Being There | Full Movie | Movies Anywhere

Name: Being There
Released: 1979-12-19
Cast: Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Jack Warden, Melvyn Douglas, Richard Dysart

Being There

PG
2h 10m
1979

95%

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What would happen if the American public got the leader it deserved? Peter Sellers plays an innocent and illiterate gardener who ends up the most influential man in Washington, D.C.--simply by Being There. Gentle and slow-witted Chance (Sellers) tends a garden on a palatial estate and knows nothing of the outside world except what he sees watching television. Then a limousine hits him, and everything changes. Elevated to celebrity status by the limousine's powerful passenger, Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine), Chance charms everyone, including the President of the United States (Jack Warden). Can his simple but wise gardening metaphors solve the country's complex problems? Chance helps peace grow and flourish in this comic, cautionary fable about the power of simplicity.

Director:

Hal Ashby

Producer:

Andrew Braunsberg, Jack Schwartzman

Writer:

Jerzy Kosinski

Cast:

Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Jack Warden, Melvyn Douglas, Richard Dysart, Richard Basehart, Ruth Attaway, David Clennon, Fran Brill, Denise DuBarry, Oteil Burbridge, Ravenell Keller III

Rotten Tomatoes® Score

TOMATOMETER®

95%

Critics Consensus: Smart, sophisticated, and refreshingly subtle, Being There soars behind sensitive direction from Hal Ashby and a stellar Peter Sellers performance.

Reviews

The Film Yap

Christopher Lloyd

Peter Sellers' last great performance came in this gently satiric look at the dawning mass media culture from the book by Jerzy Kosiński.

Alternately lovely and lacerating.

May 24, 2022

FULL REVIEW

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Joe Pollack

Under the direction of Hal Ashby, in his first film since Coming Home, Sellers gives an impressively disciplined performance, always taut and under control. The difficulty with the film, however, is that the screenplay is basically a one-joke story.

Devoid of finger-wagging, bellicose tirades, or emotional manipulation, Being There is a scathing commentary on politics and the media that points out how patently easy is it to fool people, often with their own willful, enthusiastic participation.

Among the sharpest of all satires, Being There, released in 1979, would be the last great film made by director Hal Ashby, who had the most extraordinary track record of any filmmaker of the 1970s.

February 14, 2022

FULL REVIEW