It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

From my favorite movies..

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

A flat-out perfect classic farce. It's a blend of sophisticated and low comedy, delicious, masterful comedy acting by actors at the top of their form. The classic dialogue walks the fine line between silliness and believability extremely well. Photography, production design, costumes and score are all top-flight. The actors have a field day with these larger-than-life but universal characters – they are expert farceurs. Beatty channels Barrymore and gives one of his best performances and he is VERY handsome! Nicholson is equally good in a rare truly comic role, and Channing is just fantastic - she easily earns her top billing (in her first starring role!), as is Florence Stanley as a latter-day Thelma Ritter.It's like a soufflé - delicious but nearly impossible to pull off. Mike Nichols is a genius comedy director (he's not bad with drama either!). This film is incredibly well paced, setting the right tone and balance throughout - it reminds me of Hawks' His Girl Friday and Bringing Up Baby. It has the same twisted logic and just laugh-out-loud humor. It's just really, really funny. It has a terrific screenplay by Carole Eastman, who also wrote Five Easy Pieces (talk about extremes). If 30s films could have been this sexually frank you could imagine Cagney or Tracy in the Beatty role, Cary Grant as Nicholson and Jean Arthur or Irene Dunne as Channing doing this kind of material.I was shocked to read so many strongly negative reactions to this film here on IMDb, but I didn't get this film on my first go-round either. I think it's never found an audience because it's sophisticated and a bit obtuse; also, standards have fallen so low that many people can only accept comedies they've experienced before and feel safe with.I'm looking forward to many re-viewings and sharing it with friends.

I'm not too big on comedies, but this one was recommended, so I watched it when it was run on network TV years ago.....One of the funniest movies I've ever seen in my life. It's incredible to me that it is so underrated..... Not even a mention at any of the lifetime achievement awards for either Beatty or Nicholson. I hate to oversell a movie because it creates expectations that are almost impossible to live up to, so let me just say , "This is a 'good' comedy ". :-)I just became aware that my comment is not yet ready for submission because it does not contain the minimum 10 lines of text , so let me amend my earlier statement....." This is a very very good comedy ".......This is my first comment submission to this forum.....I was heartened to find others who recognized the gem this movie is and I just wanted to add my voice to the positive comments above......But, believing that less is sometimes more , I wanted to encourage others to seek out this movie , without "overselling ". i hope I have done my job :-).

When I read about "Silkwood" in a movie encyclopedia, the caption said that Mike Nichols's career had come to a halt eight years earlier with "The Fortune". Watching the latter, I laughed but also felt like the movie was a little bit low for the director of "The Graduate" and "Catch-22". Portraying uptight Warren Beatty and over-conspicuous Jack Nicholson transporting Stockard Channing to California for what were deemed immoral purposes by the Mann Act in the 1920s, it seems like much of the flick consists of Beatty getting angry at Nicholson for not taking their predicament too seriously. But the last twenty minutes were a hoot, I will say that.So, this may be Mike Nichols's only movie that you sit around in your underwear and watch. I gotta pity the characters for having a landlady like the one portrayed in the movie. Also starring Scatman Crothers (that's right, the cook from "The Shining") and a very young Christopher Guest.

Stockhard Channing must be one of the most underrated comediennes about. This is an hilarious film. gridoon, who found it disappointing, seems to base his critique on the quality of the cast; Nicholson; Beatty & Channing. His expectations were probably pitched too high - and, sure, Five Easy Pieces is amazing, and Bonnie & Clyde is a classic. But The Fortune can stand on its own. It is very funny. The pace is hectic and the storyline has resonances of "It Happened One Night". The difference being that in the "The Fortune", the heroine is kidnapped - a botched attempt by two incompetents (Nicholson & Beatty). The so-called Swedish Syndrome seems to have rooted here, in that the captive falls for her captors & doesn't want to be saved. This film is well worth putting into DVD format - all Regions, please.