Lucky Lady (1975)

          Screenwriters Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz were hot after American Graffiti, scoring a huge purchase price for their screenplay Lucky Lady, which gene-spliced the music-driven ribaldry of Cabaret (1972) with the twisty plotting of The Sting (1973). An impressive roster of A-list talents converged on the project, including director Stanley Donen and the three stars billed above the title: Gene Hackman, Burt Reynolds, and Cabaret Oscar-winner Liza Minnelli. Cabaret vets working behind the camera include cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth and songwriters Fred Ebb and John Kander. But even with all of this cinematic firepower, and a hefty budget of $13 million, Lucky Lady is little more than a well-made train wreck.

          The main problem is that expensive script, which puts three despicable characters into an icky housekeeping arrangement. After an unnecessarily convoluted set-up, Prohibition-era schemers Kibby (Hackman), Claire (Minnelli), and Walker (Reynolds) become rum-runners sailing their ship, the Lucky Lady, back and forth between Mexico and the U.S., chased by a homicidal Coast Guard captain (Geoffrey Lewis) and a ruthless fellow bootlegger (John Hillerman). Half of the picture is devoted to criminal intrigue, including several high-seas shootouts, so the movie’s frothy tone disappears whenever the story turns dark and violent, which is often. The other half of the picture is devoted to the farce of Kibby and Walker competing for Claire; she moves back and forth between their beds until all three finally sleep together. Why these two men are so excited by the abrasive Claire is as mystifying as why viewers are expected to care about any of them, since all three are deceitful, shallow, and tiresome. (Supporting player Robby Benson, as a Lucky Lady shipmate, adds the film’s only glimmer of sweetness.)

          With its painfully episodic structure, the movie feels much longer than its 118-minute running time, and Unsworth goes berserk with his signature haze filters, making some images almost indecipherable. The stars try valiantly to make the material work, with Reynolds thriving in his light-comedy métier and Minnelli belting out a few numbers, but aside from the production values and star power, there’s little to recommend in Lucky Lady.

Lucky Lady: LAME

At Long Last Love (1975)

          Director Peter Bogdanovich’s twin preoccupations with classic cinema and Cybill Shepherd, the model/actress for whom he left his wife in the early ’70s, collided in one of the most infamous flops of the decade, At Long Last Love. A sincere but wholly unnecessary homage to the champagne-and-caviar musicals of the Depression era, the film presents the uninteresting story of two swell couples trading partners back and forth as they serenade each other with dizzy ditties by the great Cole Porter. Displaying his usual meticulousness, Bogdanovich gets most of the details right (frothy patter, glossy interior sets, perfect evening dresses), but the film is far less than the sum of its parts.

          The characters are abstractions because all they do is cavort about and wait for money to appear from nowhere (some are penniless strivers faking affluence, others are spoiled wastrels with trust funds), which means it’s impossible to care about their romantic entanglements. The story takes forever to unfold, since each plot development, no matter how trivial, is explained in a full-length song. Ironically, Shepherd is the best thing about the movie, because while she’s a natural singer with a brassy voice, her costars Eileen Brennan, John Hillerman, Madeline Kahn, and Burt Reynolds display far less impressive vocal talents. (The other major player, Italian actor Duilio Del Prete, is a fine actor and singer, but he’s adrift as an unfamiliar foreigner in a sea of recognizable Hollywood faces.) Worst of all, Bogdanovich completely botches a key element of any successful musical: dancing. None of his performers has any real hoofing skill, so most of the numbers are delivered while characters sit in chairs or walk around lush estates. Dullsville, baby.

          Had the picture been faster, shorter, and infused with fleet footwork, it might have been a pleasant trifle. But as is, it’s nearly interminable. At Long Last Love bombed so badly that it nearly killed its directors once-blazing career. After making the much better Nickelodeon (1976), which was already in motion by the time At Long Last Love tanked, Bogdanovich spent three years in the wilderness before returning with Saint Jack (1979), the low budget of which reflected his diminished stature.

At Long Last Love: LAME