NICKELODEON (1976) ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Peter Bogdanovich
Ryan O'Neal, Burt Reynolds, Tatum O'Neal,
Brian Keith, Stella Stevens, Jon Ritter,
Jane Hitchcock, Brion James, James Best,
M. Emmett Walsh, Harry Carey Jr., Don Calfa
A slapstick valentine to the early days of cinema, about an independent movie company struggling to turn out films against the wishes of a syndicate of major producers who don't welcome the competition. It's early in the 20th century and movies have barely been invented, so there aren't many rules about how to shoot pictures, or even who should do that. Which means that a lawyer with limited courtroom skills (Ryan O'Neal) can become a director, more or less by accident. An alligator wrestler from Florida (Burt Reynolds) can charm, lie and stumble his way to stardom. And a 12-year-old kid (Ryan's daughter Tatum) can leverage her ostrich farm and pet rattlesnake into a successful career as a screenwriter, cribbing her stories from Shakespeare. Bogdanovich plays it fast and loose, never letting a plot point interfere with a pratfall or a pie in the face. That it's a labor of love becomes evident in the last ten minutes, when the now-prosperous members of the movie company attend the premiere of D.W. Griffith's "The Clansman", soon to be retitled "The Birth of a Nation". Tatum's the scene-stealer, with her studious demeanor and wire-framed specs, and her dad does a pretty good Harold Lloyd impression.
