Plantiana Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Charles Reichenthal The AIDS epidemic, of course, put The Ritz into a no-play situation in that it gay characters intertwine in all sorts of partnerships...though never seen on screen. But all really know about life in the gay clubs as they existed prior to AIDS. Putting all of that aside, and looking at The Ritz as if in a time capsule, it is a riotous farce with stereotypical gays that are nonetheless wonderfully funny and somehow loving people. Rita Moreno, repeating her award-winning stage role, dominates the screen at every interval...and her 'performance' at the baths' pool is among the funniest scenes of the decade. Treat Williams is also paramount in the craziness wonder of the film. Yes, the story that holds the film together is nonsense, although played well enough by F. Murray Abraham, Kaye Ballard, et al. But the film, despite its strange place in history, makes you laugh...and laughter is a good thing. The people are not hurt and not put down. The 'bad guys' are absolutely ridiculous, and the gays are lovable. It may be a little socially unacceptable, but nonetheless still with us. Even Rosie Perez did a Broadway revival , to acclaim, even after the AIDS crisis was abating a little.

blanche-2 1976'a "The Ritz," based on the Broadway play by Terrence McNally, is an absolute riot.On the run from the brother-in-law Carmine (Jerry Stiller) who's trying to kill him, Gaetano Procio (Jack Weston) orders a cab to take him someplace where no one can find him. The cabbie takes him to The Ritz, a gay bathhouse. There, Gaetano meets some bizarre characters: a chubby chaser (Paul Price); a macho man with a high voice (Treat Williams); Puerto Rican entertainer Googie Gomez (Rita Moreno) whom Gaetano assumes is a drag queen; his own wife (Kaye Ballard) who comes searching for him dressed as a man; and someone just there to party and enter the talent contest (F. Murray Abraham).The laughs are non-stop in this somewhat dated but very funny movie, complete with a talent show where Weston is one of the Andrews sisters, mistaken identity, and Googie's unbelievable nightclub act, during which she sings "Everything's Comin' Up Roses." The performances are all terrific, but Moreno has the killer role as Googie, who claims a producer named Seymour Pippin got her fired from both Sound of Music and Camelot. Kaye Ballard has a scene at the end of the film that had me screaming with laughter. She is just fabulous.Truly a no-miss. Unfortunately they don't make this kind of comedy any longer.

Don Daniels It was 1976, Tehran Iran. Terry, also American, and I were bored at work and on the spur of the moment decided to skip out and check out the Tehran Film Festival. Boy, did we have no idea what we were getting in for.It just so happened that the next film on the bill was The Ritz. We knew nothing about it, but we hailed our driver, raced downtown to the theater, and made it in just in time.Before long, we were rolling on the floor. Truly, we couldn't hold on to our seats, I can't speak for Terry but the tears were just pouring down my face from laughter. And what made this worse was that, in a mostly packed theater, it seemed that most of the time the two of us near the back were the only ones laughing. Oh, every once and while the Farsi sub-titles would catch-up and the rest of the theater would let out a good laugh, I guess they were having a good time, but it was amazing to us how much was being missed, even some of the visual humor.I suppose we were both just overdo for some comic relief, but I've watched this film again through the years and it remains one of the funniest films I have ever seen. Jack Weston as the everyman-victim is perfect, as is Rita Morena as a never-quite-been, trying with varying degrees of success, to retain her dignity, her temper, and her dreams. And the rest of the cast -- who can you fault? Yes, from the dark opening deathbed scene, to all the madcap mistakes that follow, this is farce that at times sinks almost as low as the Three Stooges, but keeps sailing from floor to floor with surprise laughs at every turn.Some folks can't seem to get past the subject matter, I guess. But if you can find this movie, and you can open your mind beyond the lifestyle to just enjoy all the zaniness that happens, then hang on to your towel!

Gerald A. DeLuca THE RITZ is a zany and broadly played little farce directed by Richard Lester. It is an adaptation of a Broadway play by Terrence McNally, later acclaimed for MASTER CLASS and the hit musical THE FULL MONTY. It is set in a New York club-bath for gays. Dying gang leader George Coulouris tells his son Jerry Stiller and daughter Kaye Ballard that he wants Ballard's husband, Jack Weston, a Cleveland sanitation company owner, to be killed. That's the only plot there is. Weston tells a cabbie to take him to a place where no one will suspect he is hiding. Enter "The Ritz," a seedily elegant gay paradise with its clients that include self-mocking F.Murray Abraham, and chubby-chaser Paul B. Price. The cast is uniformly amusing, especially Rita Moreno as Google Gomez, an untalented Latin singer whom Weston mistakes for a drag queen. She frequently steals the show from everyone. Moreno got a Tony Award for her Broadway portrayal of that role. Also good is the improbably squeaky-voiced detective played by Treat Williams. Some of the resulting mayhem is very funny indeed; some stretches are more ho-hum. Nevertheless, it is a generally successful piece of entertainment regardless of one's sexual orientation.