I feel bad for brilliant directors. They make one movie that isn't as great as their many other masterpieces and BAM! — it's thrown into the trash heap, classified as a miserable pile of dookie. Some (critics) like to designate a less successful film as an interesting mess; what they really mean, though, is that they can't decide if they liked the film or not — but one thing is for sure: it wasn't as good as (insert Oscar adored movie from a multiple-award winning director here). It's unavoidable — everyone wants an Orson Welles to have a career full of Citizen Kanes, nothing experimental, nothing tricky. Sigh. People are human, you know. It's hard to make a masterpiece!

As an admirer of Robert Altman's work (Nashville, Short Cuts), even the slightest of a failure remains watchable to me. Is it the overlapping dialogue? The devastatingly star-studded casts? The magnificent giganticness of the plot, the characters, the script? Not all of Altman's films are equally chatty — he is capable of going gloomy and dry (Thieves Like Us, The Long Goodbye) — but when he wants to go all out he goes all out. The Player, a Hollywood satire, featured nearly sixty celebrities making random cameos for the sake of making a cameo. Nashville had twenty-four main characters, all of them somehow as well-characterized as the last.

Ready to Wear, a fashion week parody, comes directly after The Player and Short Cuts — Altman's biggest successes of the 1990s — and it continues the trend of a large cast and cheerfully rambling dialogue. But arriving in the shadow of these terror twins can only be described as a sort of curse. Three is hardly a magic number, and Ready to Wear learned that all too soon, considering the critical destruction it faced upon its release. Altman died in 2006, his legacy coming in the form of the films I mentioned earlier; Ready to Wear, in the meantime, got filed away in the reject folder.

I've spoiled myself these last few years. I have only sat through Altman movies Ebert promised I would like — and I have yet to see one that I haven't admired in some way or another. Ready to Wear is my first wild card (it currently holds a 26% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, panned for "not being mean enough", "not being focused enough", etc). 133 minutes later, I can confidently say that I don't understand the lack of love for Ready to Wear.

Fine, the humor isn't as sharp as it could be (this is supposed to be a satire, after all). Okay, Altman and his co-screenwriter, Barbara Shulgasser, aren't decisive enough to really make consistent characters out of the massive ensemble. But I like Ready to Wear, along with its hiccups. Things to like include the setting, Paris, of all places; how extensive this fictional fashion week is, loaded with brilliantly timed cameos and dynamic catwalk sequences (soundtracked with Salt-N-Peppa, Björk, more); and, most significantly, the cast, which is possibly too ravishing to resist, including Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Lauren Bacall, (a scene-stealing) Kim Basinger, Julia Roberts, Tim Robbins, Forest Whitaker, Tracey Ullman, Sally Kellerman, Lili Taylor, Teri Garr and Lyle Lovett. Some portray insiders, some out, all compelling.

Problematic and sprawling as it is, Ready to Wear keeps us busy and keeps things charming — finding ourselves entertained is accidental. There's so much going on, so much to enjoy. So stop, please stop, thinking and comparing and underrating Ready to Wear because of Nashville and Short Cuts and M*A*S*H and The Player. You'll have a better time that way. There's much to savor. Altman pays homage to 1963's Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow by recreating its striptease scene with its now senior stars, Loren and Mastroianni, and the final sequence, featuring a scad of gorgeous (and nude) models, cements the film's carefree approach to do whatever the hell it wants. Sure, you should watch one of the Altman greats first (I won't name them again), but Ready to Wear acts as a smart pastime. You can't get all this from the September issue anyway.

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I missed Ready to Wear when it was released in 1994, and finally rented the film. I had great anticipation. The fashion industry was the next to squirm under Mr. Altman's cinematic scalpel. Altman assembled a large, talented ensemble cast as usual. The locale is the annual prêt-à-porter fashion show in Paris, as a multitude of characters descend on hotels, fashion houses, restaurants, and runways; their stories intertwining and crisscrossing across a pastiche of interlocking plotlines. It'll be just like Nashville, in other words, another Altman tour de force.

Oddly and sadly, it's nothing of the sort. Ready to Wear loses its way early, and drifts aimlessly along for its lengthy 133 minute runtime. The characters lack the depth of his other films; they're poorly defined and you never really feel you get to know them. The dialogue is shallow and lacks bite. Even the little things tend to annoy; why use sidewalk dog poop as a unifying symbol? What's the point to that?

All in all I found Ready to Wear disappointing and probably my least favorite of Altman's films.

In the tradition of Nashville and Short Cuts comes another interweaving mix of odd tales set during a Parisian fashion show with an all star cast.

Robert Altman is a true pro and one of American cinema's greats. Here, his slick directing, coupled with a snazzy and peppy soundtrack, and a veritable cornucopia of top actors keep things moving along well enough in his 1994 fashion satire to avoid boredom. But, unlike his other multi-strand tales like 'Nashville' and 'Short Cuts', the various stories never feel as satisfying or well connected.

In fact, several are almost perfunctory and have absolutely nothing to do with the fashion trade (especially the Robbins-Roberts & Everett threads, neither of which feel important and lack full resolution). And alas, even then, the ones that do offer nothing biting, insightful or new to say about this sometimes crazy and backhanded business except the same tired 'natural is more beautiful' spiel. It's a shame too as the film is never out and out boring, but it just makes me wish for more. It had everything needed for a great film, and it ended up being just an okay one.

Why, oh why, Bob?