The Fortune
There's a saying among film critics that only someone of considerable talent could make a really bad movie. Director Mike Nichols contributed to the decade's wave of '20s nostalgia with 1975's THE FORTUNE. Bogdanovich did it several times, and failed almost as often. Even James Ivory had a whack at it. Maybe these guys tried too hard. Labored were these movies. Overbudgeted. Nichols' stab is especially odious. An astonishingly inept and unfunny film that is as about as heavy handed a farce as I've seen. I'm still in disbelief that the Coen Brothers cite this as one of their favorites. It would lead to their own screwball dud, INTOLERABLE CRUELTY. Penned by Adrien Joyce, Carole Eastman's pseudonym, THE FORTUNE tells the tale of two swindlers named Nicky (Warren Beatty) and Oscar (Jack Nicholson) who try to cash in on the fortune of sanitary napkin heiress Frederika Bigard (Stockard Channing). By essentially kidnappin...
