Starting Over (1979)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

best movie i've ever seen.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Burt Reynolds played Phil Potter, a Boston publishing executive. In this film, he and his wife, Jessica, split up. She wants to pursue a singing career. Candice Bergen earned an Academy Award nomination for her performance as Jessica Potter. Phil meets Marilyn Holmburg, a school teacher, who helps him deal with the breakup. Jill Clayburgh earned an Academy Award nomination for her performance as Marilyn. Reynolds, Clayburgh and Bergen did earn Golden Globe nominations for their roles in this film. The film is a nice romantic comedy about mature adults. They don't make films like this anymore. Burt Reynolds can act aside from action films. He is totally a different character here.

Starting Over wants so badly to be the male counterpart to 1978's rousing An Unmarried Woman, and it almost succeeds. All the adults on display are complicated, nearing 40, desperate for love, and as unsure about the future as they were when they were teenagers. This time, however, Jill Clayburgh is not the newly divorced leading character; she's the love interest and Burt Reynolds is the divorcée. Starting Over has the majority of the ingredients to make An Unmarried Woman 2: An Unmarried Man, but it's missing two important aspects: Paul Mazursky, and a character as fundamentally compelling as Erica Benton.Phil Potter (Reynolds) has been a good husband for years. He's never ceased to be faithful, he's always contributed to the relationship, and he's brought home the bacon day in and day out. But one day, his wife, Jessica (Candice Bergen), announces that she desires a divorce — it's time she cut the restraints of marriage and pursue a career as a professional singer. But in truth, she has begun an affair with Phil's boss and craves new romance.Jessica is human garbage, but Phil is lost without her. He hasn't gone on a date for years, and he isn't ready to tackle life as a single man. But after just a few crappy dates, he finds himself falling for Marilyn (Clayburgh), a teacher that his brother set him up with. Marilyn is self-deprecating and attractive in a non-threatening sort of way — the second we see her, we can only hope that Phil will marry her in a quaint romantic comedy fashion. Yet he finds himself still drawn to Jessica, something that doesn't sit well with Marilyn, who has burgeoning commitment issues.Starting Over is pleasant, but it doesn't have the affecting aura that An Unmarried Woman had. I'm one that despises the idea of basing another film's accomplishments off of another, but Starting Over has so many similar aspects that it's nearly impossible not to.The film begins with a divorce, and that's one of the biggest mistakes it makes. In An Unmarried Woman there was a period in which Erica Benton was happily married, a sympathetic witness to her friends marital issues — when her husband announced his infidelities, it came as an unrelenting shock to us and the leading heroine. But because there is no time to process or understand the marriage between Phil and Jessica, all we know is that she must be a bitch and he must be a saint. In later scenes, she serenades him in an over-the-top fashion to parallel her flighty singing career, telling us that she's crazy and he's stable.Starting Over struggles so much because we don't get to know the characters well enough to really care about them. Phil is such a thinly sketched character that it's hard to even understand why women are really charmed by him; he's mild-mannered and devoid of personality. He's a nice guy, but is that really enough? Bergen takes on the Michael Murphy role and isn't given nearly enough to work with. Murphy's crocodile tear shedding husband to Clayburgh's Erica was a product of marital boredom; we couldn't hate him, but we also couldn't understand why he'd abandon someone has wonderful as his wife. Bergen's Jessica is such a caricature that all we want to do is boo and hiss at her; but we can never see things from her point of view.The lone bright spot in Starting Over is Clayburgh, who is alive with spunk, disarmingly funny. But when the love interest is more fascinating than the main character, you know you have a problem. It's even worse, though, when that love interest plays Erica Benton in An Unmarried Woman. And after watching Starting Over, I found myself simply wanting to watch An Unmarried Woman again. Sue me.Read more reviews at petersonreviews.com

Well, watching a 1979 movie may be a new thing for me. I rarely watch movies that old, mainly because I think things were extremely different in the past. For some reason, "Starting Over" is a movie that shows people just like they are, including nowadays. Sadly, the whole plot isn't too entertaining or engaging, since it's quite simple, but some things are interesting to notice. First, thanksgiving dinner scene is brilliant; they show an extremely uncomfortable situation, mainly when everyone stays in silence thinking "what should we do now". It's interesting to notice that some social protocol are never changing. All in all, it's a weak movie that brings nothing new to the genre, but if you're looking for an old picture to compare with nowadays', maybe you'll like this.

For the first time, a marriage break-up shows the male as vulnerable, mild-mannered, and incredibly human. Burt Reynolds displays none of his usual macho style and is absolutely hilarious as a guy who gets dumped by his nutty wife. The attempted romance between Jill Clayburgh and Reynolds is so realistic, each so nervous, defensive. Yet no one is creating a perfect new relationship here. Every time I see it, I laugh just as hard as I did the first time. This should be required viewing for all who find themselves suddenly single. All the how-to touchy-feely books and groups only make the single person seeking relationship even more self-conscious. "Starting Over" puts a new spin on the subject without diminishing the angst and self-doubt that makes the trial-and-error process so heinous. Burt Reynolds hyper-ventilating when he and Jill try to buy a mattress together at Bloomingdale's is one of the funniest scenes in filmdom.