ridiculous rating

Not even bad in a good way

Highly Overrated But Still Good

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

I was quite surprised to find this made-for-TV movie on sale on DVD at Overstock.com Saturday, February 4, 2006 just one month ago, and naturally ordered it, receiving it just over a week later on Monday, February 13. Yet because I had seen it when it premiered on TV back in 1984, I had been in no immediate hurry to re-view it, and had thusly put it on the shelf and forgotten it. Well, Thursday night with nothing on TV but "American Idol" competition, I put it on, and it proved as entertaining as when all of America was introduced to it back then. In "The Cartier Affair," David Hasselhoff plays ex-con Curt Taylor, who owes the number one prison convict Phil Drexler played by the deliciously slick-tongued and slick-headed Telly Savalas of "Kojak" fame---well, in effect, his life for protecting him in prison. Upon his release, he is given a tip about a job by an associate of Drexler, who steers him to an employment agent who is on the phone with the manager of Cartier Rand, over-the-top TV soap actress played by then-Dynasty soap diva Joan Collins, whose long-stressed secretary had finally snapped and been taken under arrest after shooting up Cartier's mansion and half of her possessions. Cartier, whose love life with long-time lover Morgan, played by the dapper Charles Napier, is as unsatisfying as her job and relationships with sycophant other associates, demands a replacement secretary in a hurry; yet rather than put her trust in another traitorous female, she requests that they send over a 'male.' Morgan, however, insists on a female secretary for his lady love because he is jealous of any other man who looks at her. However, the employment agent, looking for an opportunity to rip off Cartier of her jewels, takes one look at Curt who has just arrived in response to the job tip he had been given, and comes up with a ruse to satisfy them all---he tells Cartier's manager that he has the perfect secretary for her, a man, who is---in a word, gay. So very straight "Knightrider" Hasselhoff is roped into playing gay secretary to very straight Joan Collins, who thinks she'll be able to carry her distance to him off---that is, until he walks in her door, the cutest gay man she had ever seen walking on two legs. And it wasn't that the fabulously youthful Collins looked too old for Hasselhoff in this movie; at a height of---I believe---6'4", David was tall and all, but all gangly arms and legs and looked like had stepped straight out of high school, with his baby-doll smile and too mesmeric eyes for any man to have. With a padded resume that gave him a typing speed of a ridiculously impossible 120 words per minute, David is just there to get the goods on her security system and give them to his employment agent---until he starts finding himself falling for the woman so unlike her actress persona and as much in need of a real friend as he is. Naturally, a romantic pairing with this new employee that Joan herself terms a "gay secretary-turned straight gangster" is inevitable. But as what is wrong in both their lives unravels and is thrown into chaos, aided by the unexpected intrusion of a ridiculous ex-girlfriend of Curt and partner-in-crime played by an outrageous Randi Brooks, Curt and Cartier have to rely on each other to keep alive and exonerate themselves amid a most comical flee from Hollywood by limousine and trek to Mexico by Volkswagen to recover the jewels stolen by the crooked employment agent that is going to breathe life back into the despairing Cartier, having both been written off her soap opera and ripped off by her manager, who has extorted her money and run off with a stiff female associate. And once they have destroyed the bad guys and done just that in an even funnier plane ride finale and Cartier has gotten Curt off the hook with number one prison convict Drexler, the movie ends with the two so similar to each other staring blissfully at the moon under shelter of a cave in the middle of the desert, where they have not the slightest idea of how they're going to get back to Hollywood the next day. But with all the romantic possibilities that lay ahead of them secluded out there alone on a long balmy night---who cares?