Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Bumpy Chip It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Blake Peterson Starting Over wants so badly to be the male counterpart to 1978's rousing An Unmarried Woman, and it almost succeeds. All the adults on display are complicated, nearing 40, desperate for love, and as unsure about the future as they were when they were teenagers. This time, however, Jill Clayburgh is not the newly divorced leading character; she's the love interest and Burt Reynolds is the divorcée. Starting Over has the majority of the ingredients to make An Unmarried Woman 2: An Unmarried Man, but it's missing two important aspects: Paul Mazursky, and a character as fundamentally compelling as Erica Benton.Phil Potter (Reynolds) has been a good husband for years. He's never ceased to be faithful, he's always contributed to the relationship, and he's brought home the bacon day in and day out. But one day, his wife, Jessica (Candice Bergen), announces that she desires a divorce — it's time she cut the restraints of marriage and pursue a career as a professional singer. But in truth, she has begun an affair with Phil's boss and craves new romance.Jessica is human garbage, but Phil is lost without her. He hasn't gone on a date for years, and he isn't ready to tackle life as a single man. But after just a few crappy dates, he finds himself falling for Marilyn (Clayburgh), a teacher that his brother set him up with. Marilyn is self-deprecating and attractive in a non-threatening sort of way — the second we see her, we can only hope that Phil will marry her in a quaint romantic comedy fashion. Yet he finds himself still drawn to Jessica, something that doesn't sit well with Marilyn, who has burgeoning commitment issues.Starting Over is pleasant, but it doesn't have the affecting aura that An Unmarried Woman had. I'm one that despises the idea of basing another film's accomplishments off of another, but Starting Over has so many similar aspects that it's nearly impossible not to.The film begins with a divorce, and that's one of the biggest mistakes it makes. In An Unmarried Woman there was a period in which Erica Benton was happily married, a sympathetic witness to her friends marital issues — when her husband announced his infidelities, it came as an unrelenting shock to us and the leading heroine. But because there is no time to process or understand the marriage between Phil and Jessica, all we know is that she must be a bitch and he must be a saint. In later scenes, she serenades him in an over-the-top fashion to parallel her flighty singing career, telling us that she's crazy and he's stable.Starting Over struggles so much because we don't get to know the characters well enough to really care about them. Phil is such a thinly sketched character that it's hard to even understand why women are really charmed by him; he's mild-mannered and devoid of personality. He's a nice guy, but is that really enough? Bergen takes on the Michael Murphy role and isn't given nearly enough to work with. Murphy's crocodile tear shedding husband to Clayburgh's Erica was a product of marital boredom; we couldn't hate him, but we also couldn't understand why he'd abandon someone has wonderful as his wife. Bergen's Jessica is such a caricature that all we want to do is boo and hiss at her; but we can never see things from her point of view.The lone bright spot in Starting Over is Clayburgh, who is alive with spunk, disarmingly funny. But when the love interest is more fascinating than the main character, you know you have a problem. It's even worse, though, when that love interest plays Erica Benton in An Unmarried Woman. And after watching Starting Over, I found myself simply wanting to watch An Unmarried Woman again. Sue me.Read more reviews at petersonreviews.com

zardoz-13 "All the President's Men" director Alan J. Pakula stepped out of his comfort zone so to speak to helm this lightweight 'divorce' romance comedy with Burt Reynolds, Jill Clayburgh, Candice Bergen, Charles Durning, and Frances Sternhagen. Previously, the closest that Pakula came to "Starting Over" was "The Sterile Cukoo" (1969) and "Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing" (1973). Usually, Pakula specialized in dark-themed conspiracy thrillers, such "Klute" and "The Parallax View," or melodramas like "Comes A Horseman," "Rollover," and "Presumed Innocent." Not only was Pakula venturing out of his usual zone, but also Burt Reynolds definitely stepped out of his comfort zone, too. Reynolds made "Starting Over" between his "Smokey and the Bandit" movies and "Hooper." Although both Clayburgh and Bergin received Oscar nominations respective for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, Reynolds didn't get a Best Actor nod for what is essentially one of his more winning as well as offbeat performances. He did receive a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture Actor in Musical/Comedy for his performance in "Starting Over." Indeed, Reynolds is more subdued than you can ever imagine this action hero being. He slows down his cadence and displays a vulnerability that was never apart of his action hero roles. Reynolds' wardrobe reflects this change-of-pace casting. He dons sweater vests to wear with his sports jackets and trench coat. Reynolds plays Phil Potter. His wife Jessica (Candice Bergen of "Bite the Bullet") has slept with his boss and she gives Burt the boot. Phil is heart-broken that his wife is kicking him out. He didn't want to part company with her, but she has a popular tune hit and is able to go out on her own. You know that you're watching a comedy because Bergen's character has no vocal talent and sounds distressingly off-key. Here is a sample of the lyrics of her song: "I'm sure I've cried more tears than you-ooh-ooh, but I've gotta be more than a shadow of my mannnnnnnn-nuh." A dejected Phil starts over with the help of his older brother Michael (Mickey) Potter (Charles Durning of "The Choirboys") and his wife Marva (Frances Sternhagen of "Outland") and they set him up with a variety of women. When he isn't dating, Phil participates in a divorced men's workshop in the basement of a church. These scenes are amusing in themselves because the women constantly antagonize the men into leaving early. Meantime, the winner of all the women that Phil sees is a school teacher, Marilyn (Jill Clayburgh of "An Unmarried Woman"), but they endure a rocky romance, principally because Phil hasn't gotten over his ex-wife. Incredibly enough, just as Phil is adjusting to his new life and getting along with Marilyn, Jessica shows up to collapse that house of cards between Marilyn and Phil. When Phil tries to reunite with Jessica, Marilyn asks him to swear on his brother's life that he won't bother her again. Of course, this is not to be and Phil and Jessica cannot rekindle the glow that once warmed their romance. "Starting Over" is just a change of pace for both Pakula and Reynolds that you could almost ignore it, were it not for scenarist James L. Brooks' adaptation of Dan Wakefield's novel. Interestingly, Reynolds had appeared earlier in another lightweight football comedy that was derived from Wakefield's novel "Semi-Tough." It is refreshing to see Reynolds play a role that doesn't require him to pack a pistol or perform dangerous automobile stunts. Actually, he does run a small car off a road onto a snowy embankment where he crashes into a tree, but it isn't a life-or-death stunt. The funniest scene occurs when Phil and Marilyn are shopping at Bloomingdale's for a sofa and Phil experiences a panic attack. Eventually, Micky comes to his rescue and convinces Phil that he was just hyperventilating. Mickey asks the spectators if any of them have a Valium and everybody tries to fork over the medication. If you want to see Burt Reynolds stretch himself as an actor and watching an entertaining comedy, "Starting Over" is a good start.

