Movie Night: The Oscar.

Review #549: The Oscar.

Cast
Stephen Boyd (Frankie Fane), Elke Sommer (Kay Bergdahl), Milton Berle (Alfred Kapstetter), Eleanor Parker (Sophie Cantaro), Joseph Cotten (Kenneth H. Regan), Jill St. John (Laurel Scott), Tony Bennett (Kelly), Edie Adams (Trina Yale), and Ernest Borgnine (Barney Yale) Directed by Russell Rouse.

Review
In honor of the 86th Academy Awards this Sunday, I decided to review a movie with many stars (some of which who won Oscars before this movie), many cameos...and a big ego. The movie is billed as a drama, when it really is an unintentional comedy that goes so over the top in trying to be a drama, that it becomes laughable. The main problem of the movie is the unlikable characters. Aside from the main character, there are no characters to root for, none to actually feel for nor care about, and while it could be argued that there are films with unlikable characters that are actually good, this is not one of them. This is a movie that decays from beginning to end, a movie that tries to disguise its faults with cameos, basically trying to plug a hole with a band-aid. Tony Bennett is bad (one might say inept is a better term, but let's be fair, this was his film debut and consequently his only dramatic role), but with the lines (Example: "I was running out of numbers! He used 'em like Kleenex! Once, and threw 'em away!") he has to say, I can't blame him. The movie is bloated in length, self-indulgent in style, and an overall mess that almost is so bad, it's good, until it goes back into so bad, it's bad. I'd stick to the "The Nobel" by SCTV instead. Whatever you may think of the Oscars, this is a definite skip it.

Overall, I give it 3 out of 10 stars.