Ready to Wear (1994)

Overrated and overhyped

Just what I expected

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

It's incredible that I didn't see this film until now (2015)! I am still under shock. Short: it's the best film I saw since Fellini's "Otto e mezzo". Now more to say. But I have to. The different stories are all worth a critique. But I can not do this now. I am in love with Mastroianni and when he talks to Sophia Loren in his warm Italien, I had to cry. The finale is also a great and moving scene. Other directors than Altman could have done this. But I can not imaging, who. I sad I was shocked. But also of the mastery of Altman. A farce and lots of stories together with no fil rouge at all (or it doesn't matter). Then comes the best lineup I can remember. So short: Funny, highest quality and moving more than once. What you want more?

I feel bad for brilliant directors. They make one movie that isn't as great as their many other masterpieces and BAM! — it's thrown into the trash heap, classified as a miserable pile of dookie. Some (critics) like to designate a less successful film as an interesting mess; what they really mean, though, is that they can't decide if they liked the film or not — but one thing is for sure: it wasn't as good as (insert Oscar adored movie from a multiple-award winning director here). It's unavoidable — everyone wants an Orson Welles to have a career full of Citizen Kanes, nothing experimental, nothing tricky. Sigh. People are human, you know. It's hard to make a masterpiece! As an admirer of Robert Altman's work (Nashville, Short Cuts), even the slightest of a failure remains watchable to me. Is it the overlapping dialogue? The devastatingly star-studded casts? The magnificent giganticness of the plot, the characters, the script? Not all of Altman's films are equally chatty — he is capable of going gloomy and dry (Thieves Like Us, The Long Goodbye) — but when he wants to go all out he goes all out. The Player, a Hollywood satire, featured nearly sixty celebrities making random cameos for the sake of making a cameo. Nashville had twenty-four main characters, all of them somehow as well-characterized as the last. Ready to Wear, a fashion week parody, comes directly after The Player and Short Cuts — Altman's biggest successes of the 1990s — and it continues the trend of a large cast and cheerfully rambling dialogue. But arriving in the shadow of these terror twins can only be described as a sort of curse. Three is hardly a magic number, and Ready to Wear learned that all too soon, considering the critical destruction it faced upon its release. Altman died in 2006, his legacy coming in the form of the films I mentioned earlier; Ready to Wear, in the meantime, got filed away in the reject folder.I've spoiled myself these last few years. I have only sat through Altman movies Ebert promised I would like — and I have yet to see one that I haven't admired in some way or another. Ready to Wear is my first wild card (it currently holds a 26% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, panned for "not being mean enough", "not being focused enough", etc). 133 minutes later, I can confidently say that I don't understand the lack of love for Ready to Wear.Fine, the humor isn't as sharp as it could be (this is supposed to be a satire, after all). Okay, Altman and his co-screenwriter, Barbara Shulgasser, aren't decisive enough to really make consistent characters out of the massive ensemble. But I like Ready to Wear, along with its hiccups. Things to like include the setting, Paris, of all places; how extensive this fictional fashion week is, loaded with brilliantly timed cameos and dynamic catwalk sequences (soundtracked with Salt-N-Peppa, Björk, more); and, most significantly, the cast, which is possibly too ravishing to resist, including Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Lauren Bacall, (a scene-stealing) Kim Basinger, Julia Roberts, Tim Robbins, Forest Whitaker, Tracey Ullman, Sally Kellerman, Lili Taylor, Teri Garr and Lyle Lovett. Some portray insiders, some out, all compelling.Problematic and sprawling as it is, Ready to Wear keeps us busy and keeps things charming — finding ourselves entertained is accidental. There's so much going on, so much to enjoy. So stop, please stop, thinking and comparing and underrating Ready to Wear because of Nashville and Short Cuts and M*A*S*H and The Player. You'll have a better time that way. There's much to savor. Altman pays homage to 1963's Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow by recreating its striptease scene with its now senior stars, Loren and Mastroianni, and the final sequence, featuring a scad of gorgeous (and nude) models, cements the film's carefree approach to do whatever the hell it wants. Sure, you should watch one of the Altman greats first (I won't name them again), but Ready to Wear acts as a smart pastime. You can't get all this from the September issue anyway.Read more reviews at petersonreviews.com

I've seen it a couple of times. I understand Altman was maybe trying to create a disjointed, farcial almost surreal type atmosphere, but I found the lack of cohesiveness and clear cut thread annoying and it caused me to not care about the film or its characters. Being just a regular jane and not blessed with 15 or so credits in Film-making at NYU, the subtly of the art was lost on me. I desperately wanted just a little exposition to grab onto, and all the film's inside jokes and vague, obscure references to Italian films I found to be self indulgent. I'm not saying this film was bad - just bad for me. I think he could have pulled off the same feel and frenzied little European farce with a TOUCH more connective tissue in the plot. Not a lot, just a little for the audience to care about the story, the characters and whatnot. The thing I found in the film that I even cared more than a fig about was the Simone storyline.

This film is messy, disjointed and sprawling just as life is. I loved it so much when I saw it last night on Independent Film Channel, and was amazed that it got such horrible reviews. Oh well most of my favorite movies got horrible reviews.Like most Altman films, this is a compendium of tiny little moments. He gets together an absolutely stunning cast and gives the actors their heads. More an actors' jam session than a movie. For an old Fellini fan like me, the scenes between Mastroianni and Loren are priceless. They are playing basically themselves, this is not a spoiler at all.Vicious, sarcastic, funny as hell, right on target, this is Altman's take on the old folk tale "The Emperor's New Clothes". Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more.