Starting Over (1979)

Directed by Alan J. Pakula. Starring Burt Reynolds, Jill Clayburgh, Candice Bergen, Charles Durning, Mary K. Place, Frances Sternhagen, Austin Pendleton. [R]

Uncharacteristic seriocomic romance from Pakula finds Reynolds recovering from the dissolution of his marriage to Bergen’s untalented aspiring singer/songwriter, and dipping his toes into a new romance with Clayburgh. The screenplay comes from James L. Brooks (based on a book by Dan Wakefield), and as much as his later ventures in directing feature films, the situations are sitcom-ish and the dialogue a little too overwritten. Laidback Reynolds is “realer” than the easygoing bad-boy charmers he specialized in during this stretch of his career, Clayburgh makes her neuroses seem unforced, and Bergen is (intentionally?) off-putting for the sake of cheap chuckles. Has a low-energy, pseudo-realist style that suggests the audience is supposed to take this sort of thing seriously, like a peek into real adult relationships and all the discoveries and issues therein, but it’s really just a corn-fed merry-go-round given a couple wistful, sentimental coats of paint. Songs by Marvin Hamlisch and Carole Bayer Sager, and like Bergen’s foolish performances of them, they’re supposed to sound terrible, right? Pakula and Brooks produced. Wallace Shawn appears briefly, and try to spot Daniel Stern as a student.

45/100