The Movie Star Among Actors

My Favorite Year (1982)
directed by Richard Benjamin
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

As much as I hate to bat down a friend's recommendation, every moment of Errol Flynn charm that Peter O'Toole brings to My Favorite Year - and there are many, I'll admit - is completely overshadowed by Mark Linn-Baker's Benjy, a pushy, condescending egoist ripped from the mold of Woody Allen's most misogynistic and insulting protagonists. Benjy, unfortunately, shares every one of Alan Swann's scenes, and engages the aging actor with a personality so abrasive that even the most forgiving fan of Borscht Belt comedians would wince to sit through them. I have no doubt that working for a variety show like the fictional King Kaiser's in the 1950s was exhilarating and anecdotal, but Richard Benjamin's treatment of the world outside the studio - the relatives in Brooklyn, the everyday folks in the audience, the city's elite on their rooftop patios - is so dismissive that one aligns oneself, out of sheer self-preservation, against the entire production. Except Lawrence, of course, the least judgmental of drunks, and thoroughly out of place here.