The first 30 minutes or so of "For Pete's Sake" are amusingly on-target: Brooklyn housewife Barbra Streisand drops her husband off at work on their motorcycle and then pops a wheelie; she proceeds to forge a battle of the bills with the grocery store cashier, the insurance company, the banker, and the telephone company exec (Anne Ramsey, pre-"Throw Momma From The Train"). All this time, Streisand is in terrific comedic form, her expressions more and more incredulous. A dinner with her husband's relatives is equally funny, but "Pete" starts to give out somewhere after this. Barbra can't pay back loan sharks and has to work as a prostitute, a bomb deliverer and a cattle rustler. This last job gives the movie its big slapstick scene, which was a groaner even in 1974. Clearly a rip-off of Streisand's "What's Up, Doc?", it features a stampede of cows down the Columbia backlot accompanied by some of the silliest "country" music I've ever heard. If the filmmakers had kept the movie on a grounded level--and kept Streisand as the perfect Everywoman--this might have been a dead-on satire of the ailing economy. As it is, it's passable fluff. **1/2 from ****
