On the brink of a midlife crisis, big-name Broadway player Margo Channing (Bette Davis) is introduced to a starstruck fan (Anne Baxter), admires the kid’s enthusiasm and hires her as a live-in assistant. Margo can be a handful, a drama queen in every sense, but she’s a loyal, compassionate friend and immediately shares those virtues with the new girl. And the new girl, for her part, spins the star’s influence to her own benefit, proving she’s not half as clueless as she seems. Though Margo catches on quickly, her friends and associates remain enchanted with the youngster and chalk their growing divide up to mere jealousy. Which isn’t untrue - now on the wrong side of forty, Margo knows she’s got to start losing those glamorous leading roles to someone - but the aging star’s famously erratic behavior and deep-seated insecurities are the real issue. Those self-destructive tendencies do more to reverse her fortunes than any amount of conniving from the ambitious younger model. She’s fighting the same uphill battle that defeated her predecessors, she knows it, and the desperation only makes things worse.
Well acted and well directed, All About Eve makes good observations about the industry and delivers big twists, but it’s incredibly, distractingly wordy. While I could believe an actress or playwright might speak in this way, an onslaught of witty metaphors and rare adjectives, it’s exhausting to hear it from the entire cast. Every line’s a mouthful. And while that does result in some great material (Davis’s famous “fasten your seatbelts,” for example), it also slows the plot to a crawl. Smart and amusing but overwrought, this film uses sheer hot air to stretch ninety minutes’ worth of material across two hours and change.
Review by drqshadowBlockedParent2024-02-26T19:30:38Z
On the brink of a midlife crisis, big-name Broadway player Margo Channing (Bette Davis) is introduced to a starstruck fan (Anne Baxter), admires the kid’s enthusiasm and hires her as a live-in assistant. Margo can be a handful, a drama queen in every sense, but she’s a loyal, compassionate friend and immediately shares those virtues with the new girl. And the new girl, for her part, spins the star’s influence to her own benefit, proving she’s not half as clueless as she seems. Though Margo catches on quickly, her friends and associates remain enchanted with the youngster and chalk their growing divide up to mere jealousy. Which isn’t untrue - now on the wrong side of forty, Margo knows she’s got to start losing those glamorous leading roles to someone - but the aging star’s famously erratic behavior and deep-seated insecurities are the real issue. Those self-destructive tendencies do more to reverse her fortunes than any amount of conniving from the ambitious younger model. She’s fighting the same uphill battle that defeated her predecessors, she knows it, and the desperation only makes things worse.
Well acted and well directed, All About Eve makes good observations about the industry and delivers big twists, but it’s incredibly, distractingly wordy. While I could believe an actress or playwright might speak in this way, an onslaught of witty metaphors and rare adjectives, it’s exhausting to hear it from the entire cast. Every line’s a mouthful. And while that does result in some great material (Davis’s famous “fasten your seatbelts,” for example), it also slows the plot to a crawl. Smart and amusing but overwrought, this film uses sheer hot air to stretch ninety minutes’ worth of material across two hours and change.