The Kid Stays in the Picture

Has to be one of the must-see films for any student of Hollywood fame and infamy.

An imaginative self-profile of producer Robert Evans, could well be the most totally irresistible movie of the summer.

A new documentary about the life of this producer who put together one of the most remarkable winning streaks in Hollywood history, and followed it with a losing streak that almost destroyed him. It's one of the most honest films ever made about Hollywood.

The best thing the film does is to show us not only what that mind looks like, but how the creative process itself operates: messily, erratically, outside of most people's morality, but with a force and purposiveness that makes the machinations of the rest of us look irresolute by comparison.

Robert Evans has been variously described as the Hugh Hefner of Hollywood, a Tinseltown Gatsby, the Lancelot of the backlot.

If Hollywood is really a dream factory, then it's the movie moguls and movie stars who live that dream to the hilt. In the late 1970s few lived quite as large as Robert Evans.

The movie's only discernible purpose is as publicity for the book. An admitted egomaniac, Evans is no Hollywood villain, and yet this grating showcase almost makes you wish he'd gone the way of Don Simpson. Instead, he'll probably get an Irving Thalberg award.