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23 out of 23 people found the following comment useful :-
A Perfect Film Comedy!, 18 October 2003
Author: Ben Burgraff (cariart) from Las Vegas, Nevada

Have you ever watched a film and wished it wouldn't end? Where you loved all the characters, adored each scene, and laughed at every joke, even after you'd seen the film so many times that you could quote the dialog? MY FAVORITE YEAR is that kind of movie!

Directed with gusto by Richard Benjamin, the film is both a loving tribute to Sid Caesar's 'Your Show of Show', and the remarkable talents that brought it together each week, and a sincere homage to Errol Flynn, whose antics and larger-than-life persona, in the waning years of his life, still had a kind of magic that could enthrall a shy young fan, or make a woman swoon.

Three dynamic performances dominate the film. Mark Linn-Baker, as Benjy Stone, based on the young Mel Brooks, is a shy kid who hides his insecurities behind a rapid-fire wit. The dazzling young star in a staff of comedy 'pros', Stone suffers from an unrequited love from fellow staffer K. C. Downing (Jessica Harper), and has an inspiration, inviting legendary swashbuckler Alan Swann (Peter O'Toole) to appear on the show. As King Kaiser, star of the hit series, Joseph Bologna captures much of Sid Caesar's legendary physical 'presence' and irreverence to authority. When threatened by gangsters over a 'too close to home' series of parodies about crime boss Karl Rojeck (portrayed with brute menace by veteran actor Cameron Mitchell), Kaiser 'thumbs his nose' at them, mimicking the gangster mercilessly. "I'll KEEP doing it!" he taunts. "Why? Because it's FUNNY!"

Then there is Peter O'Toole's 'Alan Swann'. With his own career a roller coaster ride of alcoholism, resulting in the near destruction of his health, no actor could have 'channeled' Errol Flynn better. Just as Flynn, by the 1950s, was a nearly burned-out roué, his classic good looks long gone, O'Toole's matinee-idol appearance, after years of self-abuse, had aged into a gaunt mask, making Benji Stone's film montage of 'classic' clips more poignant. What Flynn still had, in abundance, were charm and a ready wit, and O'Toole's 'Swann' is so enchanting a personality that you can't help but love him, and root for him to succeed.

From the opening nostalgic strains of Nat King Cole's rendition of 'Stardust', through Benjy's futile effort to attempt to keep Swann sober (Red Skelton loved to tell how he kept Flynn sober on his program...he emptied all of the actor's bottles of vodka, replacing it with water...and Flynn couldn't tell the difference!), to a riotous Swann dinner with Benjy's family, to the near-disastrous broadcast, with Swann developing stage fright, and Kaiser brawling with mob enforcers...MY FAVORITE YEAR has one glorious scene after another, each unforgettable!

One of the AFI's '100 Greatest Film Comedies', MY FAVORITE YEAR will bring a tear to your eye, even as you laugh. It was a time of legends, and heroes who would live up to boyhood dreams.

Film comedy doesn't get any better than this!

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20 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
O'Toole at his best, 11 April 2004

Author: Lupercali from Tasmania

Peter O'Toole is at the height of his comic powers in this wonderful homage to Errol Flynn, the 50's, and early live TV. Alan Swann (O'Toole) is a swashbuckling, aging, alcoholic actor billed to appear on television - which is fine until he realises that the thing is going to be broadcast LIVE, which is unthinkable. This prompts severe stage fright and heavy drinking, as he is cojoled with endless patience by his adoring young minder, Benjy Stone, (Mark Linn-Baker).

The film is funny, brilliant, sad, stirring, inspiring, exciting - unique. The cast is perfect from top to bottom A tour de force by O'Toole. Watch it. 'My Favorite Year' should become one of Your Favorite Films. 9 out of 10.

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17 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
My Favorite Year, 15 June 1999
Author: Tim Cox from Marietta, OH

Hilarious film about a Sid Caesar-like comedy series where the special guest is a legendary swashbuckler movie idol who is more known for taking to drink, than for his acting credits. O'Toole shines as Alan Swann, the swashbuckler on his first live television series. Bologna is priceless as the Sid Caesar-like star of the comedy show. Baker is also wonderful as the young comedy writer assigned to watch Swann's every move. There is great support from Bill Macy, excellent as the show's head writer; Green as the show's producer; Hoffman as a comedy writer who only whispers how he feels...only to speak at the end of the film and Kazan, who is simply divine as Baker's mother. The film is a fine slice of old fashioned comedy with great slapstick and dialogue with lots of zap and zing. Director Benjamin shines in his first venture behind the camera. O'Toole was Oscar nominated.

