X
  • 1981
  • R
  • Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
  • 1 h 57 m
  • 1981
  • R
  • Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
  • 1 h 57 m

Summary Liz (Jacqueline Bisset) and Merry Noel (Candice Bergen) become friends as college roommates and their friendship endures over the years. Liz becomes a respected "serious" novelist. Merry Noel marries, has a daughter and writes, too: "trash" fiction which becomes enormously successful. Their story begins in college and jumps ahead some ye...

Directed By: George Cukor

Written By: John Van Druten, Gerald Ayres

  • 1981
  • R
  • Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
  • 1 h 57 m
  • 1981
  • R
  • Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
  • 1 h 57 m

Rich and Famous

Metascore Mixed or Average Based on 10 Critic Reviews
52
User Score Available after 4 ratings
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Where to Watch

Summary Liz (Jacqueline Bisset) and Merry Noel (Candice Bergen) become friends as college roommates and their friendship endures over the years. Liz becomes a respected "serious" novelist. Merry Noel marries, has a daughter and writes, too: "trash" fiction which becomes enormously successful. Their story begins in college and jumps ahead some ye...

Directed By: George Cukor

Written By: John Van Druten, Gerald Ayres

Where to Watch

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Critic Reviews

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Metascore
Mixed or Average Based on 10 Critic Reviews
52
50% Positive
5 Reviews
20% Mixed
2 Reviews
30% Negative
3 Reviews

  • All Reviews
  • Positive Reviews
  • Mixed Reviews
  • Negative Reviews

Critic Reviews

 View All
Metascore
Mixed or Average Based on 10 Critic Reviews
52
50% Positive
5 Reviews
20% Mixed
2 Reviews
30% Negative
3 Reviews

  • All Reviews
  • Positive Reviews
  • Mixed Reviews
  • Negative Reviews
90
This swiftly paced comedy is a deliciously impure compound of old-fashioned "women's film" formulas and up-to-the-minute sexual mores. It is, from moment to moment, trashy and touching, literate and ludicrous, bitchily funny and as full of sharp, sophisticated insights as it is of appalling blind spots. Part soap opera, part comedy of manners, it refurbishes shopworn cliches into a gloriously unrespectable entertainment. [12 Oct 1981, p.98]
By David Ansen FULL REVIEW
70
Considering neither Bisset nor Bergen had ever shown the slightest acting ability before in movies, their performances in the Bette Davis/Miriam Hopkins roles in this loose reworking of Old Acquaintance are very capable.
FULL REVIEW
63
One of the pleasures of "Old Acquaintance" was watching two fanged pros chew scenery. One of the pleasures of Rich and Famous is watching two toothless amateurs gum everything in sight, including each other (the penultimate confrontation, when the teddy bear, symbol of the friendship, is ripped into stuffing, is outrageously funny). [10 Oct 1981]
By Jay Scott FULL REVIEW
50
The lead performances, by Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen as two college friends who become competing novelists in later life, have the Cukor audacity without the Cukor grace, and his visual expressiveness is in evidence only sporadically. Yet the film stays in the mind for its dark asides on aging, loneliness, and the troubling survival of sexual needs.
By Dave Kehr FULL REVIEW
40
The movie can't make up its mind whether it's about a tumultuously difficult but rewarding friendship or whether it's a sendup of the contemporary literary scene. It fails as both.
By Vincent Canby FULL REVIEW
30
The new movie adorned with this sure-fire title happens to be a tacky and disreputable attempt at a sophisticated comedy about women writers.
By Gary Arnold FULL REVIEW
25
This could have been--and is--a very funny film; unfortunately, most of the laughs are unintentional.
FULL REVIEW

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Details

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Production Company Jaquet, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
Release Date Oct 9, 1981
Duration 1 h 57 m
Rating R
Genres
Tagline From the very beginning, they knew they'd be friends to the end. What they didn't count on was everything in between.
View All Details

Awards

Writers Guild of America, USA
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
Jupiter Award
• 1 Nomination

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