Barbra Streisand has always been more of a movie star than an actress, which is fine for fans like me but can make her movies difficult for non-fans to enjoy. There are exceptions, of course: "The Main Event," which was just plain insufferable for fans and non-fans alike, and "Up the Sandbox," a forgotten gem in the Streisand filmography that even the non-fans can appreciate.

Ironically, Streisand gives her most naturalistic performance in a movie about a housewife who frequently escapes into fantasies, like debating Fidel Castro and joining a band of revolutionaries who blow up the Statue of Liberty. It's also ironic that "Sandbox," the first movie made by Streisand's Barwood Productions, is one of the few times she seems to have checked her ego at the door, more concerned with embodying a character than how she's lit. This was the movie for which she deserved a second Best Actress nomination, even more so than "The Way We Were."

Not only is Streisand's performance more natural, the fantasy elements seem organic in the way director Irvin Kershner introduces them. There are no swirling blurs or harp music, heretofore the usual way filmmakers signified a character was fantasizing. Instead, Margaret does something mundane, like going to her husband's (David Selby) office, but upon seeing he's been chatting with an attractive female colleague decides to voice here suspicions about an affair. The confrontation takes a strange turn and then we learn the scene was all in Margaret's mind. This approach to handling fantasy is so commonplace now that it's even been employed in pornography, but apparently it was enough to confuse audiences when this movie was released with a resounding thud in 1972. (The movie's poorly conceived trailer didn't help.)

Of course, a movie's commercial success has little bearing on its quality and "Up the Sandbox"'s quality is far greater than its box office take. It's not a masterpiece by any stretch - the tone is often spotty and some of the fantasy sequences are a bit silly - but "Up the Sandbox" deserves higher acclaim than it receives. Also appearing in the movie are future sitcom stars Isabel ("The Jeffersons") Sanford as the maid of Margaret's overbearing mother (Jane Hoffman) and Conrad ("Diff'rent Strokes") Bain, as Margaret's bored, chauvinistic gynecologist.