“None of us are gonna get out of New York alive. They’ve got big pictures of us up in the lobby!”

I shouldn’t have really expected less of this – like Assassins, it’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect from the ingredients, a behind-the-scenes Broadway farce featuring a host of thesps including Carol Burnett, Michael Caine, Denholm Elliot and Christopher Reeve. For me, it’s 90 minutes of near constant laughter to the point where at times there were actually tears; a beautiful flow of theatrical madness.

At this stage I usually point out when a movie comes from a stage source how much those roots show, and this is no exception. The good news is that however they did sell this on the stage (I’m assuming a rotating set?) it works just as well if not better on film, and I’ve watched two Peter Bogdanovich movies today (I think to date all I’ve seen is What’s Up, Doc? and that I barely remember) and if I’ve learned anything it’s that he’s a perfectionist when it comes to the technical side of things. There are some really deceptively complicated long shots here and overall the thing I find myself comparing it to best is the staged version (not the movie) of Catch-22 I saw a few years ago – the chaos here gets really chaotic towards the end, and the way Bogdanovich maintains cohesion is honestly a wonder in itself. This comes highly recommended, particularly if you’re a theatre fan.

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