My God what a MESS!
This picture is almost hard to believe. Sometimes it's charming and interesting to watch really smart people act silly...and sometimes it's THE FORTUNE. This clunky, painfully unfunny farce really has to be seen at least once to be believed. The fact that Mike Nichols directed Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson to such ill effect is stupefying. All 3 men are noted for being incredibly intelligent and precise artists, they all won multiple Academy Awards and I would imagine the chance to make a mock screwball comedy must have had it's appeal, but, the results are so underwhelming one sits slack jawed in wonder as to how the scenes could possibly have stuck to the celluloid.
This is a pretty hard to see film . TCM ran it the other night and, I think, it's the first time it's been seen in years. I'm not surprised. I would hope that its creators have gone to any lengths possible to burn the negatives that exist one by one and try to get IMDB to remove it from their resumes.
I'm surprised that it hasn't become more of a cult film, sought out by enthusiasts and that there aren't midnight screenings of it with people dressed in costume and silly mustaches.
If you can find 88 minutes that you can't fill by having your teeth drilled or listening to old George W Bush speeches, I highly recommend destroying a small part of your brain and heart by snuggling up to The Fortune. It makes Ishtar look like The Marx Brothers!
"What's the rumpus?"