Watch Gaily, Gaily For Free

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

hyped garbage

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

A competent, routine late 60s' Hollywood sex comedy based very loosely on Ben Hecht's memoirs of his youth as a newpaper reporter. Young Ben (Beau Bridges), a horny and painfully naive small town boy, comes to the wicked city of Chicago and gets a job as a cub reporter. There he learns the rudiments of the newspaper business and, not incidentally, finds true love and gets relieved of his virginity. The girl (Margot Kidder), is a teenaged prostitute with the proverbial heart of gold who helps Ben break a big political corruption story by stealing the notebook listing the bribes from the coat pocket of a sleeping John. They live happily ever after.It's memorable only for one line. The ferocious city editor (Brian Keith) assigns the kid to go out and find a picture of an accused "sex maniac." As Ben is on his way out through the city room, the editor calls out, "Boy, do you even know what a sex maniac does?" Ben, who has no clue, stammers and blushes. The editor bellows, "A good sex maniac -- SELLS NEWSPAPERS!" True then; true now.

First of all, it's the memoirs of Ben Hecht's 1963 book of the same name. His name is changed to Ben Harvey. It has a wonderful cast: Beau Bridges, Margot Kidder, Melodie Johnson, Melina Mercouri, Hume Cronyn, George Kennedy and others. Directed by Norman Jewison in the style of a Blake Edwards comedy. It starts out with great promise. Beau (as Ben Harvey) lusts after George Kennedy's beautiful young "niece" whom ends up being the mistress. Not knowing this, he runs off to Chicago to repent, becomes an "assistant" to cantankerous drunk newspaper reporter Brian Keith, ends up "rescued", by a madam and living at a bawdy house. He is so innocent that he first believes it to be a boarding house for women! He falls in love with the proverbial "prostitute with a heart of gold" (played by a very young Margot Kidder. While some of this actually happened, it is exaggerated, and ends up deteriorating into an unbelievable comical farce during the second half of the movie. It starts out as a very fine film with wonderful period sets, including a famous Chicago landmark, The Sullivan Theater. Sadly, it has little resemblance to the autobiographical book it is based upon. It borrows from every cliché, including Mark Twain, as Ben attends his own funeral, quite alive after being resurrected from a drowning by the then-new wonder-drug Adrenalin. Involves all the standard comic devices: The madcap chase for the climax of the movie, the multiple "switched" prop, (that looks like a small Bible) which in this case is a little black book involving commodity price-fixing and politicians. It ends very slapstick,it wraps up in about 5 minutes at the end and looks rushed; although the movie is 2 hours long. Of course Ben gets the girl, now reformed. Also, "The Madam Queen" Melina gets to belt out a very forgettable tune, in her "gravelly" voice. The uncut "R" version (very brief nudity) is 117 minutes long and can only be seen on TMC at this time. No Region 1 DVD is available.

The first 15 minutes or so are wonderful, a rose-colored reminiscence of small-town America at the turn of the last century that suggests "Ah, Wilderness!" Then the Ben Hecht prototype, played by Beau Bridges with such innocence as to border on retardation, lights out for Chicago, and the narrative loses traction. It's quite a gorgeous, expensive production, and Melina Mercouri helps out as the madam who takes him under her wing (this was right toward the end of the movie era when prostitutes and bordellos were considered automatically titillating and hilarious, hence neither Mercouri nor any of her girls are fleshed out as characters). The always-good Brian Keith is Ben's alcoholic newspaper mentor, and other good actors mill about (Hume Cronyn, George Kennedy), but it's all color and very little forward thrust. Chicago 1910 had to be more interesting than this, and there must be more compelling stories to tell about it.

Ben Hecht wrote a book detailing his experiences as a reporter in Chicago during the early part of the century. It is more entertaining than this mix mash of a movie that jumps all over the place. The film has its moments. However, there are too few of them to see. The colorful characters that Hecht crossed paths with are watered down in this movie.