All that Jazz (1979)

Director: Bob Fosse
Stars:  Roy Scheider,  Jessica Lange
Plot: Based on Bob Fosse's own life, a Broadway Choreographer (Joe Gideon)  has a heart attack, while juggling a film, a musical, an ex-wife, daughter, and numerous mistresses.

I originally saw All that Jazz in the early 1980s and hated it. As a young man,  I had zero interest -or liking - for the "pervy",  middle-aged, Broadway Dance King and his heart trouble, obsession with death,  and women problems.

Re-watching it,  35 years later, I'm more sympathetic with Joe Gideon's heart problems and interest in death. And in the age of legalized MJ, Harvey Weinstein and Clinton-Lewinsky, caring about Joe Gideon's adultery, and prescription drug abuse seems absolutely quaint.

The first half is pretty good.  We get some nice production numbers, and excellent scenes between Scheider and his love interests.  But after the heart attack, the movie turns pretentious and repetitive -making the same points over and over.  And Damn, the 70s were REALLY the age of ugly.

A perfect encapsulation of the problem, is a  "Comedy Clip" about death that Fosse keeps playing over and over in the movie.  Modeled on a remark by Lenny Bruce, Fosse seems to think its funny or "deep" - which to someone born in 1927 and  raised on Bob Hope and Jack Benny it probably was. But to someone like me, its just dull & obvious.

Summary:
Despite some touching honesty, occasional inventiveness and good acting/singing, the movie is very uneven and too often repetitive, shallow, and dumb.  Designed to "shock the bourgeois" in 1979, its now just another failed, Fellini-light, 1970s movie.

Its amazing what time accomplishes.  There's no Business like Show Business (1954) was released 25 years after Broadway Melody (1929).  Technically Show Business is light years ahead of  Broadway Melody - but morally and artistically they aren't much different.  All that Jazz was made 25 years after Show Business - but might as well come from a  different planet.  Did we evolve or devolve? You make the call.