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12 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
"I'm Not an Actor...I'm a Movie Star!!", 11 January 2006

Author: ijonesiii from United States

The 1982 comedy MY FAVORITE COMEDY was a lovingly made period piece that takes place during a wonderful time in entertainment history...the infancy of live television in the 1950's (or more specifically, YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS). This laugh-filled comic romp follows the adventures of Benji (Mark Linn-Baker), a gopher for COMEDY CALVACADE (this film's version of YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS), who is excited when a swashbuckling actor of the period named Alan Swann (Peter O'Toole) has been booked as a guest on the show turns out to be a skirt-chasing alcoholic who Benji is put in charge of keeping under control until showtime. This movie is a lovely valentine to the 1950's with exquisite period detail and an intelligent screenplay that invokes the period so beautifully. O'Toole gives the performance of a lifetime as Swann, an alternately laugh out loud funny and heartbreakingly warm performance that earned him an Oscar nomination, yet somehow Linn-Baker somehow manages to hold his own and never allows O'Toole to blow him off the screen. O' Toole and Linn-Baker get solid support from Lainie Kazan as Benji's mother, Joseph Bologna as King Kaiser, the star of Comedy Calvacade, Cameron Mitchell as a not-too bright gangster, and Adolph Green as the manic producer of the show. A good looking, smartly-written superbly written comedy that documents a long gone era in entertainment history and tells a warm and amusing story as well.

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11 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
Plastered Makes Perfect, 15 May 2003

Author: Bill Slocum (slokes@optonline.net) from Norwalk, CT USA

Really fun movie, with a tone and style all its own. It has the same zippy sitcom character of the set which is its main stage, and the comedic acting is often over the top. Yet it drives through some very subtle and deep ideas about what makes a celebrity tick, the price culture extracts from its most ballyhooed figures, and the scars divorce and drink can leave on those with the smoothest of surfaces.

The secret to this film's success is O'Toole, who gives up some of his most intimate and affecting moments on screen and intersperses them with ass-over-elbow feats of physical schtick that would make a Ritz Brother proud. What a shock we never saw much else from him after this tour de force. Richard Benjamin did go on to direct other films like "Shoot The Moon," but he never managed to get it all absolutely right the way he did here. It's so note-perfect, from the opening shot of midtown Manhattan 1954 with the cars, outfits, and bustle all coming together beneath the strains of Les Paul and Mary Ford's "How High The Moon" into a tight closeup of Benjy Stone carrying a cardboard cutout of his hero, Alan Swann, through an uncaring, jostling crowd.

I almost wish they could have made a sitcom featuring the King Kaiser crew, with of course Joseph Balogna, Bill Macy, Adolph Green and the rest all reprising their roles in a kind of "Remember WENN"-style show. O, what roads left untravelled. Balogna is so good, managing to carry off his Sid Caesar-inspired role with the same kind of aplomb that made the original Caesar early television's most dynamic and celebrated comedy performer. There's a nice scene early on where Stone sticks up for a prone Swann by telling Kaiser he can't fire the swashbuckler. "You're a big star now, and I'm sure you always will be," Benjy says. "But suppose, and I know it will never happen, you end up like this. I hope nobody does to you what you're doing to him." Of course Caesar did end up like this, strung out on substance-use problems that derailed his post-50s career, and knowing that gives the scene, both funny and tension-filled, a certain undertone of poignancy for those in the know.

Mark Linn-Baker could have taken it down a notch or two, and the Brooklyn idyll was to die for, and not in a good way. I'd like to know how the hell I'm supposed to lock lips with the woman of my dreams by stuffing my face with Chinese food and showing her old movies, but I don't think my repeated viewings have helped my love life much. It has given me many hours of pleasure though. This is one film that keeps on giving. With lines like "Plastered? So are some of the finest erections in Europe" "These must be his drinking socks" and "Tongue...Death," how can it do anything less?

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12 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
A Movie of Moments, 1 November 2000
Author: Mark Mayhew

The best movies have moments -- scenes so powerful, or simply so note-perfect, that they live on in your memory after the plot is forgotten.

"My Favorite Year" has more than its share of these.

