Synopsis
Two literary women compete for 20 years: one writes for the critics; the other one, to get rich.
Votre Filmothèque
Cast
- Jacqueline BissetLiz Hamilton
- Candice BergenMerry Noel Blake
- David SelbyDoug Blake
- Hart BochnerChris Adams
- Steven HillJules Levi
- Meg RyanDebby Blake, 18 Years
- Matt LattanziJim
- Daniel FaraldoGinger Trinidad
- Nicole EggertDebby Blake, 8 Years
- Joe MarossMartin Fornam
Recommandations
- 90
Washington Post
This particular kind of social satire, a quick and deft combination of fashions in clothes, words and romance, can be done better on the screen than in books, where it requires the enumeration of too many details, or on stage, where the details can't be seen. Rich and Famous, directed by George Cukor, does it brilliantly. [9 Oct 1981, p.21] - 90
Newsweek
This swiftly paced comedy is a deliciously impure compound of old-fashioned "women's film" formulas and up-to-the-minute sexual mores. It is, from moment to moment, trashy and touching, literate and ludicrous, bitchily funny and as full of sharp, sophisticated insights as it is of appalling blind spots. Part soap opera, part comedy of manners, it refurbishes shopworn cliches into a gloriously unrespectable entertainment. [12 Oct 1981, p.98] - 70
Time Out
Considering neither Bisset nor Bergen had ever shown the slightest acting ability before in movies, their performances in the Bette Davis/Miriam Hopkins roles in this loose reworking of Old Acquaintance are very capable. - 63
Chicago Sun-Times
Insights into human nature don't seem to be the point of the movie, anyway. It's a slick, trashy, entertaining melodrama, with too many dumb scenes to qualify as successful. - 63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
One of the pleasures of "Old Acquaintance" was watching two fanged pros chew scenery. One of the pleasures of Rich and Famous is watching two toothless amateurs gum everything in sight, including each other (the penultimate confrontation, when the teddy bear, symbol of the friendship, is ripped into stuffing, is outrageously funny). [10 Oct 1981] - 50
Chicago Reader
The lead performances, by Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen as two college friends who become competing novelists in later life, have the Cukor audacity without the Cukor grace, and his visual expressiveness is in evidence only sporadically. Yet the film stays in the mind for its dark asides on aging, loneliness, and the troubling survival of sexual needs. - 40
The New York Times
The movie can't make up its mind whether it's about a tumultuously difficult but rewarding friendship or whether it's a sendup of the contemporary literary scene. It fails as both. - 30
Washington Post
The new movie adorned with this sure-fire title happens to be a tacky and disreputable attempt at a sophisticated comedy about women writers.
