You Light Up My Life

When you come right down to it You Light Up My Life has one silly plot premise. Young Didi Conn is the daughter of second rate comedian Joe Silver who after living with this girl into her adulthood can't get it into his head that the young woman is not a second banana comedian. But he makes her wear a clown outfit, gives her a ventriloquist dummy and says with his tutelage she'll be funny.

Now he has to have heard her sing and heard her sing the songs she herself composed. Conn decides to spread her wings and fly, but in the process she loses Stephen Nathan the guy she was going to marry and finds out that producer Michael Zaslow whom she had a fling with is a rat. What the story is about is how Conn decides to deal with all those heartaches. And you're not sure she can because she is a fragile thing.

One of those songs that she wrote is the title song which was a mega-hit for Debbie Boone in 1977 and responsible for the film getting an Oscar for Best Song. The song really makes the film even though Conn only lipsynches the part.

Try as I might I could not wrap my mind around the fact the Silver legacy in show business had to be perpetuated by Conn the Clown and that a professional couldn't recognize talent. In the same situation in Ziegfeld Girl, Judy Garland was a second banana to her father Charles Winninger, but he saw what he was holding back. You're not sure that Silver ever does.

On the plus side Didi Conn is a touching figure and gives a wonderful performance as an eager show business hopeful. For her and for the song you should see the movie.

Here is a coming-of-age film that embodies everything 70's. It especially appeals to me because I was born in 1960 & was a teenager in the 1970's. If a teen watches this film today it would seem hokey, the cloths especially odd & unattractive, the music sappy, & the storyline threadbare. But if you were there, it has a special nostalgic quality that is undeniable. This is an interesting story about a young woman finding herself & her way through life. Instead of padding the story out with too many unnecessary shots of Conn driving her car, they should have fleshed out the characters a little more. The storyline was also choppy. One minute she's told she has a major part in a film & the next minute a deadpan blonde is hired instead. This sudden shift in the story is too abrupt a transition. Also, when she tells her dad about the offer from Columbia Records to record her songs, it came out of left field. (Perhaps this should have been something her character struggled with. Should she stay in California & contemplate making the film & starting a new a relationship, or go to New York & record?) DiDi Conn is very likable in the lead & the music adds just the right romantic touch.

After I watched the movie "You Light Up My Life," I sort of have mixed feelings about it. I can't decide if it's awful or terrible. I'm leaning more towards "awful," but there are parts of the movie that are "terrible" as well.

In "You Light Up My Life," Didi Conn plays Laurie Robinson, a young woman trying to make it in show business. She spends her days driving around Los Angeles in a 1960s convertible, acting in various odd TV commercials, and appearing in her father's TV show for kids. Her father, Sy Robinson (Joe Silver), is a Z-grade borscht-belt comedian who is totally clueless about the fact that he just isn't funny!

At the beginning of the movie, we see Laurie as a child, doing a stage act where she sits on a stool, holding a ventriloquist dummy, making unfunny jokes to a barely-laughing audience. (It's NOT a ventriloquist act - Laurie isn't "throwing her voice." She's just sitting there HOLDING the ventriloquist dummy, for some unexplained reason!)

As an adult, Laurie is STILL doing this lame comedy act, except now she's doing it before an audience of little kids, who only sit and stare at her in total confusion, not laughing at all! (These scenes are painful to watch!) Laurie tries to tell her father that the act isn't funny, but he refuses to listen to her, stupidly insisting, "It's all about timing."

One night at a bar, Laurie is almost literally "picked up" by Chris Nolan (Michael Zaslow), a curly-haired Lothario in a loud 1970's shirt with a wide collar. (He puts his arm around her and refuses to let her go while he's talking on a pay phone. If you know the history of the director, Joseph Brooks, you know how creepy this is.)

Chris takes her back to his apartment. The next morning, when he asks her to stay, she tells him she has to go to a wedding rehearsal.

"Whose wedding is it?" Chris asks.

"Mine," says Laurie.

