Rich and Famous (1981)
(On Cable TV, November 2022) Most directors go out with a whimper rather than a bang, and so Rich and Famous is veteran filmmaker George Cukor’s swan song in a career that spanned six decades. Unfortunately, it’s not much of a final statement. While adapting the classic 1943 Old Acquaintance to mid-to-late 20th century America and keeping a firm focus on Cukor’s much-vaunted ability to direct “women’s pictures,” this sexed-up remake is far more frequently bland than bold. Starring Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen as two lifelong frenemies whose relative fortunes keep shifting over two decades, the film wants to be a drama about a complex friendship but usually settles for annoying bickering between two people who should know better. The portrait of the literary scene that it (may) want to satirize feels alien, and so do the relationships between every single character in the film. Bisset and Bergen look great, but Rich and Famous itself is a fuzzy melodrama that thinks it’s profound. The real question is whether this was an ill-advised late-life project for Cukor, or that he was lucky to have made another movie entirely at that age.