RICH AND FAMOUS, released in 1981, was lauded director George Cukor’s last picture, an update of John Van Druten’s play “Old Acquaintance”, first done for film in 1943 with Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins. This time the feuding friends are inhabited by Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen. Cukor’s celebrated career ended with a critical and commercial dud, undone by Gerald Ayres fatuous script and lazy miscasting in the supporting roles. Wobbling into 59th place for the year, marking a gross of $14,500,000, it fizzled next to the $11,500,000 price tag.

Spanning 1959 to 1981, the spite-suffused saga of college mates whose friendship endures one round of jealousy-incubated arguments after another (basically every time they get together) has ‘serious’ writer ‘Liz Hamilton’ (Bisset, 36) spatting and making up with ‘trash’ author ‘Merry Noel Blake’ (Bergen, 34), their battling and bonding affecting the dullard men in their lives and eventually Merry’s daughter (Meg Ryan, 19 in her debut).

Bergen’s okay, playing it broad, but the underrated Bisset is by far the best thing in the tonally lumpy mix. The script has a few good exchanges of snark, but in the main it’s pseudo-sophisticated, self-impressed and silly. The men are all blanks, and the two most important male characters—Merry’s disaffected husband and a younger reporter who rocks Liz’s cynical boat—are played by David Selby and Hart Bochner with about as much animation as golf bags.

With Steven Hill, Michael Brandon, Matt Latanzi, Dack Rambo and Joe Maross. If you’re quick and/or care, glimpsed in party scenes are Christopher Isherwood, Roger Vadim, Ray Bradbury, Marsha Hunt and Nina Foch.