slcagnina Edwards and his wife Julie Andrews wanted to make a kiss-off to Hollywood. This is not a bad inspiration for a film. But the result is a muddle.Edwards can be an uneven director; sometimes he's hilarious, sometimes he's not funny at all (and his Asian caricatures from Breakfast at Tiffany's to this film make me wonder if Edwards understands that playing racial stereotypes without irony is not funny).In this film, his best and worst are often in the same scene. It's hard to understand what Edwards is condemning because he doesn't put forth a realistic central character or premise (even in 1981, re-shooting a failed film as bad as the one he presents here by putting in sex sex sex wouldn't bring you instant box office). William Holden and Robert Preston are excellent in the film as old time cynics with a heart. But they're not the central focus of the film -- that would be Mulligan, a funny actor but not one to present the conflicted portrait of a gifted director gone bad. Edwards never takes Mulligan's Felix Farmer's plight seriously -- which undercuts the comedy. Why was his film so bad in the beginning? If he had shown the execs causing the problems, then that would have made Mulligan's actions more plausible -- if not in the realm of realism. Another narrative mistake with Felix, Edwards tells us this was Felix's first failure. Would a multimillionaire successful Hollywood guy with a giant ego go suicidal insane over one failure?That's the problem. Felix's downfall isn't understandable -- and he appears so inept his previous success isn't understandable; and the loyalty he inspires in Holden and Preston's characters isn't understandable, because we don't see why they'd have affection for Felix as a person or a filmmaker. If we're supposed to feel bad because Felix loses his movie, we don't, because we don't know how a man with so little talent got a 30 million dollar (1981 dollars) budget in the first place. If Edwards had drawn a realistic Felix character, and cut down on some of the slapstick elements, he might have had a good, if clichéd, Hollywood cautionary tale. Instead, he made a hollow film about a hollow business. In the end, this makes Edwards as bad as the ones he's trying to eviscerate.

inspectors71 Seeing this movie as a 21 year old was not a good idea. I was literate and mature enough to understand that this was an adult satire, but I was too much of a little boy to understand the grownup-ness of the characters. Ultimately, my 48 year old mind understands that I missed something in SOB, but I can't get by the quarter century old memory of thinking that this Blake Edwards comedy was a dud.I do remember laughing. And Rosanna Arquette's stripping in front of William Holden ("If that's nothing, I can't even conceive of what 'something' might be!"). There was lots of sharp dialogue and slapstick. Julie Andrews looked, well, perky, but by the time she did her newsworthy strip, what little attention span I was paying to the movie had spooled out. Yet that's all I remember. A lot of insider jokes and bared breasts. This isn't so much a review as a confession that I didn't get the movie. I remember feeling faintly disgusted with Mary Poppins popping out, in a repulsive, leathery musical number. I had a narrow window of opportunity to get SOB, but I missed it.I'm not really interested in giving it another shot.

Marilyn Armstrong From the opening scene to the final fade out, this movie, for it's genre, is as good as it gets.I noticed when they gave Blake Edwards his lifetime achievement award at the Oscars this past year, they did NOT mention S.O.B. amongst his list of films. Interesting. Could it be that this scathingly witting, brilliant, intelligent ... and, oh yes, HILARIOUS ... film cut too close to home?The cast is top drawer and everyone is at the top of his or her game. From Julie Andrews, playing a delicious parody of herself, to William Holden, who in the course of the movie declaims his own obituary, to Robert Preston (not a shyster ... he is a QUACK), it is wonderful. I'm sure the Hollywood Power Players hated it. Unless you are One Of Them, you will probably love it. It's great.

bruce1q Its the story of a director (Richard Mulligan) that has a major career disaster with a universally panned film called "Night Wind". The director is suicidal while all of those around him are amusingly wrapped in their own ego-centric worlds.The movie is hysterically funny and rather touching, a recurring vignette in the film is a cut-away to a man that has died jogging on the beach and his little dog. The man lies dead in the sand while people walk on by. This helps give a sense of isolation; the characters are disconnected from each other, even though they work and live together.It has great performances by the cast. One stand-out is Robert Preston as very amusing "Dr. Feel-Good"; he steals every scene.Every time I see S.O.B. there are more little bits and nuances that I never noticed before. If you are a Richard Mulligan or Robert Preston fan this is a must see.For fans of Blake Edwards this is, in my opinion, one of his best comedic films.