For Pete's Sake (1974)

IMDb plot summary: A housewife tries to finance her cab-driving husband's education.

Directed by Peter Yates. Starring Barbra Streisand, Michael Sarrazin, and Estelle Parsons.

For Pete's Sake stars Barbra Streisand as a housewife who manages to scrounge up some money for an investment deal her husband has learned about, but when the deal stops looking so certain, she has to find a way to pay the money back. That sounds like the premise of a crime film, but this one is played entirely for comedy, with Streisand's characters going to greater and greater lengths to try to get the money quickly. It's easy to see the inspirational line between this and What's Up, Doc? from just a year earlier, another zany screwball comedy starring Streisand as a well-intentioned woman sowing chaos wherever she goes. This one isn't quite as smooth. There are a handful of funny one-liners and situations, but overall the situations are hard to laugh at with the sort of broad comedy this is aiming for, especially in a very uncomfortable section of plot where Streisand attempts sex work to raise the money and her deep discomfort is played for laughs but mostly comes across as horrifying. Add to this the fact that her husband is a deeply unlikable character and it's hard to empathize with her desire to make everything work out for him, and the stakes are in the wrong place for this to really work. As I said, some good moments, but it falls flat.

How it entered my Flickchart:

For Pete's Sake > The Ghost and the Darkness

For Pete's Sake < Safe

For Pete's Sake < The Romantics

For Pete's Sake < You Can Count on Me

For Pete's Sake < Summer of Soul

For Pete's Sake < Hans Christian Andersen

For Pete's Sake > Following

For Pete's Sake < Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles

For Pete's Sake < A Silent Voice

For Pete's Sake > Dodsworth

For Pete's Sake < The Girl on a Motorcycle

For Pete's Sake < VeggieTales: Madame Blueberry

Final spot: #1842 out of 3751, or 51%.