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Buy This Item Inserts by MGM (Video & DVD)  Available from Amazon  $12.99  on 11-17-2008     Academy Award® winner* Richard Dreyfuss "gives a tour-de-force performance" (Los Angeles Times) in this provocative collision of sex and cinema. With "flashes of wit and outrageous black humor" (Los Angeles Times), this seductive story is loaded with "imagination [and] quirky charm" (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times).In the golden days of silent films, genius director Boy Wonder (Dreyfuss) was king of the silver screen. But when talkies took over Tinseltown, hetook a nosedive right into the sordid business of erotic films. Now, with a career in chaos and a dead leading lady (Veronica Cartwright) on his hands, the tormented maestro must rise above his artistic impotence and turn his latest X-rated thriller into a class-A masterpiece.*1977: Actor, The Goodbye Girl Reader Reviews One of the most curious fads of the 70s was a sudden obsession with the 1920s and early 30s that was partially fuelled by the expectation that The Great Gatsby would be the next big thing. The Boyfriend, Lucky Lady, Valentino, The World's Greatest Lover, The Great Waldo Pepper, The Wild Party, Paper Moon, At Long Last Love, The Sting - you couldn't move in a cinema in the mid-seventies for all the flappers and gangsters molls. Inserts is one of the oddest examples, looking very much like a filmed play set in Hollywood (it never leaves the house) but shot in the UK by the backers of the soft-porn Confessions Of movies in what looks like an attempt to go upmarket while upping the breast count. The setup is certainly more promising than the execution, with Richard Dreyfuss' impotent Boy Wonder, once the biggest director in Hollywood, reduced to shooting porno films for Bob Hoskins shady producer in the house he never leaves with a junkie starlet (a surprisingly vivacious turn by Veronica Cartwright) and a mortician with delusions of star potential so stupid they call him Rex the Wonder Dog (Stephen Davies). Many of the great and good and forgotten of the silent era are name checked, particularly the drug addicted boy next door Wallace Reid, whose fate is partially replayed in microcosm with one of the Boy Wonder's cast members. Unfortunately the second half, which sees Hoskins' ambitious new girlfriend Jessica Harper (so anorexic here that her nude scenes seem to be played by her ribs) trying to get the one-time former genius to show her the tricks of the trade, really doesn't work and it seems hard to fathom exactly what writer-director John Byrum was trying to achieve. It's worth a look, particularly for anyone with an interest in silent cinema, but it's hard not to come away with a feeling of disappointment at the missed opportunities.

Inserts Available from Amazon Price: $12.99 Updated on 11-17-2008.

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