Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Robert J. Maxwell Well, according to this biographical documentary, the producer Robert Evans has lived the life of an elevator, or maybe a toilet seat, with a couple of truly good highs -- "Marathon Man," "Chinatown," and others -- and some down periods involving cocaine, murder, and the loss of his beloved mansion in Woodland Hills.It's based on Evans' own autobiography, and he narrates this doc. One might expect it to be filled with self justification, along the lines of, "Yes, I brought suit and left him destitute but it was never about the money." Instead, he's pretty generous with praise for his pals and surprisingly "understanding" towards those who have brought him down.I put quotes around the word "understanding" because what I mean is that he doesn't heap his calumny upon his undoers. He leaves them pretty much blameless. But I don't believe for a moment he "understands" them, or if he does he's not being frank about it. His wife, Ali McGraw, didn't leave him for Steve McQueen because Evans stayed away from home too long while working. No respectable Hollywood producer would include such a hoary cliché in a movie, unless John Wayne was the hero. How about, "You're married to your job"? As Evans himself says in the narrative, "I was never psychiatrically oriented." Evans seems to have a decent sense of humor about himself. He can poke fun at his early acting efforts. Once you've achieved great success, you're at liberty to do that. If Picasso had once been a bicycle repairman he might have joked about how bad he was. Yet the role distance is there, even though Evans' narration undermines it with an excess of dramatization. There may always be tragedy just around the corner, but when you're hearing Evans tell you this in a voice that sounds like Rock Hudson's after chain smoking two packs of Gauloise, it remains less than convincing.The images reflect the volatility of his career, as does the music. At his height, living in his mansion, accepting awards, dating models, being interviewed while wearing a pair of tinted glasses whose color matches the tint of the pullover sweater he chose to wear that day, the cuts arrive con brio. Later, during the dark years of the late 1980s, the music turns mournful and melancholic, and there are dismal shots of Evans' deserted swimming pool with maple leaves scattered across the surface like Evans' wasted dreams, like his hundred-dollar bills.Some of it is not entirely believable. Depressed, Evans checks himself into some sort of sanatorium. He describes himself as being "behind bars" and his room is "like a cell." He relates the story of his close escape from the "goons" that guarded the hallway. (He was picked up by his chauffeur.) What the hell is this -- The Betty Ford Clinic or The Snake Pit? He's a perceptive guy, no question about it, and had a string of good luck too. Life, though, has left him battered. The epilogue suggests he's made a successful comeback with movies like "Jade" and "Sliver." That's arguable. But, to be perfectly honest, despite the suffering Evans has endured and now put on display, I'd have traded places with him at any point in his life and so would anyone else.

Cosmoeticadotcom The Kid Stays In the Picture is another in a series of stylistic documentaries over the last few years that seems to be reinvigorating the form by using different narrative and filmic techniques in service to a story. In Winged Migration it was an interplay of raising birds from hatchlings, mixing great flying footage with special effects, in The Fog Of War it was juxtaposing a man's life (ex-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara) with his beliefs, & then with special effects and facts not widely known, but this film goes the furthest in pushing this technique, to almost docudrama, and it succeeds brilliantly. As a work of art it's a tour de force. It's subject matter may seem a bit more problematic- it is not the life of a major political figure, but of a Zelig-like Hollywood mogul- Robert Evans- whose rise and fall is chronicled mostly by his own narration, & the computer effects of taking still photographs & making them come alive. There is very little of the talking head phenomena that infects most film documentaries. In his behind the scenes with the stars life Evans resembles rock DJ Rodney Bingenheimer from the documentary The Mayor Of Sunset Strip, and in its blend of subjectivity with reality it shares a kinship with the Harvey Pekar docudrama American Splendor, yet it succeeds far more than either of those two films because its subject is not an oddball, and has actually led a life worth examining. Neither Bingenheimer nor Pekar ever had the personal success Evans did…. Filmmakers Brett Morgen and Nanette Burstein have achieved something rare in the film world- a documentary that both pushes the genre's boundaries yet achieves what all but the very best documentaries achieve- insight into its subject matter. Evans is a man who is both a starmaker and starstruck fan, barren chaff yet sage insider. He is truthful- to a degree, arrogant, yet self-deprecating- a refreshing turn from many self-satisfied and dishonest documentaries. This film was clearly worlds better than Bowling For Columbine- the doc that won the Oscar that year, yet the reason for its not winning, nor even being nominated, is obvious- aside from the fact Evans made many enemies in Hollywood. Most viewers will forget it is a documentary while it's being watched. So effectively subversive are Morgan and Burstein in their technique that it works against them in terms of recognition. Yet, this film, not Columbine, will be studied in film school.As for the features, there is not much- no making of documentary, just assorted interviews with celebrities at the film's premiere, and Evans accepting some awards. The commentary track by Morgan and Burstein is superb, one of the best explications of the marriage of technique with subject matter you're likely to hear.A cynic might argue that the film is an homage to a talentless actor who just had a knack for being in the right place at the right time, and to a degree that's true. But, the film is really about the solipsistic nature of all people. We know that. We are that, by and large. It's only when we see that in people richer, more famous, and more rewarded that we look away from ourselves. The film opens with a quote from Evans: 'There are three sides to every story: my side, your side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each one differently.' Rarely has such truth been admitted by anyone in film, rarer still something done with it. This is why The Kid Stays In The Picture is a great documentary.