Yes, Laurie just had a one-night stand, right before her own wedding! This is a shock not only to Chris, but to the audience as well. At this point, we're 20 minutes into the movie, and this is the first time that Laurie has even mentioned that she's engaged!

We meet her fiancé, Ken Rothenberg (Stephen Nathan), a self-absorbed tennis pro, who doesn't support Laurie's show business dreams, and peppers her with put-downs. It's never made clear why Laurie hooked up with this jerk, or why she is marrying him.

The wedding rehearsal scene is one of the few good scenes in the movie. At the wedding chapel, an idiotic wedding planner has two rows of bridesmaids and groom attendants pull a giant white clam shell on wheels down the aisle. The giant clam shell opens up - and Laurie and Ken emerge from inside it. Ken is humiliated by the whole thing, but Laurie's father, Sy Robinson, insists that everything at the wedding is going to be great!

I thought the wedding rehearsal scene was funny - but it didn't go far enough! If Laurie and Ken had gotten STUCK inside the giant clam shell, now THAT would have been HILARIOUS! ("Press the button, Ken! It opens the clam shell." "I AM pressing it, Laurie, but it's not working! Somebody get us out of here!")

Another funny scene worth mentioning is when Laurie and two other actresses are filming a commercial for frozen waffles, dressed in old-fashioned "farm housewife" outfits. The three actresses are placed in front of an American flag, and told by an oafish director how to sing the waffles jingle. "Sing it down on your knees, like Al Jolson." (I've heard actors like Morgan Freeman complain that they actually had to do silly commercials like this one when they were just starting out!)

A few days later, Laurie goes to audition for a musical film - and wouldn't you know it, her one-night stand Chris Nolan is the director! (A director named Chris Nolan? Yeah, right! Like that would ever happen!)

Laurie decides to sing him a song that she's written, "You Light Up My Life." As soon as she starts to "sing," you know right away that Didi Conn is just lip-synching the words, and her singing voice is being dubbed. Laurie's "highly-trained Broadway-caliber singing voice" does not match with Didi Conn's mousy, barely-audible, Brooklyn-accented speaking voice. (Ukrainian singer Kasey Cisyk did the dubbing, and sued Joseph Brooks when she wasn't credited in the movie.)

Throughout the movie, Laurie is so shy and soft-spoken and apologetic that even when she's being handed her "Golden Opportunity on a Silver Platter," she's still begging off! At the audition where she sings her song, when Chris is insisting that she sing, she keeps telling the orchestra conductor, "Oh, we don't have to do this now, if you don't want to!" (I was almost shouting at her, "Shut up and SING, you idiot!")

Laurie is such a major wimpette that you get the feeling a girl like this would never make it in cut-throat Hollywood! And if she did make it, she wouldn't be very happy. She seems to stay in show business because it's the only life she's ever known.

In "Grease," Frankie Avalon told Didi Conn, "You've got the dream, but not the drive." In "You Light Up My Life," Laurie has the opposite problem. She's got the drive, but not the dream. And that makes this movie awful and terrible to sit through!

Young woman working for her low-rent showman father struggles to break out from his shadow and follow her heart as a singer-songwriter. Joseph Brooks, who composed, wrote, produced and directed the film, might have used some assistance. His picture has a drab, TV-movie look and feel, with an elongated emotional breakdown for our heroine which turns her from plucky imp to vulnerable girl victimized by too much love. Brooks stages a funny wedding rehearsal, and his placement of the Oscar-winning title tune (which he wrote, natch) in the recording studio gives it an emotional lift, but the final tag doesn't tell the whole story. Hasn't Brooks ever heard of the one-hit wonder? *1/2 from ****

I missed an opportunity to see this movie, way back in 1978. Recently I got to see it. The first thing that surprised me - there was no Debby Boone. I always associated her with the movie. That apart, the movie is light weight, enjoyable entertainment. Basically it is the story of a young woman finding her dependence and breaking out of her fathers shadow. It reminded me of the movie "Valdez horses" aka as "Chino", with Charles Bronson. Nothing dramatic happens and it does not build up to any crescendo. Overall, it is recommendable and pleasant to watch and suitable for all ages. Robert