For Pete’s Sake *** (1974, Barbra Streisand, Michael Sarrazin, Estelle Parsons) – Classic Movie Review 2266

Director Peter Yates’s frothy 1974 comedy is one of Barbra Streisand’s least substantial movies but it’s still likeable, light-hearted and fun. It pairs her with the equally likeable, light-weight Michael Sarrazin. Then and now, there’s a tiny little place for this kind of movie.

Featherweight though it is, it is an engagingly amiable, entertaining, light-as-air farce that provides a good quota of boisterous laughs. Streisand stars as a Brooklyn housewife called Henrietta Robbins, who indulges in a series of nutty, not to say far-fetched attempts to help her broke cab driver husband Pete (Sarrazin) that include becoming a hooker and then joining the Mafia to provide the money he needs to get rich by investing in pork bellies.

Working easily within her usual comedy comfort zone. Streisand’s amusing, raucous performance lifts Stanley Shapiro and Martin Richlin’s too easy-going, screwball screenplay up a couple of notches and keeps her fans chuckling merrily.

Sarrazin is a welcome, genial presence in one of his biggest movies, and Estelle Parsons and William Redfield as Helen and Fred Robbins and especially iconic Jewish star Molly Picon as the grandmotherly Mrs Cherry who operates a prostitution ring help a lot.

British director Yates (who died on January 9 2011, aged 81) was happy in San Francisco with Bullitt (1968) though here he seems as out of place in the centre of Brooklyn with a screwball comedy as the film’s rustled cattle is there, but never mind. The movie gets a certain buzz and freshness from being filmed on location in Brooklyn, New York City and Los Angeles.

Also in the good cast are Louis Zorich (as Nick Kasabian, the dispatcher), Vivian Bonnell, Richard Ward, Heywood Hale Broun, Vincent Schiavelli, Fred Sutthman, Ed Bakey, Peter Mamakos, Norman Marshall, Jack Hollander, Sidney Miller, Anne Ramsey, Bill McKinney and Martin Erlichmann.

The title tune was written by Artie Butler and Mark Lindsay, former lead singer of Paul Revere & the Raiders.