Change Your Image
cmon3590
Reviews
Australia (2008)
It could have been great!
It could have been great, a real epic, but alas, this movie wilts under the pressure of bad acting and misguided direction! But it began with the casting: why Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman? Jackman is far too much the pretty-boy for a rugged character such as "Drover" (if you ask me, Russell Crowe would have been much more suited to the role), and Nicole, well, Nicole simply can not act! Even within the rather broad bounds of a post-modernist, mixed genre text such as this, Nicole's acting is hammy and highly overdone - not in a witty, tongue-in-cheek way, but just in an "I can't act" kind of way!! The scene where she is singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow to Nullah (the little half-caste boy) is painful to watch, with her forced "upperclass" English accent, vague facial expressions and over-directed hand gestures leaving one cringeing in their seat. What should have been a funny (as the character obviously can not sing), tongue-in-cheek (due to the shameless borrowing from the Wizard of Oz), yet touching scene (remember, Nullah's mother has just died) where two people from extremely different backgrounds reach out to each other, instead becomes a farce where the audience can almost hear the director shouting "move your hand like this Nicole; tilt your head like that!" The cleverness and dimension that the scene should have had is cheapened and instead, the moment descends into pure pantomime.
And then there's the "walk" .. oh, the walk! Kidman seems to have glanced at the script, seen that her character is a "lady", and then proceeded to create a highly superficial, hammed-to-the-hilt walking style that even a first year drama student would be chastised for using! In fact, so camp is "Lady Sarah Ashley's" walk that I'm sure even Mr Humphries from Are You Being Served would have recoiled from embarrassment upon seeing it! The casting of David Wenham (who is brilliant as the evil cattle-station owner, Neil Fletcher), Jack Thompson and Brian Brown as rugged, very Australian characters was highly appropriate, and made you lament even more the film's wasted potential. These highly experienced, talented actors gave the movie the dimension and weight that it needed (fantastic to see Brian Brown playing a sinister character), only to have it snatched away again by the relative flimsiness of Jackman and overt rigidity of Kidman.
The movie mixes drama, pathos, action, adventure, comedy and politics, and concept-wise had the potential to be another post-modern work of art for Luhrmann, Romeo and Juliet style. At times, you feel the multifaceted storyline and awesome cinematography (wasted if you see the movie on DVD) is enough to carry what's bringing the movie down - primarily, Kidman's bad acting, but ultimately, even these things are not enough. Just when we think we are seeing a spark of personality in Kidman's "Lady Sarah" she pulls back again and leaves us with nothing. Even in the very important scenes where she is supposed to be emotionally connecting with the (now orphaned) half-caste boy (played excellently by little Brandon Walters), Kidman's "lady", who could have really shown another side to her stiff-upper-lip personality, instead remains largely cold and detached, showing only brief, over-acted (on behalf of Kidman) bursts of emotion here and there.
If you must see this movie then go see it for the cinematography, the political message or just to be able to say "I've seen it", but don't expect to be blown away or forever changed, as that potential was sadly lost here.
Mr. Bean's Holiday (2007)
Never Bean a Movie Star
The jokes in this movie aren't new. We've seen them all before. I'll admit, it was a better movie than "Bean" or "Johnny English", but it was still lacking the originality in gags and plot that make a movie worth watching.
Rehashing of jokes aside, I've long thought the "Mr Bean" style of humour doesn't translate well to the big screen. The "Mr Bean" character works in sketch comedy because he is so quirky and distanced from reality. He is incredibly funny, but his interactions with others are very personal - what we see is mainly from his point of view, and so his world is very specialised. This is easier to get across in a series of eccentric sketches, rather than on the big screen, as everything movie-length and movie-size has to bigger, better, shinier, etc, not "quaint" or introverted. Another problem with these movies, I believe, is setting. In the TV series, "Bean" is always in a very low-key (and again, "quaint") environment (middle-class London) which he is easily able to upset, though still be tolerated in. However, put him in sunny Los Angeles or avant garde France, and suddenly, nobody is prepared to indulge him any more. People just see him as some kind of freak that is getting in their way, and all the humour is killed. If "Bean" is not indulged, then "Bean" is not "Bean". The Python gang were able to maintain a pleasing level of intellectual absurdity while still making films like "Holy Grail" and "Life of Brian" very watchable on the big screen, however, somehow I think the "Mr Bean" style of humour is too obscure to be able to do that.
Anyway, my advice would be not to go out of your way to see this movie .. wait for the DVD, and maybe smoke some funny cigarettes or drink lots of champagne to help the experience along. Little kids may like it, but to adults I say, be cautious, particularly if you're a genuine fan (as I am) of Rowan Atkinson's TV comedies and stage work.
