Excellent but underrated film

Boring

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Plot-- After years of separation, two mature brothers try to bond even though one habitually dreams in reckless fashion, while the other, who is darkly repressed, is drawn into the latest fanciful scheme. At the same time, two obstreperous women fit in somehow with the dreamer.Maybe you can get interested in this tepid character drama. About half-way, I got tired of David's (Nicholson) somber dead-pan and almost tuned out. His existentially confused character may be the least engaging screen presence I've come across since test pattern. I guess brother Jason's (Dern) witless ebullience is supposed to compensate. Sort of like Mr. Glum and Mr. Guffaw balancing out. But they don't. Maybe there's hidden gold buried in the murky storyline, like dreams versus reality and how they slip slide into each other. But I don't really care to plod along in search. Too bad these two fine actors are stuck in what amounts to caricature. As I recall, the movie got a lot of hoopla upon release, probably because of Nicholson's zooming star. Now, I'm not against intellectualized movies, which this one may be. But a play of profound ideas does not easily combine into a play of engaging events, as I think this overrated disappointment shows. Too bad.

Two brothers get together to re-evaluate their lives and dreams, but it soon become apparent that they have more differences than similarities, and perhaps would have been better off not hooking up at all.This is a movie that makes you work. There are no easy clichés to grab hold of. Nicholson shows that he can act the pants off most others, playing a sundied, self-examining radio host, a million miles from the 'Nicholsom' we're used to.Dern gives an astounding performance as perhaps one of the most obnoxious characters to ever grace the screen - a self-obsessed businessman and would-be millionaire, if he wasn't to busy taking drugs and abusing women.Ellen Bursten is utterly convincing and heartbreaking performance as one of his neglected hangers one, and just as one is thinking the film is burning itself out, steals the show with an memorable explosion of emotion.Julie Anne Robinson, the young of the two women hanging around Dern, is equally impressive. A promising actress with three films to her credit, she sadly died of smoke-inhalation during apartment fir at her home on Eugene, Oregon, 13 April 1975.It's Nicholson one ultimately remembers most from this film, even though he is really an observer thorough whose eyes we witness the self-destructive habits of the others.Really glad I saw this, happening upon it when browsing through a batch of 70's movies that cane into my possession. No car chases, gun fights or sex scenes (well, one brief one), but a rare ensemble performance, a real gem.

Jason Staebler (Bruce Dern) has gone directly to jail, lives on the boardwalk and fronts for the local mob in Atlantic City. He is also a dreamer who asks his brother, David (Jack Nicholson), a radio personality from Philadelphia to help him build a paradise on a Pacific island, asking him to believe in yet another of his dreams, yet another of his get-rich-quick schemes.While this story is good and the direction is fine, it is the cast that really sells the movie. Especially Dern and Nicholson, who had previously worked together. Nicholson and Scatman Crothers subsequently co-starred in Miloš Forman's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975) and Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" (1980).To give a fair review, I would need to see the film again. So, until then, this is just a place holder.

Ever see a movie where you didn't like any of the characters? This movie is one of them. I know that in the early 70's, when it came out, I probably would have thought it "profound." In those days antinomianism, angst, the nihilism of the post-war nuclear threat, were still chic. The plays of Samuel Beckett were still fresh. And Hollywood was at the zenith of its "profound" era. I have re-viewed many movies from that time--movies I thought were so deep--and found them pretentious and wanting. I didn't see King of Marvin Gardens then, but I felt the same as during a recent viewing of The Deer Hunter, the first 2/3 of which were yawningly--guess I'll get a beer-- "profound." I won't see it again. So much of Nicholson's early work is so acidic I can no longer stand it. Five Easy Pieces? What a load of self-indulged artsy-fartsy hooey: the Nicholson character is so talented that he, like Zarathustra, comes down from the mountaintop, becomes a roughneck, takes up with a proletarian woman, and later selfishly says the hell with them both. (Sometime in the mid-80's I wrote him off until About Schmidt, where does a bang-up job.) In King of Marvin Gardens, he sounds like he's on the same bad pot-high, during his radio monologues, as he was in the camping scene in Easy Rider: talking about Venusians or...huh?. As for the rest of the cast: Bruce Dern, would do better in construction than acting; Ellyn Burstyn, really should have concentrated on organic gardening and psychoanalysis. The movie's real star was the backdrop of Atlantic City, then on hard times. All those old hotels and faceless old-folks who, no doubt, still remembered its heyday, were wonderful. They kept me through it to the end.