ROBERT DOWNEY SR.

Bil’s rating (out of 5): BBB

Alternate Title: Moment To Moment

USA, 1975. Goosedown Production. Screenplay by Robert Downey Sr., Elsie Downey. Produced by Raymond Lofaro, Max L. Raab, Bette Wanderman. Music by Arica, Jack Nitzsche, David Sanborn. Film Editing by Stanley Warnow.

The film’s original title, Moment To Moment, better conveys the impression that the viewer gets when watching this highly experimental, often esoteric work of avant-garde exuberance by Robert Downey (Sr.). As if switching channels on television, the hour-long film takes you through a series of disconnected situations all tinged with more than a small sense of surrealism, among them a game of baseball on horseback, men fighting over a conflict involving their sisters, and the drug deal that inspires the title. Elsie Downey, wife of the director, appears in multiple roles in many of the sketches, most of them designed, as the filmmaker’s work often was, to shake up our ideas of narrative convention while drawing attention to the insidious infiltration of commercial advertising into popular culture. The director’s future movie star son also makes a few appearances at the age of 10, in a film that will only hold appeal for those who are willing to accept its gleeful absurdity; all others might find their patience more than a little bit tested by the experience.