The first narrative feature film by documentarian William Friedkin is a Sonny and Cher variety hour (and a half)? That's such a weird place to start his career, but okay. I have no real problem with loose narratives and variety-like presentation, but Good Times tries to strike this balance between having a story with expected payoffs in the pathos department while dedicating far too much of its runtime to three sketches that don't end up actually contribute to anything while not being nearly funny enough on their own to justify their existence otherwise. I mean, Sonny and Cher were an entertaining duo (this was the first thing I've seen of them, and it's obvious enough). Sonny has a stronger grasp of the comedic angle, and Cher is the better singer. However, that's about all that the film offers for entertainment save for George Sanders' dry and witty delivery.
Sony and Cher play themselves being courted by Mr. Mordicus (Sanders) to make a film. Sonny shows up to the meeting and is all for it. Cher skips the meeting and doesn't want to do it. Sonny only agrees because Mordicus allows him space to rewrite as he wishes. After the meeting, we get our first extended, unrelated sequence as Sonny imagines himself as a sheriff in a Wild West town. This stand-alone sequence has some moderate entertaining appeal as Sonny plays up a sort of early Woody Allen-esque buffoonery as he scares off a heavy with silliness while simply taking the punches. I mean...there's some moderate entertainment here, but it's not much. It crescendos with Sonny and Cher singing "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing," a fun musical with a lot of dancers and colors and is probably the height of the film's charms. The sequence ends with Knife McBlade (Sanders) showing up in town like the bad guy in High Noon, except he gets to shoot Sonny in the face, ending the fantasy in Sonny's head.
Going back home, Cher and Sonny are suddenly in a fight because, offscreen, Sonny bought a motorcycle. This bit of bickering is broken up with visiting Mordicus' office where he reveals the set getting put up for the movie production which should start in ten days. Both Sonny and Cher are underwhelmed by the proposed story, and Mordicus allows them the ten days to come up with what they want. After the pair sing "Trust Me" and "It's the Little Things", we get our next extended fantasy sequence: Sonny as a Tarzan-like man in the jungle, Cher as his Jane, and an ambling, aimless bit of business about...checkers? Out of the three fantasy sequences, this is the least interesting and dullest. I mean, it's got some very base entertainment here and there, but it's not much.
We return to the real world for a hot minute before Sonny imagines himself as a noirish detective, and this is probably the most Zucker Brothers-like the film gets in terms of its zaniness. It's colorful and weird, and I kinda dug it. Sonny walks around carrying six guns in his comical holsters along his belly. Cher plays dual roles. There's a shootout. It's kind of dumb and has no real point, but it's slightly amusing as it plays out.
At this point, I wasn't exactly on the film's side, but I was tipping the scales slightly in its favor. It wasn't good, but I had some decent moments of entertainment along the way.
And then the final motions of the "plot" get progressing, and there's this heavy emphasis on pathos as the core pair have a fight, Sonny has to stand up to Mordicus, and there's earnestness about the breaking relationship between Sonny and Cher that simply doesn't feel right at all. The film was suddenly taking itself far too seriously in its final moments as a bit of drama that had only been playfully touched suddenly gets amped up to relationship ending levels that I cannot believe an audience would buy into.
So, it's something of a mess. The individual sequences could stand on their own as mild, but overlong, entries in any variety show. They take up at least an hour of the 90-minute screentime, though, leaving 30 minutes for this bit of plot about Sonny and Cher making a movie, or not really making a movie at all, and not really dedicating to it.
It does feel like everyone had a good time, though.
