Word: plot
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...English husband-type (John Archibald), a loudly attired private detective (Peter Kazaras), and, eventually, the frighteningly energetic wife (Melissa Mueller) who is the subject of their investigation. And I'm afraid that's about all I can tell if I'm not to give away the one twist of plot. I would suspect that, since most of the play's humor is sadly dated in a late fifties-early sixties sort of way (there are jokes about psychoanalysts, coffee bars and Kismet), the play's real interest lies in the fledgling hints it gives of Shaffer's present London...
...play follows the path already too well-worn by Rod Serling and friends. The only original moment comes at the very end when an additional plot twist gives us our illusion-reality theme in a slightly different perspective. But by then it's too late. The entire production is bogged down and almost destroyed by being presented as a reading, either because of lack of rehearsal time or because the magical effects were simply too difficult. The actors had trouble acting and reading at the same time, and Maideg Bouchery was simply too Transylvanian to be believed...
That is more than can be said for Hopper. Ignoring the plot, the director presents a gallery of his favorite art works: Waterfall with a Distant View of Dennis; Effect of Dennis Through Peruvian Haze; Ruins of Dennis by Twilight; and his favorite: Dennis as the Universal Infant. This portrait can be seen throughout The Last Movie, even when other actors come on-notably Stella Garcia as Hopper's Peruvian mistress and Rod Cameron as Rod Cameron. Hopper never appears sober or coherent. This may account for the film's Godardian device-from time to time the legend...
...hands of a lesser romancer, the damaged elevator that dangled so defectively in Hotel might have fallen in the first chapter, or not at all. Hailey brought it out of its holding pattern at exactly the right moment, a dozen pages before the end, and all of the plot elements fell into place: splat. Thus the reader is only mildly alarmed when, after several chapters of Wheels, Hailey's new novel about the auto industry, the president of General Motors has not reappeared. He was there on the first page, sleepy and cross because a defective electric blanket...
...Wobbling Plot. What plot there is in Wheels wobbles around the question of whether the "clean-cut and alert" Trenton can accept the ethics of the auto industry and whether he will open his blue eyes in time to see that he has been neglecting his wife, passionate and unfulfilled Erica. It is usually said of Hailey that he does considerable research and gives his readers a lot of interesting information about, for instance, airports or hotels. This time he has not come up with much. Auto workers shoot H on company time, the reader learns. Never...