Although ["The Changing of the Guard"] is set in the present, its heart belongs to the sixties, when films were in ferment and directorial style was a heavy subject. Consider the plight of Richie Hall, a glossy international superstar who has come out of retirement from Beverly Hills to make a comeback picture in Paris. The script is something about the last days of Louis XVI and has been largely rewritten by the star himself; he sees it as a "vehicle" for his personality. But the director, a surly young brute arrogant with an auteur complex, has ideas that mingle naturalism with Grand Guignol. This is a conflict crying out for humor which is—sadly—an item in short supply here….

John Ehle takes these two poseurs [Hall and Sigler] more seriously than they deserve and tells us far more about their film than we need to know.