Inside Daisy Clover (1965)

I am a self admitted Natalie Wood fan and it was a small ambition of mine to see this movie in spite of the mixed reviews. I can see now why it has mixed reviews. You see, i can't decide whether it was good or bad either....

For me the good parts were Robert Redford as Wade Lewis, i defy you not love him just a little bit. Christopher Plummer as Raymond Swan and Ruth Gordon as Daisy's mother. I also really liked the ending.
The bad parts were: The film has pacing problems and a less than great script. The acting is melodramatic at times and Natalie Wood was noticeably too old to play the 15 year old Daisy (she was about 26 at the time.)

I enjoyed the film in spite of the huge flaws. But in some scenes i simply couldn't get past the melodrama. Wood was one of those stars where if she was good she was REALLY good, such as in Splendor In the Grass, Rebel without a Cause, West Side Story and Sex and The single girl (which was very funny IMO). But in this she came off a bit try hardish. Not to say she didn't have her moments. in the scenes where she hardly had to say anything, where the clunky dialogue didn't affect her, she shone and stole the scene. It was the eyes, they conveyed a lot of emotion. I think her best moment in this movie was a her breakdown scene, i think she had a flare for breakdown scenes.

I love Robert Redford and he was good with what he was given to work with, but his scenes aren't all that flash, but i can tell he tried and he was the second best supporting character (the 1st being Mrs Clover).

The movie takes place in the 30's and revolves around Daisy's whirlwind journey into stardom. The story is okay. But the fact we hardly see Daisy doing any work (except about 3-4 song and dances) takes it's toll on the plot. Maybe they could've added a scene or two to show us she actually does something. Daisy also seems a little erratic (even for a teenage girl), which makes her seem kind of crazy and it is hard to like her at first. But as the movie goes on it's easier and we really admire her by the end of the movie.

It is good the film has a sense of humour. Ruth Gordon injects some of this in her first scene where she  reports her husband missing, she admits he'd been gone for seven years, the cop asks her why it took her so long to report it and she answers: "well i only started to miss him this morning."

Overall i think it had more good in it than bad but it takes a while to pay off, i strongly recommend though that you stay watching it until the end. Because the ending is pretty cool.

"You're as sound as a roach" Raymond Swan (Christopher Plummer), Inside Daisy Clover.