Other reviewers on this page have singled out the dinner at Belle Mae Steinberg Carioca's (Lainie Kazan's) Brooklyn apartment. They might also have mentioned the scene in which a titanically intoxicated Alan Swann (O'Toole)essays to "shimmy down" the side of a building, using a fire hose as rapelling gear, or the farcically climactic fight scene on live 50's TV.

But two other moments resonate even more strongly; they explain completely why Peter O'Toole was cast in this otherwise comedic role.

In the first, O'Toole's character interrupts his own plans for an evening of debauchery to fulfill a fantasy by dancing with an aging, but still glorious Gloria Stuart. Both onscreen and off, the audience is spellbound in the midst of the slapstick as these two senior-citizen actors seize the screen for the duration of their waltz.

Even more compelling is an important scene later in the movie in which Swann makes a quick trip to visit a young daughter whom he hasn't seen in years. He watches her from the car, but can't bring himself to get out and speak to her. The scene is played completely without dialogue. With the camera focused tightly on the warring emotions which play across O'Toole's face, no dialogue is necessary. It's a powerful, lump-in-the-throat moment every divorced dad will recognize.

I join others on this page in urging you to rent this movie for the laughs. As you laugh, however, stay alert for two of the truest moments ever placed on film. Enjoy.

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10 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
A humane, funny film with a great heart., 20 April 1999

Author: Joseph Harder (jah5y@virginia.edu) from warren michigan

I was born in 1958, so I never saw Your Show of Shows, and needless to say, I never knew there was a famous or infamous incident involving one of my boyhood idols, a very drunk Errol Flynn.Dennis Palumbo, in what is ( sadly) apparently his only effort as a script writer, has taken this incident and woven a very human and very funny film from it. Benjamin's direction is excellent, and Peter O'Toole ( playing, it must be said, a variant of himself), is wonderful, as is most of the rest of the cast. Benjamin shows a sure comic touch in his debut. In short, like Quiz Show, one of the best movies about the fifties, and one of the best movies about the early days of television.

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11 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Stardust memories, 30 September 2002

Author: Ishallwearpurple from Heartland, USA

From the opening notes of Nat 'King' Cole's great recording of Stardust, this film just steals your heart. If you are old enough to remember TV's Show Of Shows, live every week, this is a real treat. Peter O'Toole is magic as an Errol Flynn like movie star, swashing every buck in sight, charming the socks off one and all. The final scene of the live broadcast, with the mayhem caused by the gangsters invading the stage, is a classic. A delighful 90 minutes. 8/10

Jane

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7 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
A surprising little (dare I say it?) O'Toole vehicle (I said it), 8 June 2005
Author: Brevity from Finland

Unaware of Mel Brooks's uncredited contribution and of most of the obvious parallels to real life, I began watching this and was eventually surprised I had heard so little of this minor nugget. While it is actually true that the humour here isn't too original, the execution is so irresistibly sure all can be forgiven. Even certain emotional, life lesson -like moments didn't bother me, for they have been done with utmost class.

The film flows flawlessly through its duration, and hardly anything seems out of place; there's no forced (I stress that word) emotionality to be found. Those things alone are something you don't often get. It has a splendid look to it, with the bright colours and the design, the costumes contributing to the wonderfully old-fashioned and fresh feel it has (how convenient).

The script is full of almost-priceless moments and witty one-liners and otherwise hilarious dialogue. I would imagine the film is of high re-watch value. It is by no means without its share of problems, though. As said, there's little that's not been done elsewhere, but the finished film works so well as a whole I can but say that all the praise is deserved. Needless to say, while the rest of the cast delivers, it is O'Toole's magnificently (un)steady and hilarious performance that lifts this one to heights.

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8 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
An Unexpected Good Time!, 27 October 2004
Author: dancerwh86 from Savannah, Georgia

I had never heard of this film until today. In fact, I had no intention of watching this movie at all. Peter O'Toole was being honored at the Savannah Film Festival and they had scheduled to show The Lion in Winter. That being one of my favorite flicks I immediately bought a ticket. Due to some kind of problem though they changed it and showed this instead. Well, all I can say is I'm glad I stayed for this movie! It was so funny and very witty. Peter O'Toole's delivery is unabelievable especially since I don't usually associate his name with this kind of comedy. It was hysterical! A lot of those in the theatre were college students like me and hadn't seen the movie either and everyone was rolling with laughter. I highly recommend this movie for a great time and an excellent performance from O'Toole!

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