Watch For Pete's Sake For Free

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Blistering performances.

Henrietta (Barbra Streisand) and Pete (Michael Sarrazin) Robins are happily married but not rich. He drives a cab for a living when Henrietta struggles to pay the bills. Somehow they're able to have a maid (Vivian Bonnell) who comes in a few times to clean up. Then Pete finds out that the US and Russia are going to make a deal on pork bellies. If he invests he could become rich--but he needs to put down $3,000 which he doesn't have. Henry borrows it from a loan shark--but the pork belly deal doesn't go through and Henry has to do various "hilarious" jobs to pay him back.The script is weak and most of the humor falls flat (and I think it bombed at the box office) but this is OK to watch. Streisand gives it her all and she manges to make some of the very weak lines seem funny with her readings. I never thought she could do comedy till I saw this movie. Sarrazin is super sweet as her husband and is a likable guy. Bonnell is the token wise-cracking black woman but she still manages to be funny. The only casting misstep is Estelle Parsons as a VERY annoying cousin of Pete. She's supposed to be annoying but funny but comes across as a mean, cruel witch. Just ONCE I wanted Streisand to slap her.This is mostly ignored by Streisand fans but it's not her worst movie ("The Mirror Has Two Faces" is). Worth catching. And Streisand DOES sing a song during the opening credits.

I didn't see this picture, FOR PETE'S SAKE, when it came out because the notion, as the picture was marketed at the time, about Barbra Streisand turning tricks to support her husband, was ugly and prima facia ugly. Now that I've seen it I have to say I'm glad I didn't waste a dollar or how ever much it cost to see a movie at the time. It is flat out awful. Really it's nothing more than a series of gags constructed for Babs that are executed on a sub- I Love Lucy level. It's strange because director Peter Yates has shown himself to be a master of very complicated mise en scene in action films like BULLET. Here it's clear that no one working on this picture has the slightest sense of humor.Pete, a cab driver, wants to be rich and has the opportunity to invest in pork bellies (see, its funny already). His wife borrows the money from a loan shark and can't pay it back. Instead of being rubbed out for not paying back her loan her contract is sold, first to a madam who turns out Babs but, guess what, she has a series of hilarious accidents and never actually has sex. So typical. Right down to Pretty Woman, Hollywood movie hookers never, ever, have sex. Then one belabored, unfunny, poorly played and poorly executed gag after another. Michael Sarrazin, as Babs' husband, is injected onto the screen at intervals for reasons neither he nor the director really understands. In the old days, when women ruled the box office, women were the biggest and most important stars. The male stars were known as leading men. They were around to give the women something to play off of. In FOR PETE'S SAKE Barbra Streisand doesn't need anyone else to play off of. As a comic she has eliminated the straight man. The results are monumentally flat. And so unfunny. Just terrible.This will make you appreciate Peter Bogdanovich all the more, his ability to produce a coherent, constantly funny comedy with multiple characters playing off each other. Even the little known I WONDER WHO'S KILLING HER NOW, with a similar structure, is a masterpiece compared to this ego trip. I have the terrible feeling that Streisand had become a monster by this time and did everything her way, and the only that was photographed here was her out-sized ego. It's not for nothing that this bummer never gets revived. Like Orson Wells she directed from in front of the camera. Except that Wells had talent. Streisand only has fans.P.S. As if one didn't have enough reason to hate these people for appearing in a crap movie, check out the huge apartment across the street from Prospect Park. In New York we hate people with great apartments like this especially if they're rent controlled.

...for which everyone should be grateful. The worst comedy released nowadays (Josie and the Pussycats?) will elicit more smirks than this. Anyone mourning the state of movies today (me!), should rent this half-hearted effort to confirm that there have always been poorly-made movies.Time has not been kind to it. It takes 35 sad, uninspired minutes to introduce the conflict. Today it would be moving in under ten. It's a one-joke movie. See... Streisand borrows money to help out her husband, Pete. Get it? The money is "for Pete's sake." Streisand gets in deep with loan sharks and her debt is continually traded up, leading to standard screwball antics. Peter Yates does not have any ideas for getting a laugh, or for getting this dog moving. He just kind of films each page of the script. Maybe kids with no concept of film structure would like it. The cinematography uses that bad, even lighting from the 60's that kills atmosphere. A mob hideout feels exactly the same as a middle-class living room.This was not the future of comedy. Really, really... tired.Sarrazan has a lumpy, strange head. His face looks like it was designed by committee. You can actually see the old man he's going to become, despite his youthful style. Back in the day though my sisters thought he was hot. It didn't take that much.

The first 30 minutes or so of "For Pete's Sake" are amusingly on-target: Brooklyn housewife Barbra Streisand drops her husband off at work on their motorcycle and then pops a wheelie; she proceeds to forge a battle of the bills with the grocery store cashier, the insurance company, the banker, and the telephone company exec (Anne Ramsey, pre-"Throw Momma From The Train"). All this time, Streisand is in terrific comedic form, her expressions more and more incredulous. A dinner with her husband's relatives is equally funny, but "Pete" starts to give out somewhere after this. Barbra can't pay back loan sharks and has to work as a prostitute, a bomb deliverer and a cattle rustler. This last job gives the movie its big slapstick scene, which was a groaner even in 1974. Clearly a rip-off of Streisand's "What's Up, Doc?", it features a stampede of cows down the Columbia backlot accompanied by some of the silliest "country" music I've ever heard. If the filmmakers had kept the movie on a grounded level--and kept Streisand as the perfect Everywoman--this might have been a dead-on satire of the ailing economy. As it is, it's passable fluff. **1/2 from ****