Sadly this all star 'comedy' is a monumentally wasted opportunity to put a dozen or more famous old stars into the one film...and then irritatingly give them ALL nothing to do. Some just walk on and off, some have one line, some grunt, some just sit there. Too bad if you wonder what someone like Guy Madison looks like in his final film, you can barely find him. Someone like Madeline Kahn who is just divine and hilarious in everything else she ever did is completely loose and forced here. The film relentlessly sags and there is not much fun to be had at all. The opening night party must have been like a wake! Paramount, instead of opening their treasure vault of Technicolor musicals like Metro did and make a fantastic doco about their history, opted to instead actually make movies about film 30s production; so we got DAY OF THE LOCUST and GABLE AND LOMBARD. Universal made W.C .FIELDS AND ME, Fox made AT LONG LAST LOVE and sadly, crap like THE WORLDS GREATEST LOVER and UA actually did make a doco that nobody saw: the hilarious animal stars pic ITS SHOWTIME. While most of the above are actually interesting, it wasn't what the public wanted and they ALL bombed badly. WB even made one thing called UNDER THE RAINBOW which proved that Billy Barty at the time was the hardest working midget in Hollywood since he not only appeared in about 4 of the above new 1976 films, he even turned up in the genuine items from the 30s (Footlight Parade and the Wizard Of Oz). What the public wanted was the real footage and musical numbers from the past like the three THATS ENTERTAINMENT and THATS DANCING proved. Still to this day we don't have the Fox movie doco about their Technicolor years, or a celebration of CINEMASCOPE, the Universal musicals and sci fi pix epic doco, or Columbia's serial doco. Yes we have THE REPUBLIC PICTURES STORY and the AIP biopic IT CAME FROM Hollywood (I think), but we need a THATS ENTERTAINMENT from each of the major and minor Studios. I'd even cut the MONOGRAM-AA doco for them for free if they let me! The closest we got was the fantastic RKO history TV series narrated by Edward Asner. Won Ton Ton is awful and not worth watching, sad for the tragic sight of pensioner stars warbling one line here and there. Annoying.
