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Star 80
Paul Snider is a narcissistic, small time hustler who fancies himself a ladies man. His life changes when he meets Dorothy Stratten working behind the counter of a Dairy Queen. Under his guidance Dorothy grows to fame as a Playboy Playmate. But when Dorothy begins pursuing an acting career, the jealous Paul finds himself elbowed out of the picture by more famous men.
Release : | 1983 |
Rating : | 6.8 |
Studio : | Warner Bros. Pictures, The Ladd Company, |
Crew : | Art Direction, Art Direction, |
Cast : | Mariel Hemingway Eric Roberts Cliff Robertson Carroll Baker Roger Rees |
Genre : | Drama |
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Sorry, this movie sucks
hyped garbage
It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.
It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
The whole message of this movie is that you will kill to protect the thing you love most. Noah Baumbach and Jennifer Jason Leigh? It makes me wonder if that cocaine - laced achohol drink mickey my maternal Uncle Billy Hagood slipped Mommy had something to do with my existence. Back to movie. Eric Roberts kills Dorothy Straten because he can't have the thing he loves most, his life in the form of Dorothy Straten, carry on in the world of the rich people elite, Hollywood, Playboy Magazine, sports, and any form of record label music, without him. Eric Roberts, as an actor in this movie, is obivously anti-semitic,(like me, outside of writing this, this is not an act, I honestly am), and has low self-esteem, again, as an actor in this movie, as seen with the scene in this movie with the African-American woman. Eric Roberts poisons himself with a lethal overdose of love, dying in this mortal world of ours as an actor in this movie. Will Eric Roberts as an actor in this movie, after death as an actor in this movie, go to Yaweh's Heavenly Kingdom or Lucifer's Hell? Only Yaweh knows. It is not for us mortals to judge any mortal, whether in a movie, a play, a book, music, or in our true selves as mortals in this world we call Earth. Only Yaweh.
I remember not liking Bob Fosse's Star 80 upon first viewing at the theater. First I couldn't get past the actress Mariel Hemingway playing Dorthy Statton. She just didn't do it for me. Secondly I hated the character of Paul Snider played by Eric Roberts. He gave me the creeps from the start and I felt the film just had a heavy weight of doom throughout. Being a fan of Caberet and All That Jazz, both dealing with less then happy subjects I felt Star 80 was a bit over the top. Then I saw it in the 5 dollar bin at a best buy and gave it a watch.Wow was I wrong. While not as great as the near flawless Caberete and All That Jazz, Star 80 really is an underrated film. Eric Roberts again made me hate him from the beginning but now I realized that what I felt the first time, maybe I was not mature enough to understand. The best part of his performance is that you actually feel sorry for him in the end unlike Hemingways portrayal which still left me empty and wondering if this film would be a great film with a more suitable actress. Imagine Joel Grey co starring with a lesser talent then Liza ? The results i'm sure would not be the same.Star 80 is a very good film and I'm glad I gave it a second chance.
Some films are light and breezy. Others are full of explosions and booming sound effects. Still others are romantic and dreamy.This isn't any of those kinds of films. From the very start, the film makes clear that this is a tragic story - true story - of need and manipulation with an ending that was almost inevitable. It is more a character study than anything else, at how taking people out of their element can change them, either by raising them up or by destroying them. Both of which happen here."Star 80" works because it has two fantastic performances at its core. Eric Roberts just dazzles as small-time hustler Paul Snider, who stumbles on a gorgeous small-town girl played by Mariel Hemingway and manages to transform her into a major celebrity (Playboy Playmate and neophyte actress Dorothy Stratten). Roberts was wonderful at this stage of his career, and he draws you into his character to the point where you understand him and his crazy actions. Just about anybody can empathize with some part of the twisted Snider-Stratten story, despite the bizarre antics of Snider.Hemingway, with her brilliant "aw, shucks" performance, shows how being too passive can draw out the worst in certain people. Which is not to pin any blame on Stratten - the story shows that her only error was to trust Snider for too long.It would be easy to write Snider off as simply a cold-blooded killer with no redeeming qualities, but this film rises above that. Snider is a snake and ultimately a killer, but he's also a man who on his own dime builds an elaborate cage for a friend's dog. Snider winds up pining for Stratten - perhaps she was more than just a meal ticket to him? But Roberts also conveys the torment of a man who managed his protégé to stardom, only to face the bitter reality that it is her success, not his. A lover cast aside, to be left with nothing while he thinks she is ascending the golden steps of fame without him - yes, we come to understand Snider's motivations very well. It's a fascinating role reversal, for the stereotype is of the successful man casting his wife aside for something better - and here we have the opposite. No matter how loathsome Snider may be, and how much he may have deserved getting dumped, that is the underlying tale here. The tragedy lies in how he deals with it.It's difficult to find fault with this film, but I will say that the role of Stratten's mother, played by Carrol Baker, seems a bit false. The part as written has all the earmarks of 20-20 hindsight, and that goes for the roles of the brother and Hugh Hefner, too (why Hefner sued about his characterization is beyond me, he comes off probably better than anyone else in the film). If Stratten's mother really had tremendous misgivings about her daughter going off to LA to live with Snider, why did she sign the necessary papers? And why aren't we shown any scenes of momma visiting her daughter, or even calling her - what did she do, sign away her right to be her mother, too? And did Dorothy even HAVE a father? Maybe a little parental influence could have helped matters. No, the film is a little thin there, which is understandable but leaves some lingering questions.A fantastic film showing the sleazy and sometimes tragic side of "success." For mature audiences only.
STAR 80 is Bob Fosse's stunning, no holds barred account of the life and death of playmate Dorothy Stratten and her husband Paul Snider. It features a career making performance by Eric Roberts. As Snider, Roberts is electrifying. He's the most sadistic screen villain since Richard Widmark in KISS OF DEATH. Mariel Hemingway is fine as Stratten, a would be actress who had an affair with the director Peter Bogdanovich. Unfortunately she's dwarfed by Roberts. So are the supporting players: Roger Rees as a very Bogdanovich-like director, Carroll Baker as Stratten's mother, and Cliff Robertson as Hugh Hefner. Director Fosse utilizes the same interview like technique he used on LENNY and it works just as well here --- Baker is particularly good and has a number of heartfelt moments. STAR 80 is flashy, fast paced and not to be missed!POSTSCRIPT: It turned out that Roberts would play the majority of his roles as he did Paul Snider. In movies like THE POPE OF GREENWICH VILLAGE and RUNAWAY TRAIN it was appropriate. In more subtle fare like RAGGEDY MAN it wasn't. Go figure!