School of Rock (2003)
School of Puke
I'm glad to read the other 'hated it' reviews and see that other people were as annoyed by this film as I was! I only caught it on TV, so didn't actually waste any money on it. I was able to walk away from the TV too .. another great plus! The only reason I didn't change channels is because other people in the room wanted to watch it (they also concluded it was lame, by the way). So what is wrong with this movie? Well quite a lot, actually. As other people have mentioned, the script is almost a direct rip off of Sister Act II and other 'conservative people rock out in the end' type movies. This makes it tiresome and banal, as one keeps anticipating an unexpected digression from cliché that never actually happens.
But I guess the worst problem in this movie can be summed up in two words - Jack Black! What a hyped up, overly energetic, frustrated Led Zepplin wannabe this guy is! His persona seems to totally dominate everything in this movie, and his screaming attempts at rock singing are almost enough to turn me off some of my favourite music! Maybe I could have tolerated (only just!) some of this if the script was any good, but since it wasn't .. I couldn't! Consider this - school kids play loud rock music during class at conservative private school and nobody knocks on the classroom door to investigate!! Nobody hears the music flooding down the hallway or if they do, they don't take any notice!?? This isn't just a stretch of reality, this is now the realms of fantasy; bad, mindless fantasy! SOR is obviously not a serious movie, but it is still meant to be reality-based, however .. it isn't! There are a few good sentiments in the film, like when 'Dewey' (Black's character) tells his class that the purpose of rock n' roll is not girls or drugs but 'sticking it to the man' (even though he proceeds to train them up to perform like little monkeys). I like this anti-drug sentiment in a movie involving kids. However, none of this can detract from Black's OTT annoyance factor!
Bad movies can leave you with a variety of different feelings but this one, I have to say, left me feeling depressed more than anything else. I guess it was the overall sentiment - little kids giving up valuable education to play music they are too young to really understand yet. There's something exploitative (albiet, ridiculous) about small children being drawn into the 'cock rock' aims of some dude that's just been fired from a band and has lied his way into becoming their school teacher. Sure, introduce them to the music, but don't force them to perform it every day. Didn't the Jackson Five teach anyone anything?
1 out of 10
Girls' Night (1998)
Worth a Girl's Night In
I saw this movie for the first time on Australian TV last night and was really impressed by it.
It focuses on the lives of two English working-class best friends, one of whom becomes terminally ill soon after learning she has won big in a lottery. This theme may sound somewhat clichéd, but that's not how it transfers to screen in this movie. The topic of cancer is handled realistically yet respectfully (for example, no graphic scenes of pain or vomiting, etc), and the relationship between the best friends (Jackie and her soon-to-be sick friend, Dawn) is poignant in it's portrayal. Because of the typically down-to-earth British-style acting, you are not left feeling that you've simply fallen for another tear-jerker, rather, that you've actually experienced something that could easily be a tragic, real-life scenario.
It wasn't sappy or melodramatic at all, although having said that, cancer IS dramatic, so even it had been handled this way it wouldn't have been a problem for me. The scene where Dawn says that an angel visited her in a dream and kissed her on the shoulder made me want to cry. She seems just like a vulnerable child here, which is what serious illness does to people.
Many people in today's society take things like international travel for granted. But for many folk out there, particularly the sort of characters portrayed in this movie, such things are only ever imagined. So when Jackie takes her dying friend Dawn to Las Vegas for one last blast, personally, I found it very touching. Dawn's character probably never thought something like this could happen to her (or that she would win big in a lottery in the first place!) so you really feel for her and want her to enjoy herself. This part of the movie also provides a good opportunity for some of the movie's lighter moments, for example, when Jackie and Dawn become like giggling teenage girls again over an attractive hotel porter!
The only thing that was a little depressing for me was the apparent lack of any real relationship between Dawn and her kids. They are portrayed as quite bratty, but as a dying woman I kept expecting Dawn to try and form one last close bond with them, which never seemed to happen. It would have been nice if we could have seen Dawn's kids (and her husband) sharing in her life's revelations as well, not just her best friend/sister-in-law, Jackie.
Overall though, I was really touched by this film. It is humble where it should be humble, dynamic where it should be dynamic. Both the main actresses (Walters and Blethyn) do a superb job and seem to really understand the characters they are portraying. I recommend it to anyone to watch, particularly women.
Pulp Fiction (1994)
'Fiction' or something more sinister?
