review for Nuts on AllMovie

Martin Ritt's Nuts is an unsubtle, melodramatic consideration of the boundaries of sanity, full of brow-beaten courtroom revelations and the kind of circus-like histrionics that would never be permitted in any real competency hearing. The film spends most of its 116 minutes in the courtroom setting, giving every character license for unlimited platitudinous grandstanding, which serves Barbra Streisand's fruitless pursuit of an Oscar nomination more than any sense of dedication to realism. Even the attorneys, judges, and psychiatrists, who should be on procedural autopilot, act way out of synch with their professional duties, while treating each of the defendant's button-pushing games as if they had the capacity to cut them deeply. As puzzling as anything is why Eli Wallach's shrink is so vilified, given the ample evidence that his diagnosis of mental instability is sound. Nuts is another case of Streisand's chronic misunderstanding of what roles she is suited to play. That this famously "ugly duckling" would be believable as a 500-dollar-an-hour prostitute is inane. She has a few strong moments, but only if she were considered a schizophrenic, rather than just mentally incompetent, would the wild fluctuations in her portrayal be justified. Hers is not the only case of strange casting -- with comic buffoon Leslie Nielsen appearing as a violent john, Nuts almost crosses over into unintentional spoof. This is a sad outcome indeed for a film that takes itself so seriously.