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Holistic Guidance - The Ritz
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List Price: $19.98
Our Price: $14.99
Your Save: $ 4.99 ( 25% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: Jack Weston, Rita Moreno, Jerry Stiller, Kaye Ballard, F. Murray Abraham
Directed By: Richard Lester
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Warner Brothers
EAN: 0085391203513
Format: Closed-captioned
Label: Warner Home Video
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Warner Home Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2008-01-08
Running Time: 91
Studio: Warner Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 1976
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Editorial Reviews:
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An all-male Manhatten bathouse becomes a hilarious hideout for a man from Cleveland ducking the mob. The fat frisky film of the Broadway farce featuring original stars Jack Weston and Rita Moreno. Year: 1976Format: DVD MOVIE Genre:Â COMEDY/CLASSICS UPC:Â 085391203513 Manufacturer No:Â 120351
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Googy Gomez the last of the real trash Queens
Comment: This is the famous pre-aids gay movie from the great, now forgotten, Richard Lester who developed it from a Terence Mcnally off-Broadway play.
Without Lester there would have been no Bonnie and Clyde, no Godfather, nor The Graduate. An American in London (not Paris) Lester who presented the world with those incredibly 'up close' Beatles movies in 1964 and 66 teased Hollywood with the new 'Hollywood-Look-that-Could-Be' especially in lighting and editing when Hollywood was still muddling along with 50s style westerns and musicals, whose staple products often had dated, garish colors and frigid, distant editing.
By 1976 he had made his mark but not greatly his money.The wunderkinds of the seventies, Spielberg et al, would take all of the credit for the seismic shift of the early seventies but much was also due to Lester.
This movie was not popular on release but was and is fabulous all the same. Treat Williams and Rita Moreno develop the movie's tone. He a mild mannered eager to please detective with a disturbing high pitched voice,on the lookout for on-the-lam Jack Weston escaping from his Mafiosa brother in law; she, a he who is a she, drama monarch of the house, Googy Gomez the great Klutz-Queen of the New York bath house circuit. A young F Murray Abraham doing a very nice laid back Groucho Marx in undershorts, supports the insurgency.
There are no movies like this any more. The Beatles movies were full of that lovely Lennonesque self deprecation. People now want to laugh at others rather than themselves. Take a look at this movie and see how things used to be in some movies you could go to.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Off-beat comedy - lots of fun for the broadminded
Comment: Terence McNally's play finds a straight husband hiding out from his murderous brother-in-law in a gay bath-house in NYC. This off-beat comedy has lots of laughs, if you are broad-minded. Filmed in England by Richard Lester, five actors from the original cast recreate their roles - Jack Weston, Jerry Stiller, F. Murray Abraham, Paul B. Price and Rita Moreno who won a Tony Award as the almost talent-less would-be nightclub singer. DVD transfer is fine, in its original widescreen frame. Only extra is a trailer. Great fun!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Funnier the First Time
Comment: While still a very funny movie, The Ritz is probably better suited to an audience uncomfortable in their sexuality. Set in a gay bathhouse, the clientelle are all stereotypes and most of those are unflattering. F. Murray Abraham does do a good job at being the nelliest queen in the place. And while Treat Williams is always a treat to look at, playing (satirically) queer makes him a dull light in the movie. The rest of the characters who are not denizens of the bathhouse (save, Rita Moreno)are so homophobic they keep the humor from hitting the rafters.
Not so much a lead balloon as a leaded ballon.
Friends who have come to expect a little more skin in their gay tinged flicks were non-plussed at my screening.
Chalk this one up as "Quirky".
Times have changed, so(in memory)this was Funnier the First time.
Customer Rating:
Summary: THE RITZ
Comment: The Ritz
This is worth owning...., I never saw the original but this is with most of the cast from the broadway show...., and it is a must for anyone who loves a good laugh...., Rita Moreno, is worth the price alone...., who else could give a great impression of a bad singer...., and she is great at I have a deweammmmm babbby! This is alittle dated for today standards but still worth it....,
Customer Rating:
Summary: Camp classic!
Comment: I can't remember being as excited to find something released on DVD as I was with The Ritz. It's one of those camp classic movies that I only ever got the chance to see a couple of times, but which stayed with me... on many levels... ever since I first saw it in the late Seventies. While The Ritz is a very funny comedy in every sense, it is elevated to camp classic status by the fact that it is set in the nuttiest gay bathhouse ever envisioned, and peopled by wonderful, crazy characters, beautifully brought to life by a first-rate cast. At its heart though, The Ritz belongs to Rita Moreno as two-bit lounge singer Googie Gomez. The delivery of her fabulous lines in 'that accent', turns Googie into the kind of larger than life Diva who can elicit gales of laughter from Ritz-philes by a simple quote... " I had a drean, a drean abou ju bebe..." Googie was the seventies equivalent to modern-day camp creations such as Eddie from Ab Fab. Also look out for Ben Stiller's Dad Jerry, Cheers' John Ratzenberger, a very young Treat Williams and an outrageously camp F. Murray Abraham. You'll want to visit The Ritz again and again.
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