swazijames
In its 1972 review of "What's Up Doc?" TIME magazine noted that film (a comedy) was made by a man without any apparent sense of humor. In the four subsequent years as evidenced by "Nickelodeon", the director failed to acquire one. In the 1976 film the characters are flat and childish but for the child actor, the plot plodding and episodic and the comedy mechanical and witless.
kmauryo
Just the soundtrack put me in the worst funkiest mood, never heard a movie where all they did was fuss, and argue, and yell, and nag, and scream, and debate, bull-corn......I thought the TV was playing and episode of Everybody loves Raymons. Who is this Bagdonavich guy anyway? It played on a free TV network entitled This TV. on west coast time. Tatum Oneil, and Burt Reynolds talent was totally wasted, as was Ryan Oneil, come on now your requirements of 10 lines is not worthy of my talents, block me if need be. What a crock of rules and regulations. this makes up my 10 lines of text, come on folks get a life....blah blah blah blahx
Charles Herold (cherold)
When this movie was released they had a promotion for the premiere where you could see it for a nickel. So I went to the theater, stood in a very long line, and watched a very funny, entertaining movie that the audience seemed to quite enjoy. The next day I read a review that slammed it, and then another. And I have never understood it.Over 30 years later I took a second look, and while sometimes you can't for the life of you figure out why you liked a movie from the past, I still really liked this one. It's a very funny movie that mixes in Keystone Kops-style slapstick with Howard Hawks-style screwball comedy. There are good performances by Burt Reynolds and Ryan O'Neal, and even better ones from Tatum O'Neal and, best of all, Brian Keith. The strong negative reactions particular surprise me because the film is similar in feel to What's Up Doc (Ryan even plays basically the same character) and yet that movie was much better received.I found this movie funny and likable. Everyone's good in it, including the lead actress, who apparently found film work so dispiriting that she gave up on them altogether and stuck with modeling. The first half is probably stronger than the second half, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Neil Doyle
If director Peter Bogdanovich hadn't used such a heavy-handed slapstick treatment of his little epic about early film-making called NICKELODEON, there might have emerged a fond tribute to the pioneering days of silent films in the early part of the 20th Century.But instead, he has filled NICKELODEON with a whole series of non-stop sight gags that become tiresome and repetitious, even more so because none of the characters involved really come to life. As the pretty heroine of the piece, JANE HITCHCOCK has very limited abilities beyond staring wide-eyed into the camera lens for comic effect. BURT REYNOLDS at least does derive several good chuckles from his comedy efforts as a reluctant participant in RYAN O'NEAL's troupe of silent film actors.O'Neal has obviously chosen to play his role as though he has just watched a Harold Lloyd film, wearing spectacles for his first entrance and doing the bumbling sight gags on cue, as hapless a hero as Lloyd was in all his comedies. He's not too bad, but is never as funny as he was in WHAT'S UP DOC?, an earlier Bogdanovich film.Tecbnically, the film is handsomely produced and pleasing to look at in color, but STELLA STEVENS is given little to do in what amounts to a supporting role. JOHN RITTER doesn't have too much opportunity to display his comic gifts. Entirely too much footage is devoted to a rough and tumble fight between Reynolds and O'Neal that takes up too much time with too many slapstick pratfalls to emerge as anything more than filler.The film plods along without the benefit of a tight script or a really compelling story and suffers, mainly, from the heavy-handed approach to comedy.
AD
