Star 80 (1983) Reviews

• The Explosion of Eric Roberts

  filmquestint2005-02-06

  Whitin this shockingly beautiful docudrama there is a performance by Eric Roberts that goes beyond anything we had ever seen an actor do on screen. He explodes in front of our eyes. Fearless, horrible, pathetic, sad but above all truthful. With the kind of truth we're not use to deal with. I was horrified because I understood it, like James Mason in Lolita. I'm not sympathising with him but I'm understanding him. The counterpart to Roberts's human monster is not Mariel Hemigway's beautiful Dorothy Stratten but Carroll Baker as Dorothy's mother. We can tell by looking into her face that she knows. She knows,she senses, she fears to be right because there is so little she can do. Carroll Baker's superb portrayal represents us. We dread what she dreads and like her, we're impotent to the unavoidable. Star 80 is a masterpiece. Like all of Bob Fosse's work, nothing is casual. The puzzle that he presents us with, connects the dots in a twisted, although immediately recognisable, pattern, leading inexorably to the most excruciating domestic tragedy. From Othelo to O J Simpson. Our every day horror served cold as a shattering work of art.

• Eric Roberts best performance.

  yenlo1999-12-03

  Eric Roberts was clearly the `STAR' of Star 80. His performance as the self proclaimed Gods gift to Women character Paul Snider is really what makes this film. He makes the viewer take an instant dislike to him from his opening scene and carries it all the way through. Mariel Heminways portrayal of the ill fated Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten is maybe lukewarm marginal. Cliff Robertson is cast as Hugh Hefner but somehow doesn't seem right for the role. Sadly this was in fact a true tragic story. See it for no other reason than Eric Roberts superb portrayal of the seven letter word usually considered vulgar meaning a stupid, incompetent or detestable person boyfriend/husband/manager of Dorothy Stratten. Vastly superior to the alternate version 1981's Death of A Centerfold.

• Eric Roberts is absolutely incredible

  PILBOW2005-02-17

  This is one of the best movies of all time. It was made by Bob Fosse and is in the same pseudo documentary style as LENNY, also by Fosse. STAR 80 is about Dorothy Stratten, a playboy playmate who is killed by her husband. But the movie centers more on the boyfriend turned husband, played by Eric Roberts. What's amazing about this movie is that you actually feel for Robert's character, Paul Snider. He is such an incredible actor that you really see a human side to Snider. He's a liar, and a cheater, and conman, but human nonetheless. You follow Snider before he meets Stratten, during her rise, and for a few short minutes, after her death. This movie is really about him, and is an incredible study on a deranged and jealous human being, who felt that who he had 'discovered' was being taken away from him. If you are familiar with the true story about Stratten, and if you haven't seen anything about it, the director character who Dorothy falls in love with towards the end - eventually setting off Snider - is really Peter Bogdonavitch. The movie he is making with Dorothy is "They All Laughed", a favorite film of Quentin Tarantino. Cliff Robertson, as Hugh Hefner, is terrific. Hefner's real life brother plays a photographer and, although his screen time is minimal, he gives a very good performance and has a funny line. I also liked the actor who played Snider and Stratton's friend, a plastic surgeon who they shared a mansion with. His character adds insight to the real Paul Snider just by being his friend who Snider can confide in. All in all, this is a great movie. What really works is how Fosse mixes the documentary style with narrative. It never gets boring and is always very entertaining as you go in and out, and back and forth, from past to present, and it never gets confusing. You follow Stratten's rise to stardom, but are really centering on how this quick rise burst Paul Snider's plastic bubble. Snider was a beast of a human being, but, it takes an incredible actor like Eric Roberts to show his human side... faltering as it is. You will, watching this, wonder both what happened to Eric Roberts (and why he really only appears in cable movies lately) and why he wasn't nominated for an Oscar. Or Bob Fosse for that matter. This is one of his best all-time films, as it's one of the best movies of all time, period. You just have to watch it, experience it, and, most importantly, for young beautiful girls who might get hustled by con men promising you the 'good life' ("You'll be a star"), you can LEARN from this movie as well, just as you'll wish that Stratten herself had had this movie to show her the way out of her horrible fate.

