Movie, Movie (1978)

'Movie Movie' is a little like 'Grindhouse' from 2007 where an effort was made to reconstruct film types of an earlier time, it's also a bit like 'American Horror Story' in telling several separate stories largely with the same 'stock company' cast playing different parts, it's also not very much like either of those things. Produced by Lew Grade, who was principally a television producer known for things like 'The Muppet Show' and the Patrick McGoohan series 'The Prisoner', 'Movie Movie' is a mini double feature tribute to the films of the early 1930's. There is an introduction by George Burns, and in the middle a fake trailer for a WWI fighter pilot film called 'Zero Hour'. On either side of 'Zero Hour' there is a "movie" the first 'Dynamite Hands' is a boxing morality play, the second 'Baxter's Beauties of 1933' a behind the set musical comedy. Both films star George C. Scott and Trish Van Devere, a real life married couple who really liked to work together at this point in their carriers. The surprisingly solid cast is supplemented with Eli Wallach, Red Buttons, Art Carney, and Barry Bostwick. As stories the two tales are pretty true to the types of films they are trying to reconstruction, in basic plot outline both would be completely believable as movies from 1933. However both films are just chock of full of bad jokes, such as a letter containing the phrase "by the time you read this I will have written it" or a character uttering the sentiment "Sometimes cruelty an be unkind." So this a cheesy film, but so were the films it is trying to, rather affectionately, send up so it works better then maybe it should. An odd curio of a film, almost entirely forgotten of, but if you're at all curious its probably worth seeing. **1/2