennan, John Hillerman, Mildred Natwick, Quinn Redeker, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2875,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guilty-pleasures","category-musical"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/At-Long-Last-Love-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2094"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2876,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2094\/revisions\/2876"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}