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Happiness Energy And Longevity Through Health, that is, convention and election in a Florida hotel. "In what sense is this an allegory?" The nutritionist organization needs a new leader, the candidates are the virginal octogenarian (Lauren Bacall) who grows catatonic mid-salute and the Englishwoman from Kansas (Glenda Jackson) who mercilessly wields tape recorder and bullhorn. The White House representative (Carol Burnett) observes the process, her ex-husband (James Garner) happens to manage the conservative figurehead's campaign, Dick Cavett as himself embodies the media side of hucksterism. "Did you just make that up?" "Not sure. It might have been Thomas Jefferson." End of the counterculture, dawn of Reaganism, Robert Altman is there to skewer the farcical transition. The pool from 3 Women has a body at the bottom, part of the maddening procession of fads and jingles and stunts. The right denounces orgasms while the left enjoys cups of warm water, against them is "the extreme middle" of the choleric vitamin peddler (Paul Dooley). "No meat," merely a salad of crackpots tossed this way and that for the wandering camera, some of Altman's densest textures. It turns out the shadowy cowboy mastermind (Donald Moffat) carries a valise filled with toys, elsewhere the political trickster (Henry Gibson) dons matronly drag and slogan, "the breast that feeds the baby rules the world." (Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean expands the transgender note.) The future is female, the veteran leading man is appropriately befuddled: "Somehow I feel the oddball here." Barely released by the studio, yet noticeably appreciated by Fellini (Ginger e Fred). With Alfre Woodard, Diane Stilwell, MacIntyre Dixon, Ann Ryerson, and Dinah Shore.
--- Fernando F. Croce |