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Sometimes there's an enormous gulf between conception and execution, and the one that separates the inkling of The Pickle from the finished product must be vast indeed. Writer/director Paul Mazursky is too intelligent a filmmaker to not have had some reason for creating this embarrassing mess of a movie, but what that reason may be is anyone's guess. Pickle's problems could fill an encyclopedia, but they start with the main character, an irritatingly unlikable, uninteresting, and, most damaging of all, entirely unbelievable figure. The first two flaws are bad enough, but it's the last one that sinks the film. Harry Stone, and the Hollywood he inhabits, are simply not based in reality, and without that basis, the satire has no real bite, point, or impact. This problem also damages Pickle's film-within-a-film, which is so bizarre in an unreal manner that it's impossible to accept that it would ever have been greenlighted by a major studio. It doesn't help that the snippets we see of it come across as simply strange rather than as the laugh riot they're intended to be. In addition, Pickle is filled with scenes that don't really end and suffer from trying to be both comic and serious, ending up only inane and maudlin. As Stone, Danny Aiello does his best, but the part overwhelms him. Dyan Cannon manages to turn in a compelling and very watchable performance, and Barry Miller and Stephen Tobolowsky score as extreme types played in an extreme manner, but no one else comes off particularly well. The Pickle really isn't worth the effort, except perhaps to diehard Mazursky fans.