In this movie, Barbra Streisand is victimized by everyone -- her parents, the justice system, the johns she entertains -- and therefore the movie qualifies for entry into the genre of fantasy.
Streisand, a hooker, has a court hearing before a judge, the always admirable James Whitmore, to decide if she's too crazy to stand trial for manslaughter one, after killing a client who was apparently about to kill her.
It's her intent to be judged sane enough to stand trial and what she wants, she gets. She's defended by Richard Dreyfus and prosecuted by Robert Webber. Her parents, Maureen Stapleton and Karl Malden, attend the two-day hearing.
Streisand's character was raised in a rather well-off middle-class family, but her life has been chaotic, misbehavior in high school, the collapse of a ten-year marriage, smoking (gulp) marijuana, and finally becoming a high-end prostitute. Streisand interrupts the highly ritualized hearing by banging on glass tumblers, shouting, and otherwise disrupting the tranquility of the court.
Leslie Nielsen is the client who tries to kill her. She kills him instead, by stabbing him in the neck with a sharp shard of broken mirror, which is a common Hollywood convention, akin to knocking an opponent out by butting forehead, but it's still a violation of Newton's third law: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Anyway, there is obviously going to be a damned good reason for Streisand's unusual behavior. It's pretty generic. All the men in her life have been idiots, just as most of the men in this movie are. But the moment it was disclosed that Karl Malden was merely her stepfather, not her biological parent, we knew we were to be faced with the iron causality of childhood sexual abuse.
Streisand is a curiously attractive woman with considerable acting talent and a fine singing voice. But she has an ego the size of New Guinea. To her coworkers, she is as the nutcracker is to the walnut. So it's easy to see why she would find this role suitable. She gets to tell everybody off and insult them freely. The script makes it easy for her because, aside from Whitmore's judge and Dreyfus' defense attorney, everybody from the doctor on down is a liar and a moron.
The drama itself is a little sluggish but interesting in its details. Even sluggish courtroom dramas are interesting though, if they're at all well done, as this one is. Of course, Streisand's character could have obviated the mishigas if she had just taken the stand and told the truth right off the bat, but if she'd done that there would have been no movie. It would have been like Hamlet killing Claudius at the beginning, or the Indians shooting the horses instead of trying to pick off the stagecoach passengers.
Streisand, a hooker, has a court hearing before a judge, the always admirable James Whitmore, to decide if she's too crazy to stand trial for manslaughter one, after killing a client who was apparently about to kill her.
It's her intent to be judged sane enough to stand trial and what she wants, she gets. She's defended by Richard Dreyfus and prosecuted by Robert Webber. Her parents, Maureen Stapleton and Karl Malden, attend the two-day hearing.
Streisand's character was raised in a rather well-off middle-class family, but her life has been chaotic, misbehavior in high school, the collapse of a ten-year marriage, smoking (gulp) marijuana, and finally becoming a high-end prostitute. Streisand interrupts the highly ritualized hearing by banging on glass tumblers, shouting, and otherwise disrupting the tranquility of the court.
Leslie Nielsen is the client who tries to kill her. She kills him instead, by stabbing him in the neck with a sharp shard of broken mirror, which is a common Hollywood convention, akin to knocking an opponent out by butting forehead, but it's still a violation of Newton's third law: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Anyway, there is obviously going to be a damned good reason for Streisand's unusual behavior. It's pretty generic. All the men in her life have been idiots, just as most of the men in this movie are. But the moment it was disclosed that Karl Malden was merely her stepfather, not her biological parent, we knew we were to be faced with the iron causality of childhood sexual abuse.
Streisand is a curiously attractive woman with considerable acting talent and a fine singing voice. But she has an ego the size of New Guinea. To her coworkers, she is as the nutcracker is to the walnut. So it's easy to see why she would find this role suitable. She gets to tell everybody off and insult them freely. The script makes it easy for her because, aside from Whitmore's judge and Dreyfus' defense attorney, everybody from the doctor on down is a liar and a moron.
The drama itself is a little sluggish but interesting in its details. Even sluggish courtroom dramas are interesting though, if they're at all well done, as this one is. Of course, Streisand's character could have obviated the mishigas if she had just taken the stand and told the truth right off the bat, but if she'd done that there would have been no movie. It would have been like Hamlet killing Claudius at the beginning, or the Indians shooting the horses instead of trying to pick off the stagecoach passengers.