pnagy Reviews

The Turn of the Screw (1999 TV Movie)

Appallingly stilted

[4/10 · 30 October 2002]

First of all, I must point out that I've never seen other versions of Henry James' novel and neither have I read the book itself. Judged on its own merit, however, this film is 100 minutes of your life ill-spent.

Sometime in the mid-19th century, a governess goes to a country mansion to look after a boy and a girl, but begins to have sightings or visions of 2 dead people who are seemingly possessing the children, and gradually driving her mad with fear and anxiety,

I'm one who delights in all psychological thrillers (Sleuth is one of my favourites) but this lacks in any real horror or tension. "Horror" scenes involve the appearances of a mysterious but passive man and a woman, both thought to be dead. Ooh. Somehow there is never a sense of motivation for the heroine's behaviour, most of the time she comes across as an overreacting, hysterical fool. The children's "evilness" is also ridiculously innocent. I suppose in Victorian England you would be branded morally corrupted if your shoelaces got untied . For example: Niles goes out into the garden at night. "Miss" goes after him, and he tells her that he could have done this any night. The next day she rants to the housekeeper about him being given over to evil. What, I mean WHAT? The whole ghostliness and evilness element is handled with decided incompetence.

The script also contains a lot of very stilted lines, seemingly out of character, a lot of serious material sounds somehow ludicrous. This is only aggravated by bad acting. Jodhi May (the governess) seems to spend about 80% of her onscreen time with her eyes bulging and her mouth agape in disbelief. There are about 10 scenes where she is trying to convince the housekeeper about her visions, and all of them seem alike. Niles and Flora are also very badly portrayed. I know they are only around 10 in the story, but just about any other child actor (Haley Joel Osment, Nadia Mikhalkova) would have appeared less self-conscious and less reliant on the same facial expressions for their acting. And if you're a Colin Firth fan, don't bother. He only appears for the first 5 minutes or so.

4 out of 10.

Doing Time (1979)

Tremendously enjoyable

[8/10 · 1 April 2002]

Porridge concerns the lives of a group of prison inmates. The brilliant Ronnie Barker plays Fletch, cheeky, good-natured, optimistic, quick-witted and able to handle all the little foibles of the other prisoners and guards to his advantage. Think of an Ivan Denisovich without the Siberian background. The trouble begins when Mr Grout, an aristocratic crime boss at the top of the prison hierarchy, 'requests' Fletch to suggest to the guards a celebrity football match, where a team of famous faces will play a team of prisoners.

Never having seen the Porridge TV-series, I can't comment on any differences or similarities. However, it is hard to top the quality of this little comedy. The script is an excellent mix of character, witty word-play, amusing plot and some physical comedy, done in a way that only the British seem to do so competently. The situations in the prison are believable, and even the minor parts are well-rounded characters. Almost every other line contains some memorable gag. Some examples "Beware of him. He's known as the butcher of Slade Prison." "What did he do?" "Fiddled the VAT on some sausages." And then there's: "What's a peccadillo?" "South African bird that flies backwards to keep the sand out of its eyes." "No, that's not it. But I know what you're thinking of. That's called an armour-dildo." Oh, and how about that scene of the governor losing his self-respect and teeth in a huge pot of curry?

A brilliantly written and well-acted comedy. Highly recommended.

Casablanca (1942)

Overrated, formulaic romance

[1/10 · 9 September 2001]

Why is this film considered so brilliant? How can it be a classic? It is just another shallow, formulaic, cliche-laden Hollywood love-story, typical of pre-war Hollywood. For me this film is almost undistinguishable from that other 'great' romance of the time, the nauseating 'Gone With the Wind'. At least Casablanca doesn't go on for several hours.

The usual plot of old lovers reunited after many years, once again in some Hollywood interpretation of a gratuitous exotic location. Bogart looks depressed, Bergman looks pretty. And that's about all there is to it. No depth of thought or character. Flat, commercial acting from the leads, even flatter and more commercial direction and script. If you like old movies from the 40s, why not watch Citizen Kane? There's considerably more thought and originality there.

And I've never understood why people think the lines "Here's looking at you kid" or "Play it again, Sam" are *so* quotably witty.

