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Good story, Not enough for a whole film

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

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

Just the soundtrack put me in the worst funkiest mood, never heard a movie where all they did was fuss, and argue, and yell, and nag, and scream, and debate, bull-corn......I thought the TV was playing and episode of Everybody loves Raymons. Who is this Bagdonavich guy anyway? It played on a free TV network entitled This TV. on west coast time. Tatum Oneil, and Burt Reynolds talent was totally wasted, as was Ryan Oneil, come on now your requirements of 10 lines is not worthy of my talents, block me if need be. What a crock of rules and regulations. this makes up my 10 lines of text, come on folks get a life....blah blah blah blahx

Poor Peter Bogdanovich has suffered the fate of the clever and gifted in Hollywood - i.e. been screwed,particularly by the critics from whose ranks he emerged fully - formed (see "Targets" - 1968)as a Director of promise. He made some entertaining iconoclastic movies which the critics disliked but were nonetheless successful.As a former writer/critic he was,perhaps more than most movie makers,aware of and interested in early cinema and with "Nickelodeon" gave us his take on the works of the pioneers of the medium.It is a very well made funny movie that has apparently attracted few devotees over the last thirty or so years which is something I find rather strange. The ambiance of the Silent Era has been lovingly recreated,the little touches of detail convincingly presented.A cast of actors who can do comedy and look as though they enjoy it,an excellent soundtrack and some witty dialogue.......what more has Bogdanovich got to do?Wear a revolving bow tie? Anyone can write about movies - it takes a person of talent,iron will and with the eye of an artist to make one,even a mediocre one,and this is obviously a task far,far beyond the small - minded who willed him to fail.After a notable start,Mr Bogdanovich's career plateau'd out,beset by personal problems whilst his opponents rubbed their hands with glee. But with "The Last Picture Show","Paper Moon","What's Up Doc?"the brilliantly eccentric "At Long Last Love" and "They All Laughed" on his C.V. - not to mention "Nickelodeon" - he will be remembered long after their splenetic scribblings have been left to moulder in some long - forgotten Newspaper Morgue.

"Targets": idiotic. "The Last Picture Show": dull, filmed in pretentious black-and-white. (Okay, at least he cast his bimbo girlfriend Cybill Shepherd naked there...) "What's Up, Doc?": as bad as every comedy with Big-Nose.Peter Bogdanovich was probably the most overrated director in the 60s/70s, and this painfully unfunny "comedy" only underlines the ineptitude that this pretentious ex-critic always exhibited. Bogdanovich, whose name very ironically means "God's gift", has stated on numerous occasions his belief that the best movies had already been made by the late 60s - which, of course, couldn't be further from the truth. His almost sexual obsession with dumb black-and-white movies, the so-called "classics" of the 20s/30s/40s, had gotten so bad that he had decided one day to make this quasi-tribute to the "golden comedies" of the Silent Era by making a piece of junk called "Nickelodeon". And what better way to enhance an already awful script than by casting such comedy "giants" as Ryan O'Neal and John Ritter...If you think Bogdanovich's "Noises Off" was a pathetic, embarrassing-to-watch farce, then check out this little stinker: it's quite hard to figure out which is more cretinous or childish. "Nickelodeon" is full of sight gags that the writers of Loony Toons would reject on the basis that they are too stupid. This inept comedy can only be enjoyed by two types of people: 1) those who find circus clowns funny, and 2) those who have forced themselves to believe - despite the glaring contradicting, abundant evidence - that Bogdanovich must be a great director, simply because he is the critics' darling. And as we all know, you can't be a good movie student unless you agree with the film critics...A mystery that is on par with why Madonna has had a long career in music or what drugs you have to be on to enjoy Kanye West's excremental produce is certainly the film-critics' love for Bogdanovich's crap. I have no explanation for it, other than that perhaps it may have something to do with the fact that he used to be a critic himself hence knows all those guys by first name. They probably all drink in the same pub, and weep together whenever they hear Barbra Streisand being played on the radio...

The first half, more or less, of this is pretty good. It focuses on the very early days of film making and is generally based on stories Bogdanovich collected and published much later in Who the Devil Made It? The general tenor of the first part is encapsulated in the comment made John Ritter when he tells neophyte director O'Neal something like: "Hell, any jerk can direct." Unfortunately, the second half of the film is pretty dreadful. Once Reynolds and O'Neal start to battle over Jane Hitchcock and the characters begin to make money from making movies it all falls apart. Had the movie been fleshed out a bit and ended at the point that the 'movie stars" are first recognized by film-goers it would have been a pretty good movie. But the lousy back end just kills the whole thing.