Jazz never sounded like this -- and as long as they were going to drop Mammy from the original cast of characters, they could just as well have dropped, or changed, one word of the title. Neil Diamond, with his hair sculpted in the shape of a set of headphones, makes his Robbie Robertson-Mr. Cool acting debut as the fifth-generation cantor's son who breaks tradition, plus the hearts of his father and wife, when he turns to secular music and a life of sin with a Hollywood Gentile (Lucie Arnaz). The castaway wife discreetly disappears from the movie, but the old cantor (Laurence Olivier, talking in a Jewish dialect more like the whimper of a sick dog) becomes a persistent pain in the neck, until at long last he gets converted to his son's point of view and is seen merrily clapping in unison with the rest of what the son has the effrontery to refer to as his "congregation." It would have been ideal, in a way, if this could have been directed by Joe (If Ever I See You Again, You Light Up My Life) Brooks, rather than Richard Fleischer, although it is hard to imagine how any more schmaltz could have been wrung from the material, or snickers from the audience. (1980) — Duncan Shepherd
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