User Reviews

Taylor plays a mature college professor who takes in a student boarder, which acts as a catalyst to move her out of her lonely routine. Taylor does as well as she can with the script before her. Joseph Bottoms plays an obnoxious gay student who is demanding and extremely self-centered. The expected reasons for his behavior are never really revealed other than he seemed to not get the attention he wanted as a kid. Yet, Taylor is somehow taken by this person with little redeeming value to a degree that is hard to believe. It is also revealed that Taylor was once, years back, a bit performer in vaudeville and this student exposes her secret to the public. She is pressured to perform in a campus talent show and she agrees only if the student joins her. We are then subjected to a moldy vaudeville act of song, soft shoe and bad jokes that would have cleared the house 50 years earlier. And it goes on and on and on. We have to sit through the whole thing. The audience gives this act a standing ovation, which can only mean that this town is seriously starved for entertainment. The student is now even more taken with himself as if this one talent show means he is the next Olivier. Taylor's character is now suddenly love-struck with this student, which really makes no sense as he has not done anything other than perform with her. This is the problem with the movie. The student character has never demonstrated any likable quality and you can't feel sympathy for him since we don't know much about him. You can't understand why the professor should be so crushed when the student decides to move out as abruptly as he moved in. The viewing audience is all saying good riddance.

Having written plays for Julie Harris and later on several TV movies for Katharine Hepburn, James Prideaux took on la Liz for this weird but endearingly quirky comedy that has one truly memorable transition that comes out of nowhere. Half an hour into the 75 minutes film, Elizabeth Taylor's face suddenly morphs into what she would look like when she moved onto Broadway in "The Little Foxes". Somehow she managed to loose some very noticeable pudginess within the transition from commercial break to back on the air. I had to recheck just to make sure my eyes were working correctly.

Elizabeth is playing a college literature professor who is perplexed by student Joseph Bottoms' apparent lack of interest in the subject, then suddenly approached by him about a room he has heard she has her rent. She doesn't want to rent to him for obvious reasons (he's quite unpredictable, in fact possibly having multiple personalities), but for some reason changes her mind, and in spite of things he does, starts to open up with them, even going as far as to perform in a very odd variety show with him.

I can't say that this is even remotely a good movie, but it's one of those that I feel awkward about panning. Liz allows elements of her personality to come out that I've never seen in any of her other roles, and it's as if she's begging the audience to see her in a completely different way. Bottoms plays a character I never felt was real, difficult to describe as well as deal with, yet their companionship once they bond is very sweet. It's difficult to even describe as a movie because there's really no conflict, just two people who in real life would never associate personally, yet somehow do in this. Along with Lily Tomlin and John Travolta in the same year's "Moment By Moment", it's the oddest teaming of the '70s.