A country music star must turn an obnoxious New York cabbie into a singer in order to win a bet. Just finished watching 'Rhinestone' and to be honest i don't get the hate it got it was a fun and hilarious romantic comedy. With Sylvester Stallone going against type and giving one heck of a perfomance and Dolly Parton did a terrific job as well both acting and singing wise. The scenes where Stallone was singing and a funeral was happening under his apartment or when he started screaming, yelling and singing and the dogs and animals started running away were hilarious. This is an 80's underrated flick and nowhere near as bad as let's say fellow Arnie's Batman and Robin. (10/10)

Continuing my plan to watch every Sly Stallone movie in order, I come to Rhinestone.Plot In A Paragraph: Jake Ferris (Dolly Parton) must turn New York cabbie Nick Martinelli (Stallone) in to a country and western singer, in order to win a bet, which if she wins, would free her from her contract with sleazy nightclub owner Freddy Ugo (Ron Leibman). You can see why Sly thought teaming up with Dolly Parton would be a good idea. She had a flawless filmography. Her teaming with Burt Reynolds (who wasn't known for his singing talent either) was a huge hit, and 9 to 5 to taking her all the way to the Oscars. Yet it ended up being the biggest misstep of his career so far. Whilst his performance has its moments, as he sends himself up, Sly over acts awfully at times, and is clearly trying too hard. Dolly Parton is as great as she always is, giving us some catchy songs too. They are both hampered by awful dialogue and a poor script (how much of the blame falls to Stallone is debatable) in which Parton punches more people than Stallone.As once again Stallone could not help himself when it came to meddling with the script. Original screenwriter Phil Alden Robinson was so upset by his extensive changes to the original screenplay, that he considered having his name removed. He was convinced that having his name on a film of this "caliber" would look good on his resume.In an interview Stallone once said that if there ever were any films he wished he hadn't made, this movie was one of them. And (despite me having a bit of a soft spot for it) you can see why.

Rhinestone isn't such a bad film. In fact, I nearly gave it an average mark. Yet there's just one too many broad comedy moments (the howling dogs alone is worth a loss of a mark) and Stallone is just too self- consciously "comedic" at points, a clear indication of why his return to comedy movies seven years later was destined to never really take off.Yet there are some genuinely amusing moments in this film, and, while far from spectacular, it's probably stronger than the current 3.2 rating would attest. But where Rhinestone is significant is that it's almost the first sign of Stallone really losing his way.To this point his was still producing creditable work, and if early 80s pieces like Escape To Victory were slight misfires, his performance in First Blood showed an actor who still wanted to act, rather than react. But in 1983 the star was paid half a million dollars to place Brown & Williamson products within five of his films, and such an ethically questionable decision presaged a huge drop in his work. This was followed by directing a sequel to Saturday Night Fever, the narcissistic and pointless Staying Alive.While Rhinestone is okay if far from spectacular, it was followed by turning both of his most famous characters into cartoonesque jokes, a failed new character in the shape of the ludicrous Cobra and a laughably bad arm wrestling movie in Over The Top. He saw out the decade with okayish features in Lock Up/Tango and Cash, but the star who entered the 80s as a genuinely worthwhile actor left that same decade as something of a joke.

About as funny as an abortion. Watching Sylvester Stallone do comedy is like watching a jock in cheerleader attire dance at a high-school pep assembly; humor for the complacent-minded, the brain-damaged conformist, or your average sports enthusiast/Jim Belushi fan. The attempts at comedy in this flick are so crippled, so castrated, so anemic in intension, construction, and delivery, one almost feels light-headed with embarrassment. Stallone is NYC cabbie Nick Martinelli who's being groomed for country singer-stardom by Dolly Parton. This task, the movie reminds us, constantly, is as challenging as it will be ripe with comedic adventures--none of which the movie delivers. For the first hour, "Rhinestone" plays like a harmless, 1984 sitcom pilot. In its last 30 minutes, director Bob Clark decides (or was forced) to let a shameless, ego-dripping Stallone engage in enough free-for-all mugging, ad-libbing, facial slapstick, and moments of smirking self-mockery to make fans of Clint Eastwood's monkey movies appear subscribers to Cineaste. You know a comedy is doomed when so much self-indulgent effort on the part of its star can't compete with a sight gag of him stepping in a cow pie. I don't see how the supporting cast were able to function on this movie, aware of the fact that they were creating the comedy equivalent of a snuff film. And by the 3rd week of production, out of devotion to Rocky or Rambo, didn't the crew members feel compelled to ask, "Do I have to come to set, today?", this not out of spite for Stallone's vanity project, itself, but to not contribute to the humiliating spectacle of Stallone's self-immolation. In one memorable scene, Parton strums a guitar in her room, singing: "I stroke your perfect body..." Stallone interrupts by entering the room. Parton replies, "Perfect timing, perfect body." It's a romantic interlude almost as stirring as Stallone's musical numbers which the viewer, with his/her abdominal cavity slowly filling with dread (and nausea), soon realizes is actually meant to be taken seriously. Noisy, obnoxious, the flick lacks even a shred of bad-movie criteria for a night of laughs at the expense of its cheesiness. Rent "Staying Alive" if you want some legitimate, inadvertent hilarity. Here, the guffawing, over-acting movie extras in the background--compared to Stallone in the foreground--are preferable camera subjects. Here, sadly, the late Bob Clark engineers a train wreck of a movie.