Janet Maslin wrote:
Gilda Radner: A Revue of Repertory

Nothing in “Gilda Live” is funnier than, or a substantial departure from, the material Gilda Radner does on “Saturday Night Live.” But the film ought to satisfy her fans. As directed by Mike Nichols, this is a straightforward record of Miss Radner’s Broadway show at the Winter Garden last year, a show that had its decided ups and downs. The best of her material presents Miss Radner as an agile, versatile comedian, but the lesser skits tend to ramble.

Miss Radner is not the sole star of “Gilda Live,” which opens today at the Sutton and other theaters. She appears as a number of characters, in a show that gives equal weight to these various skits and does little to tie them together. So Don Novello, who puts in a series of appearances as Father Guido Sarducci, upstages Miss Radner regularly, if only because of his character’s continuity.

Mr. Novello is seen explaining about a “Kennedy-Lincoln Coincidenza” in Italian (both their names have seven letters), and proposing his scheme for a “five-minute university” — during a five-minute session, the student is taught everything the average college graduate remembers after five years. The Religion course goes this way: “Where is God? God is everywhere. Why? Because He likes you.” Mr. Novello describes this as a combination of Roman Catholic theology and Walt Disney.

Miss Radner’s best shot here is her appearance as Rhonda Weiss, of Rhonda and the Rhondettes, singing a protest song about the banning of saccharine. The Rhondettes wear sunglasses and carry little shoulderbags, waving their hands in a gesture that suggests their nails aren’t dry. Meanwhile, Rhonda explains “up until now, I never felt the need to protest. I mean, nothing in the 60’s really bothered me.” Then she read the saccharine story in The National Enquirer: “I nearly died.”

This routine, performed with the three female singers of the group Desmond Child and Rouge, is something Miss Radner has tried on television, and in fact most of the show has a familiar ring. What it doesn’t have is an eventful feeling, a sense that Miss Radner is really taking a chance. Her closing song, something sentimental about innocent romance, offers the evening’s only step out of character — and it’s a step backwards, since it ends an otherwise amusing program on a note of false intimacy. Nothing else about the material, a 90-minute run through of Miss Radner’s repertory, suggests she’s interested in doing more than playing it safe.

GILDA LIVE, directed by Mike Nichols; written by Anne Beatts, Lorne Michaels, Marilyn Suzanne Miller, Don Novello, Michael O’Donoghue, Gilda Radner, Paul Shaffer, Rosie Shuster, Alan Zweibel; directors of photography, Ted Churchill, James Contner, Alan Metzger, Peter Norman; music by Paul Shaffer, Michael O’Donoghue, Cheryl Hardwick, Marvin Hamilsch, Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb; produced by Lorne Michaels; released by Warner Brothers. At the Sutton, Third Avenue and 57th Street; Criterion Center, Broadway at 45th Street; 86th Street Twin I, at Lexington Avenue. Running time: 95 minutes. This film is rated R

WITH:
Gilda Radner and
Father Guido Sarducci, Don Kirshner, Arnie Schnactman, Student Body President . . . . . Paul Shaffer
Audition Scene Planist . . . . . Bob Christianson
Roadie . . . . . Nils Nichols
Cardinal Dario Fungi . . . . . Himself
The Candy Slice Group
John Caruso, Paul Shaffer, Howard Shore and G. E. Smith

gilda.live.1980.720p.hdtv.x264-regret.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 29 min
Size: 	1.85 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1280x720 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	2 509 kb/s
BPP: 	0.114
Audio
#1:  	English 5.1ch AC-3 @ 448 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/AC21732AE088AF1/gilda.live.1980.720p.hdtv.x264-regret.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Mike Nichols & Lorne Michaels – Gilda Live (1980) first appeared on Cinema of the World.