'Kid' a college of polished glitz

Generally defined, a documentary film is one that approaches its subject with objectivity. When the very first title card to a documentary is, "There are three sides to every story: my side, your side and the truth...," that objectivism is being challenged. With this being the opening title to "The Kid Stays in the Picture," it quickly becomes apparent just where that objectivism lies: right out the window.\n"The Kid Stays in the Picture" is the unapologetically self-slanted story of "my side," which is Robert Evans' side. Evans glitzes his pitch with such schmaltzy self-glorification that it almost feels pornographic, and voyeurism has rarely been in such good fun.\nIt was while swimming at a Beverly Hills Hotel pool that Evans was discovered by actress Norma Shearer. After dabbling in the world of acting for awhile, he eventually found his home as the new young-gun producer of then-flailing Paramount studios. Obviously involved -- and if told by Evans, absolutely and integrally essential -- it was during his leadership that Paramount produced some of the best films ever made: "Rosemary's Baby," "The Godfather" and "Chinatown," just to name a few. Living his life with women, wealth and whatever suited his super-swinging style, Evans was the talk of the town and an American icon.\nOf course, every Icarus who gets to see the sun knows he's going to crash and burn, and this came to Evans in the form of a cocaine sting, the loss of the studio, a foggy link to the murder of a mysterious funder and his slick-backed, iconoclast image being ironically deconstructed by the people who had built him up. Evans was able to turn his life back around in the '80's and regain his status as a producer at Paramount.\nEvans provides the narration to this nostalgia-bleeding collage. With his gravelly voice and smooth jazz banter, he occasionally becomes campishly noir, delivering lines like, "Any man who thinks he can read the mind of a woman is a man who doesn't know anything at all."\nYou always get the vibe that Evans is trying to sell you something, and this works for the lounge-singer suavity of the first half. But when it comes to the second half, this pitiful peddling of justification and glossed-over details begins to go the way of the gimmick. Overall, this is a purely entertaining (if not completely factual) but completely fun film. Yet, I think less for your viewing pleasure and more for the safety of your wallet, wait for this one to hit a video store near you.