NICKELODEON beautifully evokes the feel of early filmmaking, how these people had to learn everything on the fly, how unorganized filmmaking was before the mid-1910s. Unfortunately, all this is wasted on paper-thin characters who barely grow or change over the course of the movie, which seems to alternate between history lessons on the nickelodeon era and never-ending pratfalls (for real, these people fell over so much they seemed drunk rather than merely clumsy; I get it's supposed to evoke the silent comedians... but even Chaplin and Keaton didn't fall over this much in their movies, good heaven).
It's a shame because everyone is giving it their all. The costumes and cinematography are gorgeous. The actors give as much life as possible to these one-dimensional characters (yes, even the oft-panned Ryan O'Neal is good). I can tell Peter Bogdanovich is passionate about silent film... but couldn't he have just been a bit more passionate about telling a story inside that milieu?
It's a shame because everyone is giving it their all. The costumes and cinematography are gorgeous. The actors give as much life as possible to these one-dimensional characters (yes, even the oft-panned Ryan O'Neal is good). I can tell Peter Bogdanovich is passionate about silent film... but couldn't he have just been a bit more passionate about telling a story inside that milieu?