People are voting emotionally.

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The King of Marvin Gardens like its predecessor "Five Easy Pieces" by the same director with Nicholson, isn't much of a film. A so called character study film, where nothing happens.Unfortunately I didn't know, otherwise I wouldn't of watched it. Anyway, the opening monologue by David was interesting, but the film was all down hill from there. The miss America pageant scene brought some joy, if only briefly. All the characters were mostly unlikable, Jason especially. Sally was the only one to show any real heart. It was all pretty pretentious, there wasn't anything here.

It's hard to imagine Jack Nicholson appearing in a film like 'The King of Marvin Gardens' today. The movie is a story of an introverted broadcaster and his hustling brother; there's an air of seediness to the portrait of a run-down, early 1970s, east-coast America; of doomed hopelessness about the the huckster's implausible vision; and of a terrific sadness in the way that the broadcaster finds a touch of glamour and excitement in hanging out with his brother for a while, although the two of them have nothing in common and surely nothing is actually going to turn out right. I've heard it said that Saul Bellow's 'The Adventures of Augie March' is the great American novel because of its optimism; but this is another side of America, post-Vietnam war, a world of fraudsters, impossible dreamers, and those just hunkering down to survive. As a film, and certainly as entertainment, it's weaker than Nicholson and director Bob Rafelson's earlier 'Five Easy Pieces', primarily because Nicholson's character here is fundamentally less interesting: it's a correctly restrained performance from Jack, but playing a man who has little capacity for change, and constrained by a story that's low-key painful, rather than exciting. Yet even if this is not a fun movie, it's a telling one. Pessimism, like optimism, remains part of the American landscape, as it is in every country; but it's a shame that it's been written out of the contemporary Hollywood vision.

Ever see a movie where you didn't like any of the characters? This movie is one of them. I know that in the early 70's, when it came out, I probably would have thought it "profound." In those days antinomianism, angst, the nihilism of the post-war nuclear threat, were still chic. The plays of Samuel Beckett were still fresh. And Hollywood was at the zenith of its "profound" era. I have re-viewed many movies from that time--movies I thought were so deep--and found them pretentious and wanting. I didn't see King of Marvin Gardens then, but I felt the same as during a recent viewing of The Deer Hunter, the first 2/3 of which were yawningly--guess I'll get a beer-- "profound." I won't see it again. So much of Nicholson's early work is so acidic I can no longer stand it. Five Easy Pieces? What a load of self-indulged artsy-fartsy hooey: the Nicholson character is so talented that he, like Zarathustra, comes down from the mountaintop, becomes a roughneck, takes up with a proletarian woman, and later selfishly says the hell with them both. (Sometime in the mid-80's I wrote him off until About Schmidt, where does a bang-up job.) In King of Marvin Gardens, he sounds like he's on the same bad pot-high, during his radio monologues, as he was in the camping scene in Easy Rider: talking about Venusians or...huh?. As for the rest of the cast: Bruce Dern, would do better in construction than acting; Ellyn Burstyn, really should have concentrated on organic gardening and psychoanalysis. The movie's real star was the backdrop of Atlantic City, then on hard times. All those old hotels and faceless old-folks who, no doubt, still remembered its heyday, were wonderful. They kept me through it to the end.

It was the 3rd movie that i've watched from Rafelson in his golden 70's era (after Five Easy pieces n Stay Hungry).I found it brilliant. it could be named as "Five Easy Pieces,part ii". all of director's elements are present here:the story of frustrated Americans in 70's, their alienation from their families(i just reminded that poetic sequence in the final of " 5ive Easy Pieces",where jack talks to his handicap father n the symmetric sequence in "Marvin Gardens" is at the beginning when Jack narrates a fiction story about his grandfather).the movie truly criticizes the "American dream" and Rafelson is definitely 1 of the first directors who dared to create the story of this disillusioned generation with poetic n compelling structure.i am afraid that i'll remember "Marvin Gardens" by one sequence n 1 quote: the scene where two brothers arrange a show to elect(!) Miss America. that's a fantastic satire about "opportunism-like" evaluation of American dream.and the quote in near final where Jason (Dern) says: "if everything don't work out for you like magic,then it's all a mirage"...