"S.O.B" had great promise when it came out in the summer of 1981. Director Blake Edwards, who was on a winning streak, used his greatest professional disaster, a bomb he made with wife Julie Andrews 11 years before called "Darling Lili," as the basis for an all-star satire on shallow loyalties and bottom-line mentalities in Hollywood. The newspaper ad featured a cartoon bull in a director's chair, smoking a cigar with the legend "The bull hits the fan July 1." Oh, yes, and Andrews was making her topless debut, too. It seemed all too cool to be true, and was. "S.O.B." never caught fire, and watching it 25 years later is to understand why. It's a comedy that forgets to be funny.
Richard Mulligan plays moviemaker Felix Farmer, whose latest picture "Night Wind" is in serious trouble after previews. ("N.Y. Critics Break 'Wind'" is the headline in Variety.) At first falling into a suicidal funk, he then gets the idea to reshoot the film as an erotic spectacular, deciding that sex sells and giving the public what it wants means getting his wife, Sally Miles (Andrews), to show them her breasts. As excitement builds for this second "Wind", hard-charging studio boss David Blackman (Robert Vaughn) decides to use whatever foul means he can to steal Farmer's film out from under him.
"S.O.B." boasts an all-star cast of TV actors like Mulligan and Vaughn whom Edwards and the script throw out on the screen with lame one-liners they scream at the top of their lungs. Loretta Swit as a gossip columnist is the worst offender. William Holden in his last film wears ugly sunglasses and seems a frail shadow of the actor he was only a few years before in "Network," leaving most of the foreground to Robert Preston, who adds a touch of class and gives "S.O.B" its few decent lines as a drug- and wisdom-dispensing doctor.
"If he doesn't remember me, mention his first case of the clap," he says of Blackman. "I didn't give it to him, I cured it!"
"S.O.B." doesn't work as a comedy because it doesn't really try to be a comedy. Instead, Edwards rubs old sores over "Lili" and tries to get even with the people who clipped his wings long ago. Maybe it worked for him. If someone told him back then that he couldn't make a worse film than "Lili," then he proved them wrong here.
"S.O.B." has a lot of repetitious gags, like a hole in a floor people keep falling through. A flaccid score by Henry Mancini kills any lingering affection you may have had for that old number "Polly-Wolly-Doodle." Mulligan's overacting is embarrassingly bad and shticky, and the narrative is advanced in the form of unrealistic television reports, including a live bulletin when Sally Miles is getting ready for her nude scene.
Andrews' breasts are the fifth- and sixth-best reasons to see "S.O.B" (Rosanna Arquette and Marisa Berenson appear topless here as well). But there's not much else to perk your interest, unless you enjoy seeing a good director sacrifice his art for the sake of purging his bitterness. "S.O.B." is as sad as the faithful dog we see on the beach, mourning his dead, forgotten owner and serving as a thematic device for the heartlessness of the other characters. It's appropriate in one way: "S.O.B." is a D.O.G.
Richard Mulligan plays moviemaker Felix Farmer, whose latest picture "Night Wind" is in serious trouble after previews. ("N.Y. Critics Break 'Wind'" is the headline in Variety.) At first falling into a suicidal funk, he then gets the idea to reshoot the film as an erotic spectacular, deciding that sex sells and giving the public what it wants means getting his wife, Sally Miles (Andrews), to show them her breasts. As excitement builds for this second "Wind", hard-charging studio boss David Blackman (Robert Vaughn) decides to use whatever foul means he can to steal Farmer's film out from under him.
"S.O.B." boasts an all-star cast of TV actors like Mulligan and Vaughn whom Edwards and the script throw out on the screen with lame one-liners they scream at the top of their lungs. Loretta Swit as a gossip columnist is the worst offender. William Holden in his last film wears ugly sunglasses and seems a frail shadow of the actor he was only a few years before in "Network," leaving most of the foreground to Robert Preston, who adds a touch of class and gives "S.O.B" its few decent lines as a drug- and wisdom-dispensing doctor.
"If he doesn't remember me, mention his first case of the clap," he says of Blackman. "I didn't give it to him, I cured it!"
"S.O.B." doesn't work as a comedy because it doesn't really try to be a comedy. Instead, Edwards rubs old sores over "Lili" and tries to get even with the people who clipped his wings long ago. Maybe it worked for him. If someone told him back then that he couldn't make a worse film than "Lili," then he proved them wrong here.
"S.O.B." has a lot of repetitious gags, like a hole in a floor people keep falling through. A flaccid score by Henry Mancini kills any lingering affection you may have had for that old number "Polly-Wolly-Doodle." Mulligan's overacting is embarrassingly bad and shticky, and the narrative is advanced in the form of unrealistic television reports, including a live bulletin when Sally Miles is getting ready for her nude scene.
Andrews' breasts are the fifth- and sixth-best reasons to see "S.O.B" (Rosanna Arquette and Marisa Berenson appear topless here as well). But there's not much else to perk your interest, unless you enjoy seeing a good director sacrifice his art for the sake of purging his bitterness. "S.O.B." is as sad as the faithful dog we see on the beach, mourning his dead, forgotten owner and serving as a thematic device for the heartlessness of the other characters. It's appropriate in one way: "S.O.B." is a D.O.G.