Ed Uyeshima Just coming off producing and writing the classic sitcoms, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Taxi", James L. Brooks wrote the screenplay, his first, for this 1979 divorce comedy. Even after all these years and finally out on DVD, it remains funny, perceptive and thoroughly engaging in a way that later crystallized into Brooks' film-making trademark in "Terms of Endearment" and "As Good As It Gets". Fortunately, the director is the accomplished Alan J. Pakula, who shows a flair for romantic comedy coaxing excellent performances from the three stars.The plot centers on Phil Potter, a magazine writer-turned-writing teacher who has been informed by his beautiful but flaky wife Jessica that she wants a divorce. Without much recourse, he seeks solace from his bear-hugging psychiatrist brother Mickey and sister-in-law Marva, who eventually set him up on a blind date with Marilyn, a mild-mannered, rather dowdy nursery schoolteacher. The movie then becomes a clever seesaw of Phil vacillating between his wife and potential new love interest. What remains fresh about the movie is how Pakula and Brooks keep the focus on the flawed characters and less on the predictable clichés about the awkward consequences of divorce.Even taking into account his comeback turn in Paul Thomas Anderson's 1997 "Boogie Nights", I doubt if Burt Reynolds has given a more subtle, genuinely humane performance than he does here. Cast completely against type (he was in his Smokey/Hooper/Sharkey action phase at the time), he makes Phil's uncertainty feel real - even at the risk of losing audience sympathy in the way he treats Marilyn no matter how inadvertently. In the afterglow of her brilliant work in Paul Mazursky's "An Unmarried Woman", Jill Clayburgh again demonstrates the malleable quality and fierce intelligence to make her deglamorized Marilyn an attractive and credibly cautious woman. In a revelation before her long, successful run as "Murphy Brown", a deadpan Candice Bergen breaks free from her heretofore vacuously decorative roles and supplies the movie's biggest laughs as the narcissistic Jessica, especially when she sings with uproariously tone-deaf panache to seduce Phil in her hotel room.There is also a terrific supporting cast - Charles Durning bringing out all the unctuous support that Mickey can muster; a scene-stealing Frances Sternhagen as Marva, more than anxious to provide Phil emotional support when he is down and out; Austin Pendleton as a needy member of Phil's divorced men's club, who keeps remarrying his ex-wife; and Mary Kay Place in a funny cameo as Phil's aggressive first post-marital date. Other than Marilyn's unflattering outfits (the orange down jacket is hideous), Marvin Hamlisch's seventies-lite pop music is really the only significant element that dates the movie severely. The divorced men's club meeting scenes are hilarious, and you can see Jay O. Sanders and Wallace Shawn as fellow members. Unlike other romantic comedies of the period full of I'm-OK-You're-OK pop psychology, this one is still well worth viewing.

BaltimoreBob She was again nominated for the Academy Award in 1979 for her role in 'Starting Over' (1979). This movie starred Burt Reynolds as Phil Potter and Jill Clayburgh as Marilyn Holmberg.Baltimore Bob's 1 of 10 favorite movie lines in 'Starting Over': "There was a funny line spoken when Marilyn is being followed by Phil in this movie in New York City and they are strangers not knowing that they are headed to the same place to meet for the first time. Marilyn senses that a stranger is following her and all of a sudden she turns to Phil and says 'Take one more step my way and I'll cut your balls off' so Phil backs off eventually getting to the place where he is going where she is discussing the fact that there was some pervert following her only to be totally embarrassed about the fact the guy was Phil."Baltimore Bob