Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Following three months of dismal box office shows and Netflix deadwood I popped this into my Blu-Ray. I am so glad I did. Fifty years of artistic nonsense disappeared in a flash. Take a trip back to the days when art flourished in film, before sophistication and technology ruined it. It will leave you feeling fresh and clean.

In my review, I will not get into the acting, production values or plot. You can babble on all day about that in ANY movie. No, Candy deserves more than just the typical cold review. Candy, for many of us was a point in time that both baffled us and left a lot of questions and memories.I am rating Candy a 10 as the WORST wonderful movie ever made. I saw Candy 3 times when it appeared in my little town back upon release. When you're 17, and love the Byrds, Steppenwolf and later Dave Grusin, and the music pushes the movie no matter HOW bad it is, you've got a winner to a 17 year old. Don't forget, this was the Hippie era, and the psychedelic counterculture was all the rage, and this movie had it in spades! Now, flash forward 50 years and watch it again. Oh my God! It's SO bad that I bought a rare collectors DVD for a lot of money! Look, MANY movies are bad. There are more bad movies than good, and there many ways to judge what is a bad movie, like bad acting, bad production values etc. There's one other way also: Name the worst movie of all time with the most amount of Hollywood Stars. Think about it. Any ONE of the stars in Candy (except Candy herself) could and did make good movies. So you'd think that with ALL those stars, the movie couldn't fail right? WRONG. The movie was criticized so badly that it was pulled for over 20 years, and by that time, we had become adults and knew what a good vs bad movie really was. But I STILL love Candy. Why? Think of it this way: Did you love the Ford Mustang when it first came out? Wouldn't you love an original one today? We forget that the Mustang was nothing more than a new body on a cheap frame and had no power at all when it first came out. It was in fact, compared to today's cars a real dog. This doesn't matter to us in the least NOW, because that car reminds us of our childhood or teenage years. It takes us back, and for me anyway, so does the movie Candy. Yes it was bad.. the WORST considering the Stars in it, but I still love it.

One of the most maligned of the all-star "anything goes" extravaganzas typical of the late 1960s – this time with pretensions towards satire given its origins as a Terry Southern novel (here adapted for the screen by Buck Henry, who also appears briefly as a lunatic) – is not too bad, actually (somewhat in the same vein as THE MAGIC Christian [1969] but slightly more entertaining), though it does run badly out of steam two-thirds of the way in.18-year old Swedish "newcomer" Ewa Aulin plays the naïve but well-meaning heroine who's taken advantage of by practically everyone she meets; actually, she had already appeared in two notable Italian movies both starring French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant – Tinto Brass' DEADLY SWEET (1967; which I caught at the 2004 Venice Film Festival with its infamous director in attendance!) and Giulio Questi's DEATH LAID AN EGG (1968) – and she would go on to star in two more worthwhile European movies which, incidentally, both feature Italian actress Lucia Bose' – Romolo Guerrieri's THE DOUBLE (1971) and Jorge Grau's BLOOD CASTLE (1973; with which I'm unfamiliar myself) – before bailing out of the film industry altogether to become a teacher! The impressive supporting cast includes (in order of appearance): John Astin who has the triple roles of Aulin's father, a hellish vision of same and her uncle; a somewhat embarrassing Richard Burton is MacPhisto, a poet-teacher (with wind forever blowing in his face) who is worshipped like a rock star by his students and whom the script requires to lick champagne off the glass-plated floor of his limousine and make love to an inflatable doll!; Ringo Starr's role isn't clearly defined but he seems to be the Christians' Mexican gardener (could he have been the inspiration for FAWLTY TOWERS' Manuel?); Elsa Martinelli is Aulin's promiscuous aunt; Walter Matthau the general commandeering a paratrooping outfit; James Coburn a celebrated surgeon; Anita Pallenberg his jealous nurse/lover; John Huston a colleague/rival of Coburn's; Charles Aznavour a hunchback criminal with a penchant for magic tricks (climbing and moving along walls or literally diving into a mirror just like in a Jean Cocteau film); Marlon Brando as an Indian guru who practices his meditation aboard a truck rambling throughout America; also in the cast as a couple of Starr's whip-wielding sisters were Euro-Cult favorites Florinda Bolkan and Marilu' Tolo.The film is most notorious perhaps for being one of Brando's weirdest acting choices during his lean years; then again, it seems that his presence was pivotal in securing the film its backing (he was friends with director/former actor Marquand who, unsurprisingly, never again stepped behind the camera); still, the best and lengthiest 'episode' is the one featuring Coburn, Pallenberg and Huston (in which Astin and Martinelli also turn up) – while Enrico Maria Salerno was hilarious as an obsessive cine-verite' film-maker who, when asked a question by a police officer, replies: "Who directed it?" and later even films himself as he is passing out! Frankly, one of the minor pleasures I derived from the film was the surprising appearance of the smaller scale actors – Bolkan, Tolo, Pallenberg and Salerno – among such Hollywood and European luminaries.Offering psychedelic visuals and a terrific rock score by Dave Grusin (abetted by songs by such modish rock bands as Steppenwolf and The Byrds – who provide the very likable "Child Of The Universe"), CANDY moves at a fairly brisk pace but, at 124 minutes and with no plot to speak of, it eventually grows tiresome. The visually striking two-minute opening sequence (created by Douglas Trumbull!) alludes to the fact that Candy is less a real character than a concept – an alien embodiment of the carnal desires in man – and the Fellini-esquire ending, grouping all the characters in a circus-like setting, only serves to bring the whole thing full circle. Ultimately, film critic John Simon's memorable dismissal of CANDY is perhaps unjustified but worth mentioning here nevertheless: "As an emetic, liquor is dandy, but CANDY is quicker"! Curiousy enough, CANDY and Otto Preminger's even more misguided SKIDOO (1968; which preceded this viewing) opened within days of one another; I wonder just what current audiences made of either of them... Unfortunately, my experience with the film was further marred by the fact that the audio on the copy I watched went badly out-of-synch around the 90-minute mark (thus including Brando's entire segment)...and no matter what I tried – usually, playing the same scene over again would fix the problem – I couldn't get it to work properly!

I saw this movie in December of 1968 when it was first released in the US. I was in High School, had just turned 16. This movie was rated "X" (noone admitted under the age of 16). I remember it being somewhat disjointed. When I think about it, I can't help comparing it (loosly) to the "Austin Powers" type of film, except much racier! By todays standards quite tame. It seems so campy now, but what a cast!! I'm glad it's on DVD now; I'll watch it again. I started being a movie buff when I was very young. My uncle owned the "63rd Street Drive-In Theatre" in Kansas City, Mo. from the late 50's to 1998. So I'm quite well-versed in cinema history.