Ick. Everyone's rich. Everyone's decayed. Everyone's white. Everyone's horny. Everyone's drunk. The subplot of a young adult with sexual feelings for her dad made me uncomfortable, and not in a "last scene of North by Northwest" way either. Strangely, Kirk Douglas just goes through the motions. Alexis Smith contributes nothing more than if she'd been typing into Stephen Hawking's voice machine. David Janssen is still hoping his looks will divert people from finding out he can't act. Melina's kind of interesting. And George Hamilton is good at putting down the idle rich by just playing one of them. Other than that, a waste of time.

Stunningly stupid movie. Young and beautiful January Wayne (Deborah Raffin) is crushed when her widowed father Mike (Kirk Douglas) marries rich Deidre Granger (Alexis Smith). It turns out that January has a thing for her father and hooks up with another older man (David Janssen) who her father hates. It also turns out Deidre is a lesbian and having an affair with the mysterious Karla (Melina Mercouri).OK Jacqueline Susann's book was hardly high art but it was a fun and trashy read. This movie sanitizes the book--all the sex is either cut out completely or off screen. Despite the R rating there's virtually no nudity--for some reason we only get to see Janssen's bare butt! Still it works. With the sole exception of Raffin the cast is very good. Douglas is OK; Smith looks gorgeous AND has fun with her role; Janssen is excellent in his part; Mercouri is only in one scene but she's fun and best of all is Brenda Vaccaro who was nominated for an Oscar here (!!!) as a sexually loose man-chaser. She grabs the movie, chews it up, spits it out and comes back for more! Her scenes are just great. Unfortunately Raffin is the lead here and she's beautiful--but lousy.This film wasn't a hit and disappeared pretty quickly. Still, out of all the Jacqueline Susann adaptations, this is easily the best. Faint praise I know but it's true. Worth catching--if you can. I give it a 7.

I haven't seen this in a while, and miss this rarely seen pic, which deserves a cult following. Deborah Raffin is outstanding as a gorgeous young girl with strange feelings for her Dad. She gets involved with an unhappy alcoholic writer, played by David Janssen. Brenda Vaccaro is outstanding as her beautiful but embittered friend who is desperate for a man. And Melinda Mercouri is memorable as a lovely lesbian. They knew they were making a piece of trash here, and it is well worth your time. Good job. I esp. like those corny singers at the end of the film which seem to have stepped out of a 1960s movie!Deborah is good and she is fortunate to have such a great ensemble cast to support her. Enjoy!

Jacqueline Susann's glamorous, emotional, highly personal novels always lost something in their translation to the screen. Once Is Not Enough is another prime example. But it doesn't have the unintended hilarity of Valley of the Dolls, nor the compelling sleaziness of The Love Machine. The most outrageous and memorable elements of the book are excised completely, and the result is two hours of sudsy romantic nothingness. Without the pills, vitamin shots, wild sex (including an acid-fueled orgy), and disturbing violence that infused the compelling novel, the story is as flat as week-old ginger ale.It's a slick production with an all-star cast, including the engaging Deborah Raffin as January, but the material is awful. The filmmakers' were obviously trying for a "respectable" approach, and the results are just plain boring. Case in point: Jackie provided the book with a surreal, escapist conclusion that's wholly amazing, whereas the movie just...ends. The book was about a naive girl trying to deal with life, and the movie is about--say it with me now!--LOOOOOOOVE! And it's like every other mediocre movie on the subject.However, things are brightened by Brenda Vaccaro in her Golden Globe-winning, Oscar-nominated turn as uninhibited magazine editor Linda Riggs. She's the perfect realization of Susann's character (albeit with toned-down material) and provides a lot more spirit than this tepid production deserves. Her performance alone merits a viewing, but everything else is a daytime-TV-style mess. About as shocking as a trip to the supermarket--perhaps even less so.