Customer Reviews

Starting Over [VHS]

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I first saw "Starting Over" in the theatre when it first came out in the fall of 1979 and then many years later on home video and I still find it enjoyable. It was directed by the late, great Alan J. Pakula("All The President's Men" from 1976,"Sophie's Choice" from 1982)and the screenplay was written by James L.Brooks(one of the writers on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the '70's,"Terms of Endearment" from 1983,"Broadcast News" from 1987, "As Good As It Gets" from 1997), and starred Jill Clayburgh and Candice Bergen and the underrated Burt Reynolds.Ms. Clayburgh was nominated for Best Actress for her role as the school teacher looking for love,(Sally Field won for "Norma Rae").Ms. Bergen was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in her role as the aspiring songwriter(Meryl Streep won for "Kramer vs. Kramer").Burt Reynolds wasn't even nominated for his role as Phil Potter.He was a superstar at the time and the No.1 box office attraction in America and it seems he was snubbed by the Academy.It was too bad because after all he was the lead role in the picture as the just divorced man who was starting over in a new life.The Academy did finally give him a nomination nearly 20 years later in 1997 for his fine performance in "Boogie Nights",(Robin Williams won for "Good Will Hunting").At least the Academy finally recognized his work.

"Starting Over" features funny supporting roles for Charles Durning as Phil Potter's older psychiatrist brother and Frances Sternhagen as his sister Marva Potter.The movie has many funny moments,like when Candice Bergen,as Phil's ex-wife breaks out in song and Phil's reaction to this musical moment.Burt Reynolds has said in interviews that Phil Potter in "Starting Over" was his personal favorite film role.I can see why.

This is one of the great cult classic romantic comedies, right up there with "The Heartbreak Kid." The writing by James Brooks is, as always, smart, dry, and very funny; and Alan J. Pakula gets great performances from everyone in the amazing cast. (I've always thought Charles Durning is one America's best character actors.) I have to disagree with one of the other reviewers who thought Jill Clayburgh was miscast. Her performance is charming and droll, a perfect match for Burt Reynolds, who gives a great performance that works particularly well because he's playing against type -- a macho star who gets big laughs when, during a love scene with Clayburgh where she's groning happily, says "I'm not that good."

I have only one complaint about this film -- it's not available on DVD, and I can't figure out why. Wake up, Paramount!

Starting Over is a romantically funny movie! Candace Bergen is hysterical as the wife who leaves Burt Reynolds to become a country western singer (what a voice!). Jill Clayburgh's first encounter with Burt Reynold's character is extremely funny. And wait until you see what happens when this Starting Over couple attempt to purhcase a couch at the mall! It's true this movie is well over twenty years old, but I still remember it with great fondness. This was Burt Reynolds at his very best. I'm glad I came across it on Amazon.com. I hope it has stood up to time and that you will enjoy it as much as I did.

I didn't realize how young Burt Reynolds is in this movie....but I love all of his romantic comedies, and was happy that amazon.com had this one. Jill Clayburgh is well cast as the love interest and Candace Bergen is hysterical as Reynolds' soon-to-be ex-wife. No wonder she was so great (later on) as "Murphy Brown." The story is hilarious and yet has its warm fuzzy moments. Great songs, too (when Bergen isn't trying to sing them herself)! Thoroughly enjoyable.

I wish there were more movies like this one. Three great performances from Bergen, Reynolds and Clayburgh, who show perfect comic timing and real chemistry. The humor comes from real, often poignant situations, and every scene, from the more intimate scenes between Reynolds and Clayburgh to those at the group therapy sessions, are the real thing. The supporting players are also terrific. It's got one of the best endings ever. Listen closely or you might not hear the last line uttered by Clayburgh because the credits are already rolling. It's a beauty.
It's great that they've brought this film out on DVD. Now if someone would just release another great Clayburgh film, An Unmarried Woman, on DVD, I would be first in line to buy it.

This movie is an absolute delight and one of the most welcome pleasant surprises I've witnessed in watching films. Burt Reynolds gives the best performance of his career (the fact that he didn't receive an Oscar nomination is dissapointing)as the newly divorced man trying to find his way. The fact that he's still hung up on his wife doesn't help matters. Jill Clayburgh is great as Burt's new woman, and Candace Bergen is a hoot as his ex wife. Other wonderful performances by Charles Durning and Austin Pendleton, make this film worth seeing. So many romantic comedies get it wrong, but this charmer of a film continues to hold up 25 years after it's initial release.

This film is a perennial favourite with me. It's funny, warm and charming every time. Burt plays a man who is reluctantly splitting from his wife (Candice Bergen). His brother, (Charles Durning) and sister-in-law (Frances Sternhagen) set him up on a blind date dinner with potential love interest (Jill Clayburgh) who tells him to look her up after he is over his break-up.
There are many funny scenes, thanks to the script, by James L. Brooks. I liked the divorced men's workshop in the church basement, the dates Burt went on and the familiar feelings of being elated or trapped during a relationship. Burt played this convincingly as a lonely, vulnerable, loveable man who is unprepared for change.
I highly recommend this film as a feel-good romantic comedy.

