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S.O.B.
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by Warner Home Video
Sales Rank: 8313
Price: $14.98
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It's been years since Blake Edwards made a funny film, and this 1981 effort may have been one of his last consistent laugh producers. Richard Mulligan plays a Hollywood producer who realizes that his career may be over when the public sees his latest film: a big-budget musical that lands on test audiences with a thud. In a moment of madness, he hits upon the idea of reediting it to include soft-porn reshoots--including a shot of his movie-star wife (Julie Andrews), who has a squeaky clean public image, baring her breasts (which the squeaky clean Andrews actually does). Scathing in its satire of Hollywood numbskullery, the film features terrific performances by Mulligan, Robert Preston, and William Holden (in his last film). <I>--Marshall Fine</I>
Viewer Reviews
After his family-friendly movie staring his wife, squeaky-clean actress Sally Miles (Julie Andrews), becomes the biggest flop of all time, director Felix Farmer (Richard Mulligan) decides to turn the movie into a porno in an effort to regain the money he has lost.
By now, just about everyone should know the gimmick behind this film: "S.O.B" is that movie in which Julie Andrews swears and does a nude scene in an (unsuccessful) effort to tarnish the squeaky-clean image that she earned from making movies like "Mary Poppins" and "The Sound of Music", and admittedly, that gimmick was what convinced me to see this film. In theory this is a great idea for a film, and for the first 90 minutes, I thought it was working. The first three-quarters of this film are a hilarious take on Hollywood, with some great sight-gags that have no real purpose other than that they are just plain funny (for example, the running joke about the dead guy on the beach). In fact, I would favourably compare the first three-quarters of "S.O.B" with "Network", the classic television industry satire. Unfortunately, "S.O.B" is ruined by writer/director Blake Edwards not knowing when to end the film.
There is a point at about the 90 minute mark which felt to me like it would be a great place to stop this film (I won't mention what it is, in order to avoid spoilers, but you'll know it if you see it). However, Blake Edwards overshoots this point by about half an hour, subjecting his audience to 30 minutes of pointless, unfunny rubbish that contributes nothing to the story and just gives the viewer time to stop and realize that not all of the plot threads were adequately tied off and that Larry Hagman's character vanished somewhere around the middle of the film. Thinking back on some of Blake Edwards' other films, including "Victor/Victoria" and "The Great Race", I realize that this pattern of making films that start off well but are let down by disappointing endings, is not a one-off occurrence for Edwards and it doesn't exactly encourage me to watch any more of his films.
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S.O.B.
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