The Dorothy Stratten story, fed into the Bob Fosse automatic slicer-dicer and salad-tosser: back and forth in time, after-the-fact interviews with participants, lots of marginal detail of marginal interest. The method does not make great sense of the slaying of the ex-Playmate of the Year by her sleazoid husband. And then, too, the total innocence and guilelessness of Stratten, and the total probity and generosity of everyone else but her husband, arouse suspicions that certain information is being withheld. (On Hugh Hefner, for example: "He's wonderful," Stratten attests, "like a father or something.") The mystery deepens further because Mariel Hemingway, despite her well-publicized breast implants, does not begin to fill the role, and comes off instead as an out-and-out imposter. To look at this strapping figure of a woman, who appears as if constructed out of a couple of pieces of lumber, it is impossible to believe that she could be the same person everyone in the movie is talking about. With Eric Roberts, Carroll Baker, and Cliff Robertson. (1983) — Duncan Shepherd
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