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (1996)

Appalling trash

[30 September 2000]

Terry Jones has achieved what few people do. He has turned one of the greatest children's stories of the English language into an appalling mountain of garbage.

Kenneth Grahame would be spinning, nay jet-propelling in his grave if he saw this. It starts out well enough, Eric Idle in particular well cast as Ratty. The tragedy is that Jones decided to 'update' the story with some corporate-mindedly greedy weasels and throw in a few unnecessary song and dance numbers and the disaster is complete. The plot starts falling apart with some half-baked idea about a dog food factory in the forest.

Jones' Wind in the Willows thus loses all of the original's gentleness and especially the book's mystic ending. Children were more frightened by the film than amused.

Even a rare opportunity to reunite all the surviving members of the Monty Python team is wasted, John Cleese appears for less than a minute and Michael Palin is relegated to being Mr Sun, which is certainly less than what he is capable of. Instead we are allowed to 'rejoice' in Jones' dubious acting abilities as Mr Toad, surely he is by far the least talented Python.

Hopefully the disastrous failure of this film will ensure that Terry Jones does not vandalise any more children's classics in the future. I would hate to see what he could do to E. Nesbit's Enchanted Castle, for example.

Fierce Creatures (1997)

John Cleese's worst film

[30 June 2000]

It seemed that after the legendary Monty Python films and TV series, the brilliant Fawlty Towers and the hilarious A Fish Called Wanda, writer-actor John Cleese couldn't go wrong. But this is incredibly bad.

You can feel the desperation in this movie, hopelessly trying to latch on to Wanda's popularity and brilliance. The ending had to be reshot several times until test audiences approved. Cleese even included some references to Wanda and the Dead Parrot Sketch, as if to say "I know this is bad but I wrote Python and AFCW, so please forgive me."

The plot concerns some half-baked idea about a zoo being taken over by a money-for-the-sake-of-money Rupert Murdoch/Kerry Packer-type magnate, who sends his idiot son and an ambitious female manager to set things right in the zoo. The jokes are old and cheap, more like a Carry-On film than Python/Fawlty. Rather than laughing, it pained me to see such a talented cast as Cleese, Palin, Kline, Curtis and Aitken wasted in undeveloped roles as they waddle through this puerile, unfunny and badly written film.

How can people say this is better than Fish Called Wanda? There aren't any of those outrageously hilarious scenes like Wanda hiding in Archie's lounge room while Otto tries to cover up for her, K-k-ken assassinating the old lady's dogs or getting chips shoved up his nose, the scenes of complete confusion in court, etc. I think the box office takings speak for themselves: Wanda - US$150 million, Fierce Creatures - US$20 million.

I tried watching this film a second time, to see if it gets better, it didn't. It got worse. Whatever you do, forget this piece of trash and watch something by Monty Python or A Fish Called Wanda, which is John Cleese at his absolute writing and acting best.

Q5 (1969–1980)

Surreal, original, but rare

[30 June 2000]

Anyone who has ever read books on Monty Python will no doubt have noticed that the Pythons themselves credit this particular series as being their inspiration. Its first 7 episodes screened several months before Monty Python's first series. The influence is apparent. Spike had the same surreal and mad atmosphere, often showing deconstructed skits (ie. one with no props, with an on-screen title saying "BBC economy sketch". However, it has to be said that Milligan has a more visual humour than Python, he would never have produced 'The Argument Clinic' or 'The Cheese Shop.' There was a lot of profanity, risque jokes and sending up of the Royal Family, which no doubt explains why most of the series was never repeated. The quality of the comedy also varied a lot, some skits were so abstract that they were probably closer to Luis Bunuel than Monty Python: a sketch would just stop in the middle and the characters would walk about the stage, bumping into each other like robots. The costumes are always strange, and the characters often wear large plastic noses a la Raymond Luxury-Yacht from Monty Python. The later series have some hilariously funny scenes eg. a traffic cop asks to see a flying carpet driver's licence and is given a banana, or a Dolly Parton look-alike whose breasts double as bagpipes. There's also a lot of Goon Show references (Spike's Minnie Bannister voice). If you're a fan of the strangest of British humour, this is definitely worth a look, but be warned it is quite hard to find. The BBC recently showed a few episodes, and there's a 'best of' compilation available called 'Spike Milligan in the Best of Q'