WTF?! - So Fine (1981)
When I was a kid, just about the age of 13 or so I remember playing in my parent’s attic and coming across a dresser drawer with buttons in it. They were all shapes and sizes. Not buttons like you’d sew on a shirt, no; but they were badges with different fun sayings on them. I’d giggle at the one that said, “I don’t mind if you smoke, as long as you don’t mind if I fart,” and “Linda Lovelace for President.” As I flipped through these funny medallions I found one that said “So Fine” with the picture of a woman’s rump slipped into jeans with her fanny cheeks showing trough clear plastic windows. I marveled at it. I thought, so weird... but funny!
I later came to find out that it was a promotional item for a film that had come out that year called, “So Fine” from Warner Brothers. “So Fine" stars Ryan O’Neal and comic vet Jack Warden. With the onset of Philadelphia area’s Prism Cable TV channel, I finally got to see the film when it first came on TV. Not remembering much of the film but remembering it was a little silly, I came across the film on 16mm as bid item on EBAY; but alas, lost the bid to someone in Canada (Damn Canadians!). Finally, I’m thrilled to say that Warner Archives does this one proud, and now makes it available on DVD.
Our story takes place in the hallowed halls of a New England university where our stuffy hero, Bobby Fine (Ryan O’Neal) teaches literature. His father Jack (Jack Warden) runs a failing 7th Avenue dress factory and is way-into debt with a monster of a mobster loan shark, played by James Bond villain extraordinary Richard Kiel. After getting wrapped up in a resolution deal with the loan shark, Bobby dives into a rendezvous with the mobster’s wife (Mariangela Melato of Swept Away). While escaping from being caught in bed with the doll, Bobby rips his jeans open in the butt, accidentally creating a new fashion craze called “So Fine Jeans.”
“So Fine” is the directing debut for screenwriter and New york native Andrew Bergman. Bergman rose to acclaim by co-penning such hilarities as “Blazing Saddles” and “The In-Laws.” In a wonderful interview with author Joel Engel, “Screenwriters on Screenwriting,” Bergman recounts his feelings on the film:
AB: “I’m still sort of an academic... I think that’s why ‘So Fine’ was about academia; it was a metaphor for the movie business. Ryan O’Neal going into the dress business was really me going into the movie business.”
JE: “Ryan O’Neal seems to me to have been interesting casting.”
AB: “He’s a great physical comedian. First of all, Warner Brothers wasn’t going to let me do the picture unless we had a major star in it. Ryan was it. I mean, he’s not the logical person to play an English professor who’s Jewish. But I really wanted to make the picture, so I said, ‘Screw it.’ Ryan is a great physical comedian--I think one of the great wasted talents. He’s extraordinarily funny.”
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| Melato and Keil cut the Disco rug |
When I bought “So Fine” I thought for sure that I’d be reliving how bad the film was, and only enjoying it for its 80s camp value. The funny thing is, I loved it! Now an adult who’s seen much more of the world, and experienced many more slapstick comedies;
I have to say, I feel that “So Fine” actually delivers “the funny” way more than originally thought. O’Neal is hands down charming in the role. His role as Bobby is quite reminiscent of his screwball antics with Barbra Streisand in “What’s Up, Doc?” Jack Warden’s one liners had me gaffaing out loud and splitting my stitches of the comic blue jeans in my head. I also took delight in some quick, but contributive cameos; Fred Gwynne (aka Herman Munster) as the university’s Department Chairman; Asian character actor James Hong (Blade Runner, Kung Fu Panda); and most-notably, singer comedienne Judith Cohen, who was discovered on the classic sit-com “Good Times” as a sad-sack performer singing “Send In The Clowns.”
Sadly, this Clothing Industry comedy didn’t do well and was a farcical flop at the box office. David Denby of New York Magazine called the film “crass and depressingly unfunny”; but liked Malato comparing her to Streisand, only “quieter, prettier, and funnier.” Ryan O’Neal spoke highly of Melato in his memoir “Both Of Us: My Life with Farrah," but thought it was a weak debut for Bergman. In his 40s when “So Fine” was released, O’Neal’s most recent success, up to that point, was with Streisand in “The Main Event” just a few years earlier. “So Fine” would appear to be a slump for him, until “Irreconcilable Differences” came out in 1984.
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| Mariangela Melato and Ryan O'Neal |
Despite other bad reviews, Janet Maslin of “The New York Times” liked the hometown film, writing “Mr. Bergman's direction is for the most part skillful and confident. 'So Fine' is a little shapeless overall, especially after it sends Bobby back to his college once the jeans have made jean history. But its comic episodes are nicely controlled, and the movie has a consistent zany style. An early college sequence, with Fred Gwynne offering a wittily grotesque caricature of a department chairman and David Rounds as an ambitious underling, is perfectly in keeping with the gangster and garment episodes that come later.”
“So Fine” has a silly charm to it, but is possible the film didn't do well because it was poking fun at women in a unintentionally misogynistic manner. (I mean, it was the 80s) That being said, “So Fine” is a great film to watch because it launches the 80s as a decade, having fun and poking light at the superficial clothing design industry. The film played for a few years on cable and broadcast TV but pretty much disappeared in the 90s until now. The DVD offering from Warner Archives looks great and is presented in its original widescreen format.
Bergman would not regain popularity as a director until “The Freshman” about a decade later. Bergman, finishing his thoughts on “So Fine”:
“The Movie was a bomb, but I must say that, to this day, some of the funniest things I’ve ever done were in that movie. Jack Warden’s performance was hysterical. The opera sequence. The whole ongoing thing between Warden and the buyers. For sheer, piss-in-the-pants funny, the movie has some of the best dialogue I’ve ever written.”
So Fine (1981)
DVD
$14.95
