They All Laughed (1981)

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Not engrossing at all, maybe worthwhile to see Hepburn who is always graceful.Pretty much Dorothy Stratten's only movie, made when she was 19. She died shortly after making this film, while it was still in post production. She wasn't very experienced and it shows, but she had much promise.

I usually avoid criticizing other movie viewers' comments. After all, we are all different people with many different tastes, interests and appeals. But, when I see a film with a wide split of opinions – most strongly of one view or the other, I wonder if there isn't something to account for such a clear difference. This film is a good example. As of the time of my writing here, very few place "They All Laughed" in the middle range. Most find it devoid of plot and screenplay, or they love it for reasons that aren't clear – in spite of the film's lack of a plot. I think I've discovered how this could be. It's due to one of two situations. First is a viewer who thinks this is one of the best movies of the 1980s. By a stretch of the imagination, one might be able to see how someone who has been isolated in a Siberian gulag for 30 years gets released and the first thing he or she sees is this 1981 movie. Some of us might think we were still being tortured. But, with nothing else to compare it to and not having seen a movie in 30 years, some might conceivably think this is a good movie. Still, to consider it great would suggest to me likely frostbite of the brain. Second is a viewer who thinks this film is highly underrated (at 6.2 to 6.4). I can see that after dozing off, waking up, dozing off again, and repeating this several times while watching this film, one might feel that he or she hasn't seen the best of the film, and therefore one must have missed some of the best parts. Still, after backing it up to replay it, and having the same thing happen again, and then again, and even another time, one should get the message that the film is a "napper." That is, it was made to be shown during siesta time. If that's what one means by underrated, then I must agree. I highly recommend this movie for insomniacs, and for all others who must have a little noise in the background in order to go to sleep. Now, for a less serious note. My three stars are for the scenes and street shots in New York. They were the only thing about this film that is any good. But, because there is no paucity of Big Apple scenes in the realm of filmdom, I can give it only the three stars. The cast is a good collection of actors, but actors with empty roles and poor or no scripts are like bobbers floating on a lake that aren't attached to the fishing line. They may look colorful from the shore but they won't dangle the bait to lure the fish and hook a catch. I don't know which there was more of for Audrey Hepburn and Ben Gazzara – no lines, or poor lines. The sad note about this film is that it is one of several mediocre to poor films in the last 10 years of Audrey Hepburn's career. The petite-figured Hepburn was beloved by fans and movie buffs everywhere during the first 15 years of her relatively short career. She became a great humanitarian and ambassador for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). She was just 63 when she died of a rare cancer that spread from her appendix. It was discovered just three months before her death, and doctors determined that it had been spreading for years. Hepburn seemed to age markedly in her last 10 years – as seen in this and her other films, which may have been due to the cancer in her body. Thankfully, generations to come will have a portfolio of some outstanding Audrey Hepburn films from the 1950s and 1960s. And, the few bombs such as this one will slide into oblivion.

I don't know about you but I thought that this movie, which Bogdanovich claimed to have written for Audrey Hepburn was overall a pretty amateurish effort. The so-called 'screwball comedy' turned out to be a little annoying for me, especially the scenes with Colleen Camp (if she said the name Charles just one more time!) which was like watching a bad school play. Now, Dorothy Stratten looked a little distant in this, but was given sound advice by the director (to keep a close eye on Miss Hepburn) She was good looking and pretty shapely but beyond that...? Ben Gazzara does just what Bogdanovich did not want his actors to do..act like they were 'acting'. Hepburn had a mighty talent for being real, and when shes on screen you feel your money's worth. Gazzara, looking a little preoccupied in his scenes only shines when Audrey is on screen with him. John Ritter brings his usual comic relief with some pleasure, after enduring some of the very bad dialog (Bogdanovich claims some of the scenes were written on the spot while filming and you get a sense of that hurried effort in a bad way) In the end I will keep a copy of this flick for myself. I love Audrey and this was her last feature film. She still had the natural beauty and class that sets her millenniums apart from the other actresses in this flick. While you may not like this vehicle as Audrey's 'swan song' as it were, you will just love to have seen her again.

There is a certain French farcical charm, however calculated, about director Peter Bogdanovich's 1981 urban valentine to romantic entanglements in Manhattan; but just released on DVD a quarter-century later, the film still feels half-baked in execution. Perhaps because Bogdanovich has too innate a familiarity with Hollywood's golden era, there is just too much pastiche and not enough depth to the shenanigans of three private eyes, their put-upon boss and the various women with whom they intertwine most predictably. The characters come in and out of this omnibus tale like Robert Altman's "Nashville" and Jean Renoir's "Rules of the Game", but the results are not nearly as resonant.Unfortunately, the movie was jinxed immediately when co-star Dorothy Stratten, who became romantically involved with Bogdanovich during filming, was infamously murdered by her husband right after its completion. If the film was meant as the director's launching pad for Stratten as he did previously for Cybill Shepherd in "The Last Picture Show", he is only partially successful this time as the pretty starlet makes a comparatively modest impression as Dolores, the innocent object of obsession for bumbling detective Charles. These two are part of a larger ensemble, which includes Arthur, a long-haired shamus constantly on roller skates, and John, the veteran investigator who finds himself drawn to Angela Niotes, the possibly philandering wife of an Italian industrialist.Bogdanovich had the good fortune of casting Audrey Hepburn, in her last feature film starring role, as Angela. Even though her story does not even get going until an hour into the movie, a fiftyish Hepburn looks radiantly stylish and is the epitome of resigned grace as an unhappily married woman. In an apparent nod to Bogie, Ben Gazzara performs too close to the vest as world-weary John, while a young, bespectacled John Ritter seems to regale in all his slapstick business as the smitten Charles. Less successful are Blaine Novak as the overly hip Arthur, model Patti Hansen (long since married to Rolling Stone Keith Richards) as bromide-spouting taxi driver "Sam", and a particularly unctuous Colleen Camp as motor-mouthed country singer Christy Miller insinuating herself into everyone else's lives.Much like a Jacques Demy film ("The Young Girls of Rochefort" comes immediately to mind), the plot unfolds after a long wordless introduction, and character motivations get filled in on an as-needed basis until the film gains some gravitas and then whimpers away. On the DVD's main extra, Bogdanovich states emphatically that this is the favorite of his films in an interview conducted with director Wes Anderson, who also admires the film (as does Quentin Tarantino, who makes it one of his top ten in "Halliwell's Top 1000" book). The details of the location shooting are interesting, as much was done on a modest scale with a minimum of extras, and Bogdanovich gratefully does not belabor the sensationalistic aspects of Stratten's death. He also provides a solid commentary track, and the print transfer on the DVD is relatively clean. I'm not sure the film is completely worthy of rediscovery in a vaunted 25th Anniversary Edition except for Hepburn's near-valedictory work and any lingering curiosity about Stratten.