Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Wizard-8 Jacqueline Susanne was definitely one of the top trashy novelists of all time, so understandably there would probably be a lot of people who would think a cinematic adaptation of her novel "Once Is Not Enough" would be great trash. Unfortunately, that is not the case. How this movie got an "R" rating is beyond me; there is no on screen sex, very little dirty talk, and only one (brief) scene of nudity. What the movie is instead for the most part is a gabfest, endless talk that doesn't contain that much interest or titillation. Though there is a little interest in a movie that has the cast of actors that it has, the actors take things so seriously that there is no fun in watching their performances. However, if you've ever wanted to see David Janssen do a nude scene...

aj989 Once is Not Enough is a tepid screen version of a terribly trashy Jackie Susann novel. Kirk Douglas stars as an over the hill, broke movie producer, who, to maintain his opulent life style, has married one of the world's richest women, played by Alexis Smith, an overbearing snob, who enjoys nothing more than to orchestrate the lives of all those around her. His daughter (Deborah Raffin) is a beautiful, but prim and naive young woman (i.e. Virgin!) who detests her father's new bride. Her "daddy complex" is a primary theme that runs throughout the film. Rather than dating the hot young available astronaut, she instead chooses the brooding, middle aged and over bearing author - a man incidentally very much like her own father.Besides the often hilarious camp nature of Once is Not Enough, the film has few redeeming features. The cinematography is terrible. Deborah Raffin is entirely uninteresting as the lead. Throughout most of her screen time, Raffin either giggles or stares blankly into the camera. The dialogue is abysmal and the story line has been done before and done much, much better. Despite all the talk of sex, very little actually occurs. I'm still not sure why Kirk Douglas agreed to do this film and for much of the film he seems confused as to why he is on screen as well. While the first 40 or so minutes are centered on his character, he disappears for most of the rest of the film. When he is on screen, he is loud and entirely over bearing, which sadly is a hallmark of his filmography from around this time.Brenda Vacarro in her role as magazine editor and sex addict Linda Riggs, is the film's main highlight. Despite her character being written as a one note joke, Vacarro perseveres. She spits out most of her badly written lines as if they are actually worth something and she gives a full characterization of what is largely a poorly constructed out stereotype.

ofumalow The big-screen "Valley of the Dolls" and under-appreciated "Love Machine" are both camp film classics in their different ways. But this adaptation of Susann's last novel has a reputation as an embarrassment without being quite bad or enjoyable enough to reward that historical semi-misjudgment. English-born director director Guy Green (perhaps best known for 1965 Sidney Poitier vehicle "A Patch of Blue" and the disastrous 1968 adaptation of John Fowles' "The Magus") does a thoroughly respectable job with his very trashy source material--which is to say he mostly sucks the life out of it via soft-focus and an over-delicate approach to performers who might easily have gone into ham overdrive. They include Kirk Douglas as a Hollywood mogul, Alexis Smith as his ex-wife and Melina Mercouri as her lover; plus Gary Conway, George Hamilton and David Janssen as suitors to our heroine, Douglas' daughter Deborah Raffin. The latter was a classic 70s shampoo commercial (Clairol!) blonde beauty a la Cybill Shepherd almost boosted to stardom in films that fell short. She's more emotionally naturalistic than this movie's often ludicrous soap-opera situations deserve. But at the same time, a more histrionic lead performance and more shamelessly melodramatic directorial hand might have made "Once Is Not Enough" an enduring guilty pleasure rather than just a dated bad movie. Watching it again just now did make me wonder about Raffin, however, who's apparently remained active as a TV/film actress with a modest profile (according to IMDb). She was only 21 when she made this movie, but she holds her own alongside some historied stars. The best thing about "Once Is Not Enough," however, is Brenda Vaccaro. Following a long line of wisecracking second leads from Pert Kelton to Eve Arden to Dyan Cannon and beyond, she gets an unexpectedly ideal showcase in a seriocomic support role in a disposable movie. She's terrific. Her enjoyment in the role does a lot to dignify a stupid film--one otherwise marked mostly by the efforts of talented people to ignore how trashy their source material is.

Vince-5 Jacqueline Susann's glamorous, emotional, highly personal novels always lost something in their translation to the screen. Once Is Not Enough is another prime example. But it doesn't have the unintended hilarity of Valley of the Dolls, nor the compelling sleaziness of The Love Machine. The most outrageous and memorable elements of the book are excised completely, and the result is two hours of sudsy romantic nothingness. Without the pills, vitamin shots, wild sex (including an acid-fueled orgy), and disturbing violence that infused the compelling novel, the story is as flat as week-old ginger ale.It's a slick production with an all-star cast, including the engaging Deborah Raffin as January, but the material is awful. The filmmakers' were obviously trying for a "respectable" approach, and the results are just plain boring. Case in point: Jackie provided the book with a surreal, escapist conclusion that's wholly amazing, whereas the movie just...ends. The book was about a naive girl trying to deal with life, and the movie is about--say it with me now!--LOOOOOOOVE! And it's like every other mediocre movie on the subject.However, things are brightened by Brenda Vaccaro in her Golden Globe-winning, Oscar-nominated turn as uninhibited magazine editor Linda Riggs. She's the perfect realization of Susann's character (albeit with toned-down material) and provides a lot more spirit than this tepid production deserves. Her performance alone merits a viewing, but everything else is a daytime-TV-style mess. About as shocking as a trip to the supermarket--perhaps even less so.