Review – The Razor’s Edge (1984)

Anyone who’s read the source novel must immediately be charged with a simple task: abandon the notion that the movie is based in any meaningful way on the book. Once you’ve got that thought out of your head, you should find it a lot easier to relax and enjoy the show. In a way it’s odd that Bill Murray – who supposedly loved Maugham’s novel so much that he took a role he didn’t want in order to get the studio to back this production – would stray so far from the original work. Of course some simplification was necessary. But changing the story into Larry Darrell, The Motion Picture seemed like a strange thing to do, unless of course one has an ego big enough to play Darrell to begin with, let alone feature him even more prominently than Maugham did. It doesn’t help that Murray – despite obvious effort on his part – seems constantly on the verge of reverting to his usual persona. Every time Darrell is called upon to say something profound, I found myself waiting with dread to find out if Murray would deliver the line or let fly with “Zooly you nut, let me talk to Dana.” Those problems aside, however, this is a reasonably entertaining tale of a man seeking and finding spiritual enlightenment during an age in which the stuff was in short supply. Mildly amusing