At Long Last Love (1975)

Directed by

Peter Bogdanovich

Genre

comedy film, musical film, jukebox musical, romantic comedy film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 58m

Rated

G

Rating

5.1 of 10 from 31 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Two couples switch partners at a party and try to make each other jealous. The film features live performances of Cole Porter songs.

old-fashionedlightheartedromanticbreezyplayfuldated

What happens

At Long Last Love is a 1975 American jukebox musical comedy film written, produced, and directed by Peter Bogdanovich, and featuring 18 songs with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. It stars Burt Reynolds, Cybill Shepherd, Madeline Kahn, and Duilio Del Prete as two couples who each switch partners during a party and attempt to make each other jealous. Bogdanovich was inspired to make a musical with Porter's songs after Shepherd gave him a book of them. All of the musical sequences were performed live by the cast, for At Long Last Love was meant by Bogdanovich to be a tribute to 1930s musical films like One Hour with You, The Love Parade, The Merry Widow and The Smiling Lieutenant in which the songs were shot in that way. 20th Century Fox rushed the film's release, only allowing for two test screenings before the final version premiered at Radio City Music Hall. Despite a few positive published opinions from critics like Roger Ebert, At Long Last Love faced mostly horrendous initial reviews that mainly targeted the lead actors' performances of the musical numbers. It was originally considered one of the worst films of all time, and received very low box office returns, only making less than half of its $5.14 million budget. The critical reception was so negative that Bogdanovich printed newspaper ads apologizing for the film. Apart from a 1981 videocassette release, At Long Last Love did not have an official home media release for many years; until the early 2010s the only available versions of the film were through bootleg TV and VHS recordings, and 16mm prints. Bogdanovich's 121-minute 1979 default version of the film was issued to Netflix in 2012, and the "Definitive Director's Version", which is 90 seconds longer, was released on Blu-ray in 2013. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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