The King of Marvin Gardens (1972)

You won't be disappointed!

Sick Product of a Sick System

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Plot-- After years of separation, two mature brothers try to bond even though one habitually dreams in reckless fashion, while the other, who is darkly repressed, is drawn into the latest fanciful scheme. At the same time, two obstreperous women fit in somehow with the dreamer.Maybe you can get interested in this tepid character drama. About half-way, I got tired of David's (Nicholson) somber dead-pan and almost tuned out. His existentially confused character may be the least engaging screen presence I've come across since test pattern. I guess brother Jason's (Dern) witless ebullience is supposed to compensate. Sort of like Mr. Glum and Mr. Guffaw balancing out. But they don't. Maybe there's hidden gold buried in the murky storyline, like dreams versus reality and how they slip slide into each other. But I don't really care to plod along in search. Too bad these two fine actors are stuck in what amounts to caricature. As I recall, the movie got a lot of hoopla upon release, probably because of Nicholson's zooming star. Now, I'm not against intellectualized movies, which this one may be. But a play of profound ideas does not easily combine into a play of engaging events, as I think this overrated disappointment shows. Too bad.

Two brothers get together to re-evaluate their lives and dreams, but it soon become apparent that they have more differences than similarities, and perhaps would have been better off not hooking up at all.This is a movie that makes you work. There are no easy clichés to grab hold of. Nicholson shows that he can act the pants off most others, playing a sundied, self-examining radio host, a million miles from the 'Nicholsom' we're used to.Dern gives an astounding performance as perhaps one of the most obnoxious characters to ever grace the screen - a self-obsessed businessman and would-be millionaire, if he wasn't to busy taking drugs and abusing women.Ellen Bursten is utterly convincing and heartbreaking performance as one of his neglected hangers one, and just as one is thinking the film is burning itself out, steals the show with an memorable explosion of emotion.Julie Anne Robinson, the young of the two women hanging around Dern, is equally impressive. A promising actress with three films to her credit, she sadly died of smoke-inhalation during apartment fir at her home on Eugene, Oregon, 13 April 1975.It's Nicholson one ultimately remembers most from this film, even though he is really an observer thorough whose eyes we witness the self-destructive habits of the others.Really glad I saw this, happening upon it when browsing through a batch of 70's movies that cane into my possession. No car chases, gun fights or sex scenes (well, one brief one), but a rare ensemble performance, a real gem.

It's hard to imagine Jack Nicholson appearing in a film like 'The King of Marvin Gardens' today. The movie is a story of an introverted broadcaster and his hustling brother; there's an air of seediness to the portrait of a run-down, early 1970s, east-coast America; of doomed hopelessness about the the huckster's implausible vision; and of a terrific sadness in the way that the broadcaster finds a touch of glamour and excitement in hanging out with his brother for a while, although the two of them have nothing in common and surely nothing is actually going to turn out right. I've heard it said that Saul Bellow's 'The Adventures of Augie March' is the great American novel because of its optimism; but this is another side of America, post-Vietnam war, a world of fraudsters, impossible dreamers, and those just hunkering down to survive. As a film, and certainly as entertainment, it's weaker than Nicholson and director Bob Rafelson's earlier 'Five Easy Pieces', primarily because Nicholson's character here is fundamentally less interesting: it's a correctly restrained performance from Jack, but playing a man who has little capacity for change, and constrained by a story that's low-key painful, rather than exciting. Yet even if this is not a fun movie, it's a telling one. Pessimism, like optimism, remains part of the American landscape, as it is in every country; but it's a shame that it's been written out of the contemporary Hollywood vision.

"The King of Marvin Gardens" is an ensemble piece that turns on the collision of four dysfunctional people. Jack Nicholson plays a perennially depressed, bookish "straight" type opposite the "dynamic" and "goofy" Bruce Dern. Ellen Burstyn and Julia Ann Robinson play, essentially, a mother-step daughter team of hookers. None of these characters is compelling and all of them become quite grating in their various ways; Bruce Dern takes the prize as being the most annoying and tiresome of the bunch.The movie is set in Atlantic City and makes frequent use of the more lurid, campy or bizarre aspects of that location. Unfortunately, the antics of the four main actors are mostly forced, mannered and flat. I found myself cringing at the strained quality of the movie as it reached toward inspiring in the audience some sort of artsy, reverse-chic epiphany it was nowhere near attaining.There really is no plot, and almost any scene could be deleted without affecting the remainder of the film...except for the happy outcome that the thing would be that much shorter. I sat through most of this mess but at a certain point I finally succumbed to my urge to walk out and... walked out. It felt really good to say goodbye to "The King of Marvin Gardens."