Curtain Call [It All Came True] *** (1998, James Spader, Michael Caine, Maggie Smith, Polly Walker, Sam Shepard, Buck Henry, Frank Whaley) – Classic Movie Review 11,384

Curtain up on director Peter Yates’s slick and entertaining 1998 supernatural romantic comedy Curtain Call spotlighting a hapless publisher (James Spader) who buys a long-uninhabited Manhattan townhouse and is haunted by the bickering ghosts of a theatre impresario (Michael Caine) and his actress wife (Maggie Smith). Spader has a business in trouble and a girlfriend (Polly Walker) who is also being pursued by a US Senator (Sam Shepard).

Ideally cast Caine and Smith, rewarded with all the movie’s funniest dialogue, spar to perfection in this delightful entertainment that is only let down by its thin plot. With less to go on, the undervalued Spader is jolly good, too, while Sam Shepard, Buck Henry, Frances Sternhagen and Marcia Gay Harden give reliable support.

Unfairly, it bypassed the cinema and DVD and went straight to satellite in the UK.

Caine and Smith also starred together in 1978’s California Suite.

Also in the cast are Polly Walker, Frank Whaley, Peter Maloney, Nicky Silver, Phyllis Somerville, Julianne Nicholson, Susan Berman, Valerie Perrine, and Todd Alcott.

Peter Yates’s last film made for the cinema, it was re-released as It All Came True.

Curtain Call [It All Came True] runs 94 minutes, is written by Andrew S Karsch (story) and Todd Alcott, photographed by Sven Nykvist, produced by Andrew S Karsch, is scored by Richard Hartley, and edited by Hughes Winborne.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,384

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