Review – Star 80

I’ve seen this before, and even before seeing it the first time I already knew how Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten’s short, tragic life turned out. Even so, I found myself hoping against hope that somehow it wouldn’t end up the way I knew it was going to. No such luck. Mariel Hemingway does a reasonably good job as the nudie ingénue caught in a fatal tug of war between the glitzy Playboy lifestyle – and an affair with director Peter Bogdanovich, fictionalized as Aram Nicholas (Roger Rees in his feature film debut) – and her sleazy, psychotic husband, Paul Snider (a rare good performance from Eric Roberts). Cliff Robertson is solid as Hugh Hefner, so I was surprised to learn that the man himself hated the portrayal so much that he sued over it. This is also director Bob Fosse’s last movie, a surprising departure from the choreography-intensive musicals that made him famous. Though it’s a sad and ultimately brutal story, it gets a good telling. Mildly amusing