With its fond, indulgent, film-fan outlook, Howard Zieff's sweet-tempered spoof of early Hollywood seems actually more condescending than a Nathanael West-ian nightmare vision of the movie colony. The Jeff Bridges protagonist, an Iowa farm boy who decides to Go West to become a Zane Grey Western writer, is played as such a foolish, wool-gathering rube that it comes as simply a shock to learn he's supposed to be an authentic talent after all. A couple of the supporting actors make firmer impressions with far less opportunity: Alan Arkin as a martinet director of B-pictures and Andy Griffith as a dreamy-eyed fallen star who resides now in a constellation of bickersome bit players. (1975) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.