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Highly Overrated But Still Good

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

In this satirical look at Hollywood, a film producer tries to commit suicide after a big-budget flop, but then decides to reshoot it as porn. It has some very funny moments but runs out of steam long before its excessive running time. It boasts a terrific all-star cast, but Preston steals the film as a wise-cracking doctor. Andrews, playing a wholesome actress not unlike herself, flashes her breasts in an attempt to boost the box office of the reshot film. Mulligan plays her husband, presumably modeled after Edwards. In his final film, Holden plays a hard-drinking, hedonistic director. In a sad irony, the actor drank himself to death months after the film was released.

Writer-director Blake Edwards vents his frustrations on Hollywood (via Hollywood!) in telling slim story of a filmmaker on the edge after critics have trashed his latest family musical. His solution is to reshoot much of the picture as a blue movie...and have the G-rated star expose her breasts. Great cast struggles through what might have been a sharp satire of Tinsel Town; instead, the film is pseudo-cynical, putting down the movie business (and audiences) while catering to the lowest common denominator (are the changes made to the movie actually meant to appeal to the mass market? Ironically, the most effervescent part of the film is the opening musical number, which is then lambasted for us!). The characters are mostly ciphers, talking all at once, and Harry Stradling, Jr.'s soupy cinematography makes the whole thing look like bad cable. * from ****

Miserable, obnoxious, depressing, lazy, and unbearably filthy excuse for a comedy with ne'er a laugh in it. In many ways, it resembles a bad dream.Everything in this picture is aesthetically and conceptually hideous - even the characters' names ("Felix Farmer") - and though Edwards presumably intended S.O.B. as a grand slam against mainstream Hollywood, his sense of humor here is so off that the film immediately becomes physically repellent - it turns one's stomach... again, and again, and again.Richard Mulligan has been quite enjoyable on the small screen (in 'Empty Nest,' and in his brief appearances on 'The Golden Girls') but his performance here is wretched. It stands comparison with his somnambulism in another lousy film, 'Scavenger Hunt,' from two years prior.But the worst aspect of S.O.B. is undoubtedly its complete implausibility. The film within the film, 'Night Wind,' is so ridiculous that it seems impossible - and insults the audience. Are bad films made in Hollywood? Every day. But never one this terrible. Just how unfunny is S.O.B.? I laughed more at 'Ironweed.' I can't think of any director in history, American or otherwise, who is as uneven as Blake Edwards. Hard to believe that the same individual responsible for such classics as 'The Days of Wine and Roses,' 'A Shot in the Dark,' 'Experiment in Terror,' 'Darling Lili,' 'Micki and Maude,' and 'That's Life' could churn out crap on par with this and 'The Trail of the Pink Panther.'

From the opening scene to the final fade out, this movie, for it's genre, is as good as it gets.I noticed when they gave Blake Edwards his lifetime achievement award at the Oscars this past year, they did NOT mention S.O.B. amongst his list of films. Interesting. Could it be that this scathingly witting, brilliant, intelligent ... and, oh yes, HILARIOUS ... film cut too close to home?The cast is top drawer and everyone is at the top of his or her game. From Julie Andrews, playing a delicious parody of herself, to William Holden, who in the course of the movie declaims his own obituary, to Robert Preston (not a shyster ... he is a QUACK), it is wonderful. I'm sure the Hollywood Power Players hated it. Unless you are One Of Them, you will probably love it. It's great.