Don't listen to the negative reviews

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Legendary Hollywood producer Robert Evans narrates the story of his own life. His movie career started in 1956 at the poolside of the Beverly Hills Hotel. He gets a few movie roles. In 'The Sun Also Rises' (1957), Ernest Hemingway telegrams Darryl F. Zanuck to get rid of Evans with most of the cast's support. Zanuck proclaims "The Kid Stays in the Picture. And anybody who doesn't like it can quit." After an unimpressive acting career, he joins Charlie Bluhdorn whose company Gulf+Western Corporation purchased the failing studio Paramount Pictures. After a string of films such as Rosemary's Baby, Love Story and The Godfather, it had become the biggest studio. He then goes on to produce Chinatown after which his marriage to Ali MacGraw ends. It's also the start of the darker times. He starts doing cocaine. Some film failures such as 'The Cotton Club', and being connected in the murder of Roy Radin would send him out of the studio that he rebuild.The stories are better than fiction. The name dropping and the movie connections are epic. It starts with Mia Farrow and Frank Sinatra. Through it all, there is the gruff voice of Robert Evans. It's hypnotic. As he falls down the rabbit hole, it becomes even personal. The addition of his movies to portray his life gives such a surreal touch. It is movie magic. One also has the sense that this is an old man telling his tales. Like all such instances, one must take these stories with a grain of salt. It is nevertheless epic.

Filmmakers Brett Morgen and Nanette Burstein use the colorful, if expressive form of the documentary format to examine the wild life and tumultuous career of legendary producer and "self-proclaimed" bad boy.....Robert Evans.From clothing tycoon to Hollywood mogul, Evans became the first actor to ever run a major studio. Under his regime, Paramount Pictures went from poverty row to fulfilling riches thanks to the successes of ROSEMARY'S BABY, THE ODD COUPLE, LOVE STORY and THE GODFATHER. In 1974, Evans' first effort as an independent producer was Roman Polanski's masterpiece CHINATOWN which garnered his only Oscar nomination for Best Picture.Morgen and Burstein brilliantly capture not only Evans' roller-coaster career in the business, but they also explore the last true Golden Age of Hollywood movie-making in the 1970's. Eschewing the traditional documentary medium of using monotone narrators and talking heads, the filmmakers rely on Evans' ruthless, but engaging presence to take viewers on his personal journey. Of course, the 1980's were not that kind to Evans on a traumatic level; his devastating cocaine arrest, the box office disappointments of POPEYE and THE COTTON CLUB, and his unwitting implication in the murder of promoter Roy Radin.But somehow, Evans miraculously came back at the forefront of credibility. Although he's no longer at the top, the legendary producer has lived to tell the tale that would make a great double feature with Xan Cassavetes' Z CHANNEL: A MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION. It is a must-see documentary for film lovers and professionals everywhere.

Robert Evans's book version of this documentary, The Kid Stays in the Picture, is still un-read by me. But I have read much about him from other movie books from the 70's, and so this film does illuminate certain aspects of him that I already knew- his huge ego, his drug addiction, his proclivity to lots and lots of women, and having some part in the more outstanding films of the 1970's. Sometimes with Evans himself narrating throughout two things become apparent as peculiarities that keep it from being great- 1) the filmmaker's style is rather repetitive and, aside from some flourishes of talent, isn't anything too grand for the material, and 2) the three sides to the story that Evans is quoted with at the beginning become rather blurred as one full-on nostalgia (for bad and good) comes out. What makes it captivating, however, is that Evans is the kind of guy who will be honest about being full of crap and will even call on himself for his past troubles. Rarely has one man's achievements gone neck and neck with his flaws, and let out in a filmic, grandiose style such as this.Evans is shown to have, basically, a lot of luck as someone getting into Hollywood (as many of these stories go). He starts out as a so-so actor and tries desperately to establish himself as a producer. He becomes more apart of the development side of the pictures, and ushers through Rosemary's Baby, Love Story, and even the Godfather to an extent. As his story includes the personal side (his rise and fall in the relationship to Ali McGraw, the cocaine, the other tabloid stuff), the other side of his professional accomplishments still gears in for room. By the end, one can see that the man has gone through enough to have his rightful reputation as Paramount's longest remaining producer, and will likely hold onto his ego of being the head-cheese kind of 'creative producer' so many directors like or dread till the grave. If anything, the film is actually too short, as at 93 minutes (a brilliant Dustin Hoffman imitation over the credits included) we only get glimpses that are further expounded in the book. Therefore its already subjective viewpoint becomes even more crunched into one all-too-simple story on such an interesting case study.The Kid Stays in the Picture, despite not being as terrific as the filmmakers might think it is by their sleek camera angles and typical interludes of montage, is as close to being as honest as it could be. Honest, in the sense that Evans doesn't hide much in his story and how his own way of speaking about it, in its deep-sounding and straight-forward Hollywood way, is what film buffs look for. He may have been and done a lot of things, but as he says at the end, "I enjoy what I do, which most people can't say that they do."

"The Kid Stays In The Picture" plays a lot like an E! True Hollywood Story, chronicling the rapid rise,fall, and rise of producer Robert Evans, but with a few crucial differences: First off, it's much prettier, with images flying around the screen, bringing the past completely to life. Second, it's narrated by Evans himself, in his own cool, croaky voice, so it doesn't go straight for the pity factor, with people he knew providing their own dark revelations about his lifestyle. He really gets into the telling of his own life, and just amazes you with all that he's been through. Here's a guy whose whole life has been about making movies, and he's here to tell you about how he fired Francis Ford Coppola four times while making the Godfather, and how his life left him for Steve McQueen. He's seen the entire scope of life: love, despair, joy, frustration, relief. It's just so enthralling hearing him narrate his story and see scenes from his movies paralleling them in eerie symmetry. It never actually takes itself to seriously, and you get the feeling that this guy doesn't regret his life at all. The stories he tells are pure Hollywood: He talks about the time he had to sell a movie at Cannes with a poster and nothing else, and then goes on to speak of when Jack Nincholson got him back his house. He doesn't take the easy way out and make anyone the villain, he just creates a cast of characters that come and go in the story. It's a memoir, really. And it might be the best story he's had a part in.