Williams' shtick was very successful on 'Mork and Mindy' but that usually was just for a half-an-hour. Somehow, many of his hour+ long films like this one seemed to have appeared to collapse as the plot wore on . Movie started off looking like it had fine potential but it just sat there after a while and it got so zany (largely due to Williams) that by the movie's end you wind up not even caring what happened to the characters. That's especially a shame given what a very good cast this film had.

This would have happened to another of his films (The Survivors) and actually it did. Williams' half of that film was bad after a while. But his co-star in that film was Walter Matthau and the latter managed to keep the movie strong with his own very good, powerful performance.Back to this film. Legendary Peter O'Toole might have helped it but as critics said--the great O'Toole was merely sleepwalking his way through another role!

William's legendary film, Popeye, stayed afloat (no slight pun intended) but that was directed by a powerful director (Robert Altman). Altman directed such films as radical Mash (see my postings).