S.O.B. (1981)

The Worst Film Ever

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Felix Farmer (Richard Mulligan) is a highly successful producer. He goes crazy when his latest release is a colossal bomb. The star is his wife Sally Miles (Julie Andrews) with a squeaky clean G-rated image. She wants a divorce but her team talks her out of it. Felix snaps out of it and buys Sally's next movie intending to turn it into an erotic musical. Sally is angry at Felix for using all of their money and reluctantly takes the risk of doing a nudie. It becomes a highly sought after property.It's a bit scattered in the beginning following a lot of characters. The heart of this is a dark biting satire. The comedy isn't always the funniest but it takes really sharp jabs at Hollywood. I was starting to really like this movie and then it takes a turn into Weekend at Bernie's territories. I love Blake Edwards taking dark comedic turns on Hollywood but some of it doesn't work.

One of the curious things about S.O.B. is that while it has an incredibly good name cast, there is no real star of the film. Julie Andrews gets first billing because she's the director/producer's wife and after her William Holden has the biggest marquee name so he's second. But if there's a star in this film it's Richard Mulligan because it's on his troubles that the plot of S.O.B. turns.Mulligan came in for a lot of criticism as the frantic film producer who after a string of hits, totally loses his mind. So much so that his movie star wife, Julie Andrews, is leaving him. The first half of the film involve some hilarious attempts at suicide, the best being when he falls through the floor of his beach house trying to hang himself and flattens nosy gossip columnist Loretta Swit. Julie Andrews is basically cast as a movie star like Julie Andrews who gained her fame and popularity with wholesome entertainment like Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. During an orgy/party that his good friend, cheerfully hedonistic director William Holden has at Mulligan's house while on suicide watch, Mulligan gets a brainstorm and decides to redo his last G rated film as soft core porn with Julie Andrews displaying her glockenspiels. Mulligan gets crazier and crazier as the film now becomes a battle between him and studio head Robert Vaughn for control of the film. It all ends quite wildly indeed. A lot of people say Richard Mulligan overacts and chews the scenery. But that's what the part calls for. He no more does it here than Robin Williams or Jonathan Winters at their zaniest. A little fine tuning in his performance might have helped, but the director who should have done this was busy elsewhere.Instead of Blake Edwards doing it himself, he should have begged Billy Wilder to do this film. S.O.B. is the greatest Billy Wilder film that Billy Wilder never directed.Besides those mentioned such luminaries as Shelley Winters, Robert Webber, Marisa Berenson, Stuart Margolin, Craig Stevens, Paul Stewart, Larry Hagman and Robert Loggia play various Hollywood types. But the best by far in the cast is Robert Preston as the Doctor Feelgood to the stars. It's a variation on the conman Harold Hill he played in The Music Man only he's far more cynical. When Preston is on screen, he dominates the film.S.O.B. was the farewell performance of William Holden. Knowing the senseless way Holden died after completing the film, you twinge when you hear him cheerfully tell Richard Mulligan how he drank enough booze to kill a dozen healthy livers. Still S.O.B. was a good film to leave on for him.I enjoy what Blake Edwards did with the talented bunch he assembled for this film. It would have been perfect if Billy Wilder had done it though.

Seeing this movie as a 21 year old was not a good idea. I was literate and mature enough to understand that this was an adult satire, but I was too much of a little boy to understand the grownup-ness of the characters. Ultimately, my 48 year old mind understands that I missed something in SOB, but I can't get by the quarter century old memory of thinking that this Blake Edwards comedy was a dud.I do remember laughing. And Rosanna Arquette's stripping in front of William Holden ("If that's nothing, I can't even conceive of what 'something' might be!"). There was lots of sharp dialogue and slapstick. Julie Andrews looked, well, perky, but by the time she did her newsworthy strip, what little attention span I was paying to the movie had spooled out. Yet that's all I remember. A lot of insider jokes and bared breasts. This isn't so much a review as a confession that I didn't get the movie. I remember feeling faintly disgusted with Mary Poppins popping out, in a repulsive, leathery musical number. I had a narrow window of opportunity to get SOB, but I missed it.I'm not really interested in giving it another shot.

S.O.B. was director Blake Edwards' own "All that Jazz", a self-indulgent, slightly over-the-top, slightly disguised look at a particularly period in his Hollywood career where he and wife Julie Andrews were treated pretty despicably by the Hollywood big shots who can make or break people in Hollywood with one telephone call. This film is loosely based on the time after Edwards had completed his wife's film STAR! and the studio hated it, wrested control of the film from Edwards, cut like an hour of footage from the film, retitled it "These Were the Happy Times" and then tried to shelve it. After all of this Edwards couldn't get arrested in Hollywood until he hit a bullseye with the 1979 comedy "10." But this 1981 comedy was a reminder to Hollywood bigwigs that Edwards had not forgotten their treatment of him. In S.O.B.(which, BTW, stands for Standard Operational Bull***t), Richard Mulligan plays the manic Hollywood director, Felix Farmer, who is suicidal after his film "Night Wind", starring his wife, Sally Miles (Julie Andrews) bombs miserably. Farmer is practically written off in Hollywood until he gets the inspiration to re-shoot the film as a near pornographic extravaganza and have his wife bare her breasts for the first time on screen. This uncompromising look at the inner workings of Hollywood may seem a little off the wall. These are not pleasant people for the most part and every character in the film, even Andrews, has their own agenda. The merciless screenplay is well executed by a glorious all-star cast backing up Mulligan and Andrews, including William Holden, Robert Vaughn, Robert Preston (hysterical as a doctor who gives out pills like candy), Robert Webber, Loretta Swit, Craig Stevens, Stuart Margolin, Shelley Winters, Marisa Berensen, Rosanna Arquette, Robert Loggia, and Larry Hagman. There are several funny scenes in this film and a lot of interesting things happen that by the time Andrews does bare her breasts, it is somewhat anti-climactic, but there is much to enjoy here for those willing to pay the attention that is required as the story is painted on a broad canvas with a lot of characters, but it is worth the trip and, after I saw it the first time, I wanted to see it again and again and think it is one of the great sleepers of 1980's.