Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.5

The Last Movie Star Blu-ray Movie Review

Deliverance.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 21, 2018

There’s a certain shock that can occur when seeing an aged movie star who might be better remembered from the halcyon days of their youth, as evidenced recently by some of the reactions to seeing a wheelchair bound Kirk Douglas on the recent Academy Awards broadcast (to cite just one example). While there are “character actors” galore, performers who make the most of their "golden years", most matinee idols typically reach the apex of their fame rather early in their careers, in their twenties or (usually at the latest) their thirties. But like a professional athlete who manages to play in a national league of some sort for a few years — what happens next? The plight of aging is at the core of The Last Movie Star, a film which trades on the still rather considerable charisma of Burt Reynolds, playing a role that writer-director Adam Rifkin states was fashioned expressly for the star, but which fails to generate much emotion, or at least as much emotion as would seem to be able to be generated from a premise following a former box office champ forced to confront not just his own demons, but the fact that he’s become the worst thing you can be in the motion picture industry — irrelevant. Reynolds portrays Vic Edwards, a one time huge star (a Time Magazine cover adorning his mansion’s walls proclaims him the Box Office Champion of 1975) who has fallen on hard times, at least physically and emotionally, if not financially (as evidenced by that very mansion). Edwards has to deal with the death of his dog in one of the first scenes in The Last Movie Star (the film was originally titled Dog Years), in a foreshadowing of the subtext of mortality that is never that far beneath the surface of the story. Urged by his best friend Sonny (Chevy Chase) to accept an invitation to a festival in Nashville that wants to honor Edwards, Vic relents and casts his fate to the wind, flying down south where he meets a bevy of fans in some decidedly lo-fi environments.

While The Last Movie Star has a rather heartfelt premise, Rifkin’s writing is all over the place, giving the film an unbalanced tonal feeling. It begins in a kind of melancholic way, what with the dog death and all, and then tries to inject a little comedy as Vic and Sonny ogle some nearby women working out in yoga pants. This ping ponging between drama and sometimes schtick laden comedy doesn’t have artful enough segues to make the journey smooth for the viewer, and instead the story comes off as something of a patchwork quilt. That proclivity only continues once Vic arrives in Nashville (riding coach after being promised first class — the first sign that the “international” film festival where he’s being feted isn’t exactly the stuff dreams are made of). There he finds his assistant and chauffeur is an unhappy goth-esque girl named Lil (Ariel Winter), someone who seems like she might be more at home as a “Valley Girl” (Rifkin talks about moving the story to Tennessee after having received funding from the state, though he says it wasn’t a requirement to do so to receive the funding).

The film works on a couple of simultaneously unfolding courses, becoming something of a “road movie” as Vic decides to journey to Knoxville, his old stomping grounds, with Lil to tie up some loose ends from his fraught history. But underlying everything is Vic’s attempt to assess his life and what it has meant, which of course includes his supposedly long history in show business. The film once again offers an undeniably sincere portrait of fans who worship an idol but who aren’t exactly part of the “showbiz elite” themselves, while also trafficking in more rote if ultimately fitfully engaging material documenting the slowly developing relationship between Vic and Lil.

That life assessment ultimately provides some dividends courtesy of a conceit that Rifkin frankly could have exploited even more to make The Last Movie Star truly memorable, and that’s the “insertion” of Vic into old clips featuring Reynolds from such iconic productions as Deliverance. While the film has a number of cheeky (nude or otherwise, considering Reynolds’ infamous Cosmopolitan centerfold) allusions to Reynolds’ actual career, it’s in these scattered interactions with his actual film history that Vic really seems to come alive as a character. Interestingly, these bits play more like monologues, leaving Lil figuratively if not literally by the wayside, something that again tends to undercut the “buddy” aspect of the story. The Last Movie Star definitely has its heart in the right place, and it’s just as undeniably a heart filled with considerable emotion. Why more of that feeling doesn’t actually spill over to the audience is no fault of Reynolds (or indeed even of Winters), but it leaves this effort feeling curiously detached.

The Last Movie Star Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Last Movie Star is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. Technical data on the shoot is sparse, though I am assuming this was digitally captured and finished at a 2K DI. The presentation is really quite good, offering great detail levels on things like the stucco or plaster wall in the vet Vic visits in the first scene (see screenshot 1), or the "ravages" of time that line Vic's own face (as can be seen in any of the close-ups of Reynolds included in the screenshot array accompanying this review). A couple of the sequences in Nashville and/or Knoxville are graded or lit in yellow tones, and the nighttime sequences that are also graded can tend to have minimally less fine detail on display. The "insertion" of Vic into the actual Reynolds' old films has been intentionally distressed at times so that Vic perhaps looks even more aged and wan in comparison to the youthful Burt (see screenshot 4). The palette is appealingly fresh and vivid throughout the presentation, and some of the scenes of the Tennessee countryside are quite beautiful. There are no issues with image instability or compression hurdles.

The Last Movie Star Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Last Movie Star features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that more than capably supports a rather "talky" film. Surround activity may not be extremely impressive, but it's consistent, if subtle. The bar scenes where Vic first encounters a bevy of fans has excellent immersion, and even some of the brief clips, as in a scene from Smokey and the Bandit, offer brief bursts of energy. But this is in essence a character study, and as such tends to play out in relatively tamer dialogue scenes. Everything is rendered cleanly and clearly and without any problems.

The Last Movie Star Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Director Adam Rifkin


• The Best is Yet to Come: Adam Rifkin on The Last Movie Star (1080p; 17:05) is an engaging interview with the writer and director, who gets into some of the back story of a long gestational period and ultimate production of the script he wrote expressly for Burt Reynolds.


• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 12:47)

The Last Movie Star Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Okay, because absolutely nobody asked, here's what I would have done with the general premise of The Last Movie Star: I would have assembled a whole movie worth of clips from Reynolds' long and at least occasionally distinguished career and had the elderly actor interact with all of them, instead of the sometimes forced "generation gap" material he has to wallow through with Winter or the largely unfunny bantering between Reynolds and Chase in the film as it is. There's actually quite a bit to like in the foundational elements of The Last Movie Star, but its execution leaves a bit to be desired. Fans of Reynolds may well want to check this out in any case, and for them technical merits are just fine.