bob the moo When Robert Evans climbed out of a pool while on a business trip he got offered an acting role alongside James Cagney. After this he had a few more appearances as an actor until the well ran dry. An experience with a powerful producer convinced him that that was what he wanted to be – the man behind the man. Buying the rights to the book The Detective was the first step on a career that would see him produce some of the most famous films of the 1970's.I haven't read the book from which this film came but like the majority of people I have seen plenty of the films that Robert Evans was responsible for bringing to the screen. His story is interesting and although it was a risk to have Evans himself tell it, it worked here. Essentially we have Evans talking through his story over stock footage, old photographs and new images. This is the only real weaknesses that I felt the film had – it needs the story telling to be totally engaging because, when it isn't, there isn't anything particularly on the screen to cover for it. The photos are animated well and the images flow nicely (rather than being static shots) and the clips are used rather than just shown. However the main engine here is Evans' story and his telling.For a wider audience I could see why his story may not be of interest but personally it held my attention for the whole time. It had been nicely edited together so that it was never too brief but never stayed too long on any one thing or time. This kept the ego at bay and allowed the story to be told rather than wallowed in or celebrated (most of the time anyway). By the end of the film I felt like I had heard a good story and it had been interesting due to his integral involvement with some of the biggest films of the 1970's; I did have to wonder though why the end credits bothered to list his more recent successes as Sliver, Jade, The Saint and The Phantom – boasting that some of them broke $100 million was probably meant to make us think Evans was "back", however it just left me with the impression that his best days are about 20 years behind him now.Overall though this is an effective piece of story telling. The visual delivery helps by being neither dull nor distracting but doing enough to make this more than a radio show. Evans drives the film forward with the value of his story and the personal delivery of his narration. A strong film that fans of films of the period (which must be a large section of the users on this site) should check out.

theprophet-2 ....is Robert Evans' balls clanking together. The man is simply a force of nature, and the film does a good job of telling his story. I'd recommend you also pick up the book--even better the audio version read by Evans himself--which covers a number of subjects that the book leaves out. The book gives more details about his relationship with Henry Kissenger, his marriage to Phylis George and the financial bath he took on the movie "Black Sunday". The book also goes into more detail on his friendship with Jack Nicholson. Evans is an American original. He's just a one-of-a-kind character, and the sort of maverick that today's business and formula driven Hollywood could use more of. Obviously the film (and the book) gives his life the spin he wants to put on it--like him taking credit for editing "The Godfather". To hear him tell the story, Coppola's original cut was unwatchable and it took his touch to make it into the classic it became. That's the nature of all autobiographies, though, and can't really be considered a flaw in the film (or the book). Anyway, I'm a sucker for films about the movie industry which made me like this even more. Just a very entertaining and well made movie about a fascinating individual.