I saw LEGAL EAGLES when it first came out. I saw it on the first Saturday of its original release. The theater was jam-packed and the crowd was excited. You could actually feel the crowd's buzzing with anticipation for this movie. The stars mainly sold the movie but also the film was made by the same team that made GHOSTBUSTERS. The hype was quite big back then. When the end credits rolled, the crowd was quiet and the buzz was gone. The buzz died halfway into the film as every lame attempt at comedy or romance fell flat with a big thud and everything seemed forced and juvenile. I cannot relate how disappointed the crowd, my friends and I were about it. Some scenes are truly cringe-worthy bad. The flimsy script is as paper thin as the paper is was written on and the entire big budget comedy hangs heavily on the poor thing, incapable of overcoming its many inherent weaknesses.
The actors try to do their best with what they have, with Redford being the sole actor with any charm in this charmless bloated thing. But the worst aspect of this "movie by committee" is Debra Winger's performance. It's so bad that her career never really recovered after it. She was supposed to be this Katherine Hepburn type who fell for Redford's debonair and free-thinking ways and she came across as someone who was perpetually constipated. Redford and Winger have zero chemistry, which doesn't help much for romance comedy. Nothing worked in LEGAL EAGLES, including the ending, which from what I read, is one of several endings the producers filmed and the awful one we saw was decided thanks to the bad taste of test audiences.
There's a reason why this big profile movie only has 3 pages of reviews here at IMDb.
The actors try to do their best with what they have, with Redford being the sole actor with any charm in this charmless bloated thing. But the worst aspect of this "movie by committee" is Debra Winger's performance. It's so bad that her career never really recovered after it. She was supposed to be this Katherine Hepburn type who fell for Redford's debonair and free-thinking ways and she came across as someone who was perpetually constipated. Redford and Winger have zero chemistry, which doesn't help much for romance comedy. Nothing worked in LEGAL EAGLES, including the ending, which from what I read, is one of several endings the producers filmed and the awful one we saw was decided thanks to the bad taste of test audiences.
There's a reason why this big profile movie only has 3 pages of reviews here at IMDb.