'All That Jazz'

I was pleasantly surprised with this film. I expected little depth, bad writing, Roy Scheider and a bunch of dancing.

Instead I got a lot of depth and insight into this troubled character, this Joe Gideon who is a dope fiend, alcoholic and social vagrant trying to piece together some simblance of a career as a Broadway director and as an absentee father to his daughter, Michelle.

Soon, we learn that Gideon is leading a disaster of a life, committing a slow and painful suicide, as we find out.

The film kind of putters along until the very end when Gideon and all of the characters in his life perform this grand finale with Ben Vereen. Some mystical, "run to the light" show-stealer featuring Gideon's final goodbye.

It's actually really sad and surreal. The moment, in elated release, Gideon embraces his daughter and his daughter, with a sense of finality, embraces her father for the last time. As if she were taking a bag of old clothes to Goodwill.

The film is based on the life of Bob Fosse, the film's director and famed choreographer. He got the idea while he was in the hospital after a heart attack. All of the characters are based on real people.

It's odd because of where it landed many of the actors. It was the only film from Erzsebet Foldi, who plays Michelle the daughter. Leland Palmer and Ann Reinking's marginal careers ended shortly after (it was Palmer's final film ... although she's not dead) and Reinking did little afterwards.

Scheider would do "SeaQuest 2032." No fate was worse.