A charmingly old-fashioned, genuinely romantic 60s drama, playfully riffing on the familiar friction generated betwixt 'Simple Small Time Boy & Sophisticated Big City Girl', the boy in question being the muscular, charismatic Rob, brought to studly, manfully moist life by the frequently bare-chested Burt Reynolds, playing an almost fetishistically masculine cowboy who fatefully meets the no less appealing Barbara Loden who plays Jean, a pin-up pretty assistant editor currently busy cutting a violent Mexicali western, their sweetly written romance soon blooms headily beneath the steamy heat of the desert sun. Director Jud Taylor shoots some truly breathtakingly beautiful postcard glossy vistas, and the roustabout Terence Stamp-starring film-within-a-film adds additional cinematic spice to the increasingly amorous affair of boisterously Bronco bucking Bob and his delectable, flaxen-haired beau Jean. Attractively set in the rundown, tumbleweed whimsicality of Moab, Utah, the kind of dusty, darkly poetic locale Merle Haggard wrote beer-sweet ballads about being kicked out of. 'Fade in' is, perhaps, a relatively slight film, but it's durn purty to look at, and one Burt Reynolds fans are sure to appreciate since it casts such a favourable light on the brawny Box Office beefcake! With its spell-bindingly vast exterior views, and filigree character detail, Fade In's lustre is little dimmed, and any negative connotations inferred by the erroneous 'Alan Smithee' moniker are wholly undeserved. Cult western fans might be interested to know that the film featured in 'Fade In' is 'Blue', directed by Silvio Narizzano, starring Terence Stamp, Joanna Pettet, and Ricardo Montalbán. Apparently there are a great many who actively dislike 'Fade In', happily, I am not one of them! And for the sake of full disclosure, I have always had a predilection for cinema about film-making, no doubt this has strongly influenced my admittedly rose-tinted review! As cinematically courting couples go, body beautiful Bob, and juicy-looking Jean are really quite adorable!
