Sorry, this movie sucks

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I will start off this review by saying I like Al Pacino. Any movie with him in it's cast, is given a chance by me. Before he started to just shout his dialogue he was one of my favourite actors.Author! Author! Finds him doing a rare comedic turn Pacino plays a Broadway playwright with a cheating wife, and five loving children (only one of whom is his own.) who are devoted to him. Ivan who loses, loves, struggles, suffers and still never loses his sense of humour.Is this a role for Al Pacino, an actor not known for tickling audiences funny bones? It may have been better suited to a Robin Williams (who was doing Mork & Mindy on TV in those days) or a Burt Reynolds (who was at the top of his game in 1982) but he is by no means wrong for it. I appreciate it when actors try something new. Like when Reynolds made 'Starting Over' or Williams made 'Good Will Hunting'. And Pacino tries something new here, he is as watchable as always, but these are not two of his better hours. Of the rest of the cast Dyan Cannion is gorgeous and still an attractive lady, if only the rest of the cast were as appealing as the two leads. The kids were on the awful end of child actors scale, and everyone else just blends in to the background. As far as I know, this was the first and last time Pacino tried a full out comedy. Scarface was his next role.

I've just finished watching this delightful movie for - I don't know - the umpteenth time...... - probably somewhere in the 20's...The kids are all adorable and just the best little actors....Coupled with the opportunity to see Al Pacino smile.... who can resist that ???Good clean fun.... well known actors.... This movie is bound to bring a smile to your face...I highly recommend this fun, fun movie....Great for all ages....Could surely become one of your favorites also.

Really enjoyed this. It's interesting to see Al doing something a bit 'softer'. As a whole I think the film reflects some concerns with the culture of individualism and addresses them well. The irony is that, as a playwright by profession, the author is by habit the most 'individual' and selfish with his time of all the characters in the film. He spends all his time creating and we are told that he has spent two years working on his play, the production of which marks the beginning of the film. However, during the film, the playwright' s priorities are superseded by the children of his unfaithful and thoroughly horrible wife, who has a blatant, albeit unconscious, disregard for the wellbeing of her offspring. She makes a great speech about how she is 'herself' and 'nothing more' and, in doing so, makes a mockery of the so-called righteousness of individualism. Oh, and there's some good acting by young kids, no mean feat for any director. And it's got good New York Jewish gags that reminded me of 'My Favorite Year'. Bravo! Author, author!

Even "Cruising" suited you better than this, and I naively thought that was you hitting rock-bottom. I suppose had I glanced at the respective CV's of both the writer and director before viewing, that should have been enough to give me a slight clue (Pacino teams with writer of "See no Evil, Hear no Evil"- Yeah, I can see why that somehow won't be on any re-release posters!); but nothing could have reasonably prepared me for the mind-numbing awfulness that is this film.The synopsis I read promised something of a 'comedic' turn from the esteemed leading man; Sure, if 'comedic turn' is a handy insider euphemism for 'rancid heap of vomit-inducing mush'... ... It's criminal to see such a talented performer marooned in a vehicle so abject as this; a picture that even an individual noted for their generosity in spirit would shrink away from and crawl fearfully back to watching 'sitcom-lite'. It's so bland that this colourlessness becomes an insulting element in itself. What meagre humour there is is so desperate to generate any kind of reaction that it resorts to mining attempted chuckles from child-abuse, of all topics. Not just edging toward, but apparently happily camped in 'distasteful' territory, I'm sure most of you will agree... This kind of trash deserves the misfortune of a Z-grade celeb saddled with 'headlining' it - not the finest actor of his generation. If you've ever had a burning, deeply shameful and dirty desire to see Al Pacino in a "Home Alone" flick; don dark glasses to rent this, watch it ONCE only and then commit yourself to good deeds for the rest of your natural days. Or failing that, just 'commit' yourself! Dreck like this is mercifully likely the closest our society will come to the realisation of such a hideous nightmare; until Satan decides to sublet Hell as a skating rink, that is!I'm convinced this title is a hidden subliminal insert from a worried distributor, drawn from the wailing of a traumatised audience member dragged raving from a test-screening. His mostly incoherent babble was meant as the beginning of a tirade against the scripter for being so callously inhumane as to subject him to this utter pap.I refuse to believe that "Revolution"; the film that kept Al Pacino away from our cinema screens for four years (85-89), can possibly be any worse than this; but shudderingly I think that I might once have possessed the brashness to say the same about "Cruising" when THAT review was in genesis, too... Imagine waking in the morning to the horrified surprise of finding a neighbour had laid a bowel movement on your doorstep. Maybe this will help you to partially assimilate my reaction as I sat and watched "Author! Author!" unfold before my disbelieving and silently weeping eyes. Thus I know not to so casually prejudge "Revolution" before I see; because until this morning I thought I'd see nothing more heinous from Pacino than "Cruising"... It was a brighter world at that time, untainted by such pure evil in celluloid form - but alas, now my relative innocence has been snatched away from me, and I have experienced the toxicity of some things that writers and directors are capable of dredging up from the fetid cesspools that must surely constitute their minds...Run now, while you can. Save yourselves from such a pile of insipid garbage. A klaxon-call if ever there was one, and you can quote me on it, if you wish...1/10.