My Favorite Year

My Favorite Year, a slight but sweet backstage comedy, now provides three levels of nostalgia: for the era of swashbuckling stars like Errol Flynn; for the golden age of TV that supplanted it; and for the presence of Peter O’Toole.

Richard Benjamin's direction surprisingly provides a dizzy pace and inventive set-ups, aided greatly by cinematographer Gerald Hirschfeld and editor Richard Chew.

O'Toole's performance transforms a mundane movie into one of the most scintillating, enjoyable comedies of the year. [01 Oct 1982]

Richard Benjamin directs the smartish script and the chaotic tomfoolery quite brilliantly; but all concerned mishandle the soppy section where O'Toole gets misty-eyed about his discarded daughter. Still, the pace picks up for the magnificent comic climax.

This overrated backstage TV nostalgia comedy, set in 1954, does boast standout performances by Peter O'Toole and Joseph Bologna as characters modeled on Erroll Flynn and Sid Caesar. [07 Nov 1997]

Sharp jokes and clever sight gags rub elbows with cheap humor and low slapstick in this comedy about a dissolute movie star preparing to appear on a 1950s TV show. [16 Dec 1982, p.19]

My Favorite Year moves from bad joke to bad joke, but it does move. [08 Oct 1982, p.D9]