Apparently antihero Frank Fain, stiffly played by Steven Boyd, never heard the saying "Be nice to the people you meet on the way up..." because he abuses everyone he meets and makes every mistake in the book including believing his own press clippings. The trouble is that Steven Boyd doesn't give us a hint of the charisma that made Fain even a potential candidate for the Oscar to begin with. Tony Bennett's portrayal of agent Hymie Kelly nearly sinks the movie like a torpedo. Fortunately, the rest of the supporting cast understands kitsch and do what they can to have fun while moving things along at an otherwise bearable pace. Milton Berle, Ernest Borgnine, and Edie Adams are especially marvelous as hard-boiled bottom-dwellers. Elke Sommer actually does a halfway decent job as Fain's disillusioned main squeeze. The final sequences are camp classics.
Review of The Oscar
