Watch Lovers and Liars For Free

People are voting emotionally.

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

It always amazes me that some reviewers can give a movie a really splendid write-up and hail everything about it from the acting to the photography, from the writing to the direction -- and then give it a rating of five out of ten! I know I'm hopeless at maths, but to me a rating of five out of ten implies that the film was either a very mediocre offering or that it had passages of great interest mixed up with scenes that were seriously flawed, or maybe scenes that promised a lot of conflict but ended up as damp squibs -- like the scene in this movie in which the deceased's mistress joins the funeral procession but nothing happens, either positive or negative! And that it why I would normally have given it 5/10. But I've given is 6/10 because there is a scene of a road accident early on in the movie which is the most spectacular I've ever seen -- and as a professional film critic who averaged ten movies a week, I've seen over 20,000 movies in my time. So this one, plagued by scenes that promise a lot but deliver little, gets a six.

Someone gets a call in the middle of the night. Someone finds out that someone else had a heart attack. Confusing ? It gets even more confusing, but then if you have the patience to hang with it, it does start making more sense. Anita (Goldie Hawn) meets some guy (Giancarlo Giannini), the ex lover of her roommate, and catches a ride with him. Much like Chevy Chase's Vacation, everything that can go wrong DOES go wrong. It's a grand adventure of a road trip, and they have some ups and downs along the way. Lots of writers listed on this one, so if it seems a bit disjointed, it has good reason to. Goldie made this one just after Foul Play. Giannini had also been nominated for an Oscar. The trivia says this was going to be a Fellini project, so as odd as it is, its probably more normal than if HE had done it! This was finally directed by Mario Monicelli, who had been nominated for two Oscars for best writing in the 1960s. Overall, its pretty good; just a shame that Sophia Loren couldn't make it way back when. IMDb thinks the run time is 120 minutes, but the DVD from DML is only 95 minutes, so this version is missing a whole chunk. i will try to add this run time to IMDb.

Giancarlo Giannini plays Guido Massacesi, a successful advertising promoter in Rome. At first, you think the movie is going to be like Three Coins In The Fountain. It turns out to be the opposite. Guido, a sex graving, middle aged man, pairs up with a beautiful, blond American named Anita (Goldie Hawn) on a drive to Pisa. Instead of being the dumb, blond, Anita turns out to be a lot harder to figure out than he imagined.Guido reveals that he is impulsive, temperamental, and really troubled. He stops at his hometown and reveals his guilt about being the one successful son in the family - saved from having to slave his whole life away in a chemical factory. Guido also reveals his hypocrisy by refusing to allow his family to meet his new girlfriend. He fears, rightly, than they will just consider her a foreign prostitute.This movie is filled with good satire. He causes a car accident, blames everyone else, but while at a hospital is moved by the permanent patients fated to live lives as paupers and confined. Suddenly, he feels a lot of guilt for who he has become - successful, spoiled, and arrogant. He also brings her to a tourist island, but because it is off season everything is closed. Lastly, there is a funny scene at the end, during the funeral of the father, that everyone reveals their spites, suspicions, and jealousies. All in all, it wasn't the typically romantic Italian movie. It was filled with social satire about the real state of Italy in the late 70s.

Scrappy Italian comedy is made up of bits and pieces, never quite coming together. Goldie Hawn (vivacious as ever) is an American actress vacationing in Rome who gets mixed up with her friend's married lover (a smoldering Giancarlo Giannini). They have little screwball mishaps and misunderstandings before making hot love in a hammock (although on US prints of the movie, there's an intrusive cut-away just as this scene heats up--perhaps there is an Italian version that Americans aren't 'mature' enough to see?). Hawn is in scatterbrain-mode, and I got a little tired of her whining about her cat, but she has fine moments too and works well with Giancarlo. There's a funny scene near the beginning when GG visits his current lover and finds her undressed--surprised, she grabs the first thing she can find to cover herself, which is of course a poster of herself naked! The editing is sloppy, the sound is fuzzy, and the finale left me scratching my head (is it Giancarlo's fantasy or for real?), but I liked "Lovers And Liars"/"Travels With Anita" for the little glimmers of good humor. Besides, Hawn is always worth a look. ** from ****