This well crafted comedy features stellar performances by its 3 top-billed stars, Clayburgh, Bergen and Reynolds; the true surprise here was the low key acting by Burt Reynolds, who plays a humble, insecure magazine writer, recently dumped by his spouse, and testing the dating waters with Jill Clayburgh, among others. Supporting roles by Charles Durning, Frances Sternhagen and Austin Pendleton round out the cast and (they) contribute to the warmth and pathos of this comedy. Phil Potter (Reynolds) has just discovered his aspiring songwriter-wife Jessica (Candace Bergen in a funny, self-deprecating role) has been having an affair with his boss and she wants out of the 8 yr. marriage to pursue her songwriting dreams. Stunned, he retreats to Boston to begin a new life with the encouragement of his psychiatrist brother Mickey (Durning) who sets him up with love-shy Marilyn Holmgren (Clayburgh) and enrolls him in group therapy. Just as Phil is finding his footing in a relationship with the insecure Marilyn, Jessica shows up to try and woo him back, which includes a funny offkey serenading by Bergen, now a successful songwriter.
Both Clayburgh and Bergen were nominated for Oscars, but it's Reynolds (whose performance was inexplicably ignored by Oscar) who shines in a role against type - no macho, mustachioed, testosterone-laced good old boy posturing here. He plays the wounded middle-aged Phil Potter trying to make a new life for himself in an understated , sympathetic un-reynolds manner and is totally charming.
This 1979 flick was superbly directed by Alan J Pakula, and is highly recommended; also good to view around the christmas holidays.

Just coming off producing and writing the classic sitcoms, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Taxi", James L. Brooks wrote the screenplay, his first, for this 1979 divorce comedy. Even after all these years and finally out on DVD, it remains funny, perceptive and thoroughly engaging in a way that later crystallized into Brooks' filmmaking trademark in "Terms of Endearment" and "As Good As It Gets". Fortunately, the director is the accomplished Alan J. Pakula, who shows a flair for romantic comedy coaxing excellent performances from the three stars.

The plot centers on Phil Potter, a magazine writer-turned-writing teacher who has been informed by his beautiful but flaky wife Jessica that she wants a divorce. Without much recourse, he seeks solace from his bear-hugging psychiatrist brother Mickey and sister-in-law Marva, who eventually set him up on a blind date with Marilyn, a mild-mannered, rather dowdy nursery schoolteacher. The movie then becomes a clever seesaw of Phil vacillating between his wife and potential new love interest. What remains fresh about the movie is how Pakula and Brooks keep the focus on the flawed characters and less on the predictable cliches about the awkward consequences of divorce.

Even taking into account his comeback turn in Paul Thomas Anderson's 1997 "Boogie Nights", I doubt if Burt Reynolds has given a more subtle, genuinely humane performance than he does here. Cast completely against type (he was in his Smokey/Hooper/Sharkey action phase at the time), he makes Phil's uncertainty feel real - even at the risk of losing audience sympathy in the way he treats Marilyn no matter how inadvertently. In the afterglow of her brilliant work in Paul Mazursky's "An Unmarried Woman", Jill Clayburgh again demonstrates the malleable quality and fierce intelligence to make her deglamorized Marilyn an attractive and credibly cautious woman. In a revelation before her long, successful run as "Murphy Brown", a deadpan Candice Bergen breaks free from her heretofore vacuously decorative roles and supplies the movie's biggest laughs as the narcissistic Jessica, especially when she sings with uproariously tone-deaf panache to seduce Phil in her hotel room.

There is also a terrific supporting cast - Charles Durning bringing out all the unctuous support that Mickey can muster; a scene-stealing Frances Sternhagen as Marva, more than anxious to provide Phil emotional support when he is down and out; Austin Pendleton as a needy member of Phil's divorced men's club, who keeps remarrying his ex-wife; and Mary Kay Place in a funny cameo as Phil's aggressive first post-marital date. Other than Marilyn's unflattering outfits (the orange down jacket is hideous), Marvin Hamlisch's seventies-lite pop music is really the only significant element that dates the movie severely. The divorced men's club meeting scenes are hilarious, and you can see Jay O. Sanders and Wallace Shawn as fellow members. Unlike other romantic comedies of the period full of I'm-OK-You're-OK pop psychology, this one is still well worth viewing. The 2005 DVD has no extras.

As a marital therapist I recommended this film to many couples struggling with their own issues throughout my professional career.

Burt Reynolds, in one of the best black comedies ever filmed, hit a high in his career. I have seen him with new appreciation for his tremendous talent as an actor and for the 1st time as a comedian of unequalled talent.

He is so believable, as a beloved but very bewildered newly separated male thrown into the dating world, with all the emotional baggage that accompanies everyone who's been there before.

He was so pitifully vunerable, experiencing loneliness, regrets, second thoughts, and misery in the ever changing single world around him. As true today as throughout the past 30 years.

This film is as meaningful today as it's ever been. It remains the same emotional roller coaster today, leaving me emotionally drained every time I see it, yet, again and again....

Through this film, I've become one of his most admiring fans....