Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
Director
Peter Bogdanovich
Cast
Ryan O'Neal,
Burt Reynolds,
Tatum O'Neal,
Brian Keith,
Stella Stevens,
John Ritter
Genre
Comedy
In this heartfelt valentine to the early days of moviemaking, bashful Leo Harrigan stumbles into his job as a film director and finds success in his career. But Leo has problems as well—while fighting to avoid unfair industry practices from bigger companies, he is also navigating being hopelessly smitten with his leading lady.
The A.V. Club by Nathan Rabin
Bogdanovich’s affection for film’s embryonic beginnings informs every frame, from the machine-gun crackle of snappy banter smartly executed to meticulously choreographed pratfalls and comic fights to silent-movie-style intertitles.
Newsweek by Jack Kroll
Nickelodeon is Bogdanovich's sweet funny homage to the days before World War I when America played with its new toy, the movies, in those converted storefronts or jerry-built pantheons where for a nickel you could enter the new magic darkness of electric centuryIn that flickering, faintly salacious darkness, a new innocence was born. [27 Dec 1976, p.56]
Variety
Peter Bogdanovich's film is an okay comedy-drama about the early days of motion pictures. Story begins with a group of barnstorming filmmakers in the pre-feature film era, later segues to the adolescence of the industry.
Variety by Staff (Not Credited)
Peter Bogdanovich's film is an okay comedy-drama about the early days of motion pictures. Story begins with a group of barnstorming filmmakers in the pre-feature film era, later segues to the adolescence of the industry.
TV Guide Magazine
An attempt by director Bogdanovich to capture his great love of early movies in a full-length motion picture.
The New York Times
Nickelodeon is two hours and two minutes of impersonations.Some of them are very good impersonations—deft and funny—but they lack a life to string them together.
The New Yorker by Pauline Kael
It sounds promising, but Bogdanovich attempts an exercise in style, and the result is sustained clutter.
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
A curiously flat movie. It functions like clockwork and it looks right, but it doesn't feel like much.
Chicago Reader by Dave Kehr
Bogdanovich is trying to do an interesting and commendable thing in dramatizing aesthetic passion; his failure is as noble as it is conspicuous.
TV Guide Magazine by Staff (Not Credited)
An attempt by director Bogdanovich to capture his great love of early movies in a full-length motion picture.
The New York Times by Richard Eder
Nickelodeon is two hours and two minutes of impersonations.Some of them are very good impersonations—deft and funny—but they lack a life to string them together.
Time Out
The direction is agonisingly pedantic for a comedy, and leaves O'Neal and Reynolds totally exposed, mugging away in charmless and clumsy fashion.
Time Out by Staff (Not Credited)
The direction is agonisingly pedantic for a comedy, and leaves O'Neal and Reynolds totally exposed, mugging away in charmless and clumsy fashion.
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