MY FAVORITE YEAR (1982) * There are many reasons, almost too many to count, to have high expectations of a film featuring an Oscar-nominated performance by Peter O'Toole as a drunken matinee idol. If Richard Harris and Oliver Reed would have been, arguably, only slightly more typecast in the part that only leaves the liklihood that O'Toole might remember more about it. Instead of being funny, it's only schmaltzy and entirely stupid. O'Toole flaps about like a 10 year-old who, having sipped a taste of wine, flounders about the playground claiming visions of pink elephants. My suspicion is that alcohol wasn't even allowed anywhere near the set, no one looks happy, creative or subjectively transcendent, although I have suspicions as to what Selma Diamond was doing in that bathroom stall. Against the few remaining hopes O'Toole isn't even the worst member of the cast, that would certainly go to Mark Linn-Baker's constipated portrayal of a character whose worst problems allegedly stem from others. And Linn-Baker perhaps only because he so gluttonized the lines, there's every reason to believe that Jessica Harper would have been just as bad with more exposure. Joseph Bologna salvages things to a minor extent, by blustering and caustically mimiking others. Given the circumstances, it was the best that could be done.
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