• Worth watching for Eric Roberts

  Ajtlawyer2002-06-21

  This was probably Eric Roberts' best movie. He steals the show as the sleazy, small-time hustler Paul Snider. Snider aches to be the big-shot, the real "Star 80" but is a failure at everything he tries---except when he gets Dorothy Stratten recognized by Playboy. Then, just as things might break through for them, Dorothy dumps him for a film director (in real life, Peter Bogdanovich). Of course we know the rest---sleazeball Snider kills Dorothy and himself. Bogdanovich wrote a scathing book about the case, "Death of the Unicorn" in which he lam basts Hugh Hefner (no more invitations to the mansion for him). What is really weird is that Bogdanovich later married Dorothy Stratten's younger sister, who was in junior high when Dorothy was killed.

• one of the few great films from the 80's

  buby19872005-07-17

  Star 80 is about many things, but above all it is about the dark side of the American Dream. It is a counterpart to Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, because it depicts the disillusionment and self-destruction of a self-made man. Snider believes in the American Dream, that if you outwork and out-hustle everyone else, and have a marketable product to hawk, you will be successful. It so happens that Snider's product is sex. Snider rises up through sheer determination (visually depicted in the opening work out scene, in which he pumps iron and does push-ups until he's on the verge of having a stroke). It also helps that Snider has no moral principles that hold him back. Paul achieves the pinnacle of his desires when he gets to visit the Playboy Mansion. He not only gets the opportunity to socialize with Playboy Bunnies, but he gets to meet his spiritual father -- Hugh Hefner. Hefner is another self-made man who has turned sex into a big business, but unlike Snider, he is socially respectable. But Paul blows it when he gets too familiar with Hefner. Hefner takes an instant dislike to Paul. As Dorothy rises up the food chain in Hollywood, getting roles in TV and in film, Paul finds himself banished from the charmed circle of Hefner's Mansion and he thereby self-destructs. All of his projects -- opening a male dance club, trying to get a waitress bimbo into the Mansion to meet Hef -- are failures. His wife drifts away from him, having an affair with her director. Paul is out of his element in L.A., and soon crashes and burns. Fosse provides imagery and conceits of "falllng" and "crashing" -- such as the scene when the loan sharks dangle Paul out of 14-story hotel window, and Fosse's camera swish-pans sideways and downwards to give us an uneasy sense of vertigo and impending doom. This motif continues in the carnival scene, as Fosse inserts quick shots of amusement park rides whipping downward and sideways. There is even a doll perched precariously on a book shelf in Aram's office -- probably a symbol of Dorothy. There is also a telling line of dialog, when Dorothy's mother asks Paul what he will do if she doesn't sign the consent form, and Paul says, "I'll jump out a window." In the final rape/murder/suicide scene, there is an emphasis on falling -- and the final shot looks down from high above, at two dead, bloody bodies that seem to have dropped into Hell. Fosse's use of pop music is superb, and revelatory. "Big Shot" by Billy Joel is about egomania fueled by coke, and not only does Paul want to be a big shot in Hollywood, he takes the ultimate "big shot" when he blows his brains out with a Mossberg shotgun. The Band's "Up On Cripple Creek" tells about a man who lives off his girlfriend. There is a lyric about betting on a nag, which is visually underlined in another scene when Paul changes horses on a merry-go-round (further expressed when Paul "changes horses" by trying to turn a bimbo waitress into another Dorothy). Billy Joel's "Just The Way You Are" provides ironic commentary. Paul is not only dissatisfied with himself, but he constantly strives to change Dorothy from a naive teen into a mature, sophisticated woman -- and he succeeds too well, as Dorothy grows up and realizes she must get away from him. Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" is appropriate, as it provides auditory reinforcement of Paul's eager desire to please and make a good impression. There is a lot of thought put into the film. Geb is not merely a doctor, he is a plastic surgeon, and has moved to West L.A. to flourish in his trade. His profession is all too apt in a world in which surface appearance is everything. He also gives the key speech in the film, in which he reminds Paul that in L.A., "There's always going to be someone with more money than you, someone with a longer penis than you." That last observation really gets to Paul. He feels grossly inadequate and must overcompensate in every situation. Geb also makes the questionable claim that the Rolls in his garage is just an investment, rather than an emblem of conspicuous consumption. The film has a Shakespearean quality. Hefner is the King, Dorothy is the Princess, Aram is the Prince, and Paul is the Bastard. People like Geb are the loyal attendants in the King's court. Some, like Aram, are bestowed with the favor of the King, while others are dispatched into exile. Paul can't take the rejection, and kills Dorothy and himself. If the sexual revolution was really a Pandora's Box, then Paul is one of the demons let loose to hover ominously over the orgy.