THE MAN WHO LOVED WOMEN!

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This week's choice for "Friday Movie Suggestion Night."

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With Blake Edwards' Writing and Directing, this movie is personally how I've come to view Burt Reynolds--which is quite a departure from the roles he's had in recent years. There is no way to take this movie seriously, thanks to Reynold's--who has always made acting and comedy, specifically, look easy. To be fair, in his early years, he had to live down comparisons to Marlon Brando. Next came endless talk of him never topping off his performance in "Deliverance". A number of comedy gems emerged and this movie is loosely based on the 1977 French film "L'Homme qui aimait les femmes". In the movie's main character, we find Reynolds leading a stress-filled life of a sculptor named David who has a major womanizing problem. He goes to seek help from a psychiatrist, Marianna (Julie Andrews), to cure him of his obsession with women. His romantic exploits with the ladies is told by Marianna throughout the film as David struggles to figure out which woman is driving him crazy and why. Many movie goers were said to be expecting a wild sex farce. Instead, Blake Edwards and his co-screenwriters offer created the role of David as a complex, meaningful, and thought-provoking man facing middle age and driven, by instinct, to glimpse the sacredness and inner beauty of almost every woman he encounters to see what makes them tick. Writer Blake Edwards, along with screenwriters Milton Wexler and Geoffrey Edwards were expected, I believe, to deliver a shallow film about a single, well off guy who casually pulls off hedonistic paradise. But Edwards was also after a human being who sincerely felt trapped from being unable to make a commitment, and this really isolates him from the joy of knowing one woman exclusively. In many respects, it is one of Reynold's finest roles. Interestingly, this became Sela Ward's break-through movie role weeks after landing in Los Angeles from a successful modeling career in New York. The Cast: Burt Reynolds as David Fowler; Julie Andrews as Marianna; Kim Basinger as Louise Carr; Marilu Henner as Agnes Chapman; Cynthia Sikes as Courtney Wade; Jennifer Edwards (Blake and Julie's real-life daughter) as Nancy; Sela Ward as Janet Wainright; Ellen Bauer as Svetlana; Denise Crosby as Enid; Barry Corbin as Roy Carr; Tracey Vaccaro as Legs (I'm not kidding) and Regis Philbin as himself. Summer's young and there's time for more intense films. This one sort of eases us into the season of one man's life. Very different. ...I hope you like it!