AT LONG LAST LOVE

 Peter Bogdanovitch was on a roll when he made "At Long Last Love". He already had "Targets", "The Last Picture Show", "What's Up, Doc?", "Paper Moon" and "Daisy Miller" behind him and was building up something of a stock company of his own when he had the idea of a musical-comedy built around the songs of Cole Porter. Could this be his masterpiece? Well, let's start with the pluses. Firstly there are the songs which are some of the best ever composed so the musical part should have been a cinch but then Mr Bogdanovitch chose to cast it with performers who could act but not necessarily sing or, at least, sing to the level these songs demanded.

Another plus was the look; filmed in colour but with the black-and-white Art Deco style of a Fred and Ginger movie it looked fabulous so perhaps a combination of the look and the score should have been enough but in the end that's really all we get. Any decent musical-comedy needs jokes but unfortunately Bogdanovitch's gags mostly fall flat. Indeed, his script sucks so the best you can say is that this is a good idea that needed a writer. Between the songs, "At Long Last Love" dies a rather painful death.

Madeline Khan comes out of it largely unscathed and Cybill Shepherd is surprisingly charming but Burt Reynolds goes through the movie as if his trousers were pinching him down below while Duilio Del Prete shows he clearly deserves better. Eileen Brennan, on the other hand, is simply an embarrassment. The film flopped though it has now built up something of a cult, (some people really love it), but in the end even those great Cole Porter tunes can't save it and set beside 'proper' musicals it's a bit of a disaster. See it if you must but maybe you'd be better off staying home and listening to Ella's Cole Porter Songbook instead.