Richard Benjamin's directorial debut is an engaging slice of nostalgia, purportedly based on an incident in life of
Mel Brooks.
Mark Linn-Baker stars as Benjy Stone, junior writer on the popular 1950s TV comedy/variety series The King Kaiser Show. Kaiser (
Joseph Bologna)'s guest star this week is Hollywood matinee idol Alan Swann (
Peter O'Toole), a swashbuckling
Errol Flynn type, right down to his indiscriminate womanizing and fondness for mass quantities of booze. Stone is assigned to keep the actor out of trouble during rehearsals and deliver him sober to the performance. Becoming fast friends, Stone and Swann alternate baby-sitting responsibilities: Swann takes the young writer to the Stork Club and on an early-morning jaunt through Central Park with a "borrowed" police horse, while Stone takes Swann to his home in the Bronx, where the star is fawned over by Benji's mom (
Lainie Kazan) and asked embarrassing questions about his love life by Uncle Morty (
Lou Jacobi). Despite a few anxious moments, all goes well until Swann, panicking at the discovery that King Kaiser's show will be telecast live and not on film, walks out just before airtime. Shamed by Benjy into honoring his committment, Swann makes a spectacular, timber-smashing entrance, saving the show and rescuing Kaiser from being rubbed out by a gangster (
Cameron Mitchell) whom the comedian has offended. Though it fluctuates between wistful realism and the manic exaggeration of a TV comedy sketch, My Favorite Year holds together quite well, delivering a plentitude of solid laughs.
Jessica Harper, usually the star of bizarro films like
Inserts and
Suspiria, is quite appealing as Benjy Stone's girlfriend; that lady dancing with O'Toole at the Stork Club is 1930s film star
Gloria Stuart, later an Oscar nominee for
Titanic; the King Kaiser Show wardrobe mistress is played by
Selma Diamond, a real-life comedy writer for
Sid Caesar. My Favorite Year was converted into an unsuccessful Broadway musical in the early 1990s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide