More Robert Redford completism, and my first go around with Barbra Streisand. Directed by Sydney Pollack from a script credited to Arthur Laurents (author of the source novel) that IMDB tells me was bashed into shape by some heavy-duty doctors: Paddy Chayefsky, Francis Ford Coppola, Herb Gardner and Dalton Trumbo. In two sittings as I came to realise it didn't have a lot of shape.
This is something like American Doctor Zhivago (1965): a soap-operatic love letter from the Boomers to the Greatest Generation who were young once, before they were wearied by World War 2 and their kids. A difference may be that here the revolution fails, as does the romance, and there's not enough cinematic magic to distract us.
I enjoyed Barbra's performance for first half or so, up to some point when I realised that her character gets older but does not develop; she learns to swear, drink and smoke but continues to rant in cookie-cutter fashion all the way through. She's supposed to be a bit of a Jewish everywoman, strong willed, unforgiving, self absorbed, doing all the work (even rowing the boat!) while vanilla WASP demigod Redford just basks in her adulation that is rightfully his due. He has his moments, like when he realises what a prize she is, but is mostly not allowed to do much. They never seem to get married. The latter half fails to show us many critical events that are referred to. IMDB says this is James Woods's first feature and I can't remember him ever being so tame.
Roger Ebert: three stars. Redford in the thankless role as the weak-man foil to furiously-determined Streisand. Vincent Canby: "looks like a 747 built around an elephant" — the latter being "the Streisand talent" which "is huge, eccentric and intractable."