I agree totally with the people here who have said, among other things, that Pulp Fiction is gratuitously violent, morally corrupt, and designed to appeal to hormonally imbalanced young males. I first saw it when it came out in 1994 and as I watched, couldn't understand why the other people in the room (my friend and her parents) were not outraged like I was. One of the more horrifying scenes that will always stand out in my mind is where a young black man is murdered and then his body dumped into the boot (trunk) of a car like a discarded shop mannequin. All this, supposedly in the name of 'art'.
People say life doesn't imitate art but I disagree. How many kids saw Harry Potter and then went home and pretended to be wizards? Of course people are influenced by art, and even if they are not influenced directly, the overall sentiment or message will often leech it's way under the skin. So what kind of message are we sending out about how we treat human beings with movies like this? Why is spraying bullets into someone's head and then making jokes about how their blood will be cleaned out of the car their body has been dumped in something we want to put on film?
It worries me that Tarentino knew he'd have a market for this kind of movie; Obviously, some of us want to see a movie like this ... disturbing, I believe.
No amount of sophisticated direction or stylization can be used to justify this kind of travesty. Quentin Tarentino, you ought to be truly ashamed of yourself.
Too unworthy to even rate.
Scooby-Doo (2002)
Scooby Don't!!
As far as cartoons go, Scooby Doo is one of the weaker, sillier offerings, so why anyone thought they could make a 2 hour movie out of it is beyond me. What material did they think they were working with?
Anyway, I would never have watched this movie in my wildest dreams, (even with Rowan Atkinson in it!) but my 5 year old son got the DVD. The script is stupid, the acting from Sarah-Michelle Gellar and Freddy Prinze Jr insultingly lackluster and the sexual innuendo ever-present and offensive. For example, at one stage, Daphne (Gellar) makes it safely through a dangerous tunnel and starts half-moaning 'Oh yeah! Oh yeah!' If you closed your eyes you could be listening to 'Debbie Does Dallas'! I'm not the sort of puritanical parent that flips out if my kid accidentally sees someone's bum on screen or something, but one thing I am getting sick of is Hollywood making kids cartoons into teen/adult soft porn. Kids go to these movies expecting to see a big screen version of the cartoons they like and instead are presented with sticky adult material. My guess is that the producers know there isn't much genuine material to work with, so they just go for the sex card. This may work for the 18 year old guys, but as the parent of a small child it is incredibly annoying.
Overall, the movie was shocking! Badly directed, horrendously scripted and nothing but a vehicle for Gellar and Prinze Junior's US teen appeal. When Sarah-Michelle Gellar came to Australia's Gold Coast to make this movie she complained about the food in the area. Well Sarah-Michelle, I've eaten Gold Coast food and seen your movie, and I know which one I prefer to do!!
Forget this film if you care about not offending yourself!!
I rate it 0/10!
Cheaper by the Dozen (2003)
Cheaper not to traumatize yourself
I've always liked Steve Martin but after seeing Cheaper by the Dozen I felt almost traumatized and now, just hearing the title of the movie makes me shiver. I didn't go to the cinema with high expectations by any means, but I at least expected the movie to be 'watchable', so to speak. It wasn't!
My six-year-old-son, like me, has a keen interest in comedy and we both love some of Martin's previous movies like 'The Jerk'. But fifteen minutes into 'Cheaper' and he turned to me and said 'Mum, this movie's really bad! Can we go now?' He was five at the time!
Even when considered against the milieu of the 'bad movie' genre, among such horrors as The Bodyguard, Far and Away and Grease 2, for example, Cheaper stands out for it's brain-numbing banality. Though I've never seen the original movie based on the book, I can only assume it must have been better than the 2003 remake, otherwise why would anyone in their right mind have bothered remaking it?
Two seemingly brain dead, ultra yuppie parents have the most boringly scripted conversations in movie history about whether or not the father (Martin) should pursue a football career and whether the mother (can't remember the actresses name and don't want to) should go off somewhere and become an author. Oh dear! While Martin seems to put a lot of energy into a whole lot of nothing (not really his fault I guess; nobody could have stood up against such an atrocious script and likewise directing) the actress who plays 'mom' seems totally detached from the film and consequently portrays a character that is almost frighteningly dull. The dozen 'madcap' kids who, incidentally and insultingly to the intelligence, bear no familial resemblance to each other whatsoever, are all over the place both literally and in terms of character portrayal. The script is diffuse and inconsistent and the attempts at sub-plotting would be laughable if the whole movie wasn't so utterly painful.
This is corporate Hollywood milking a cash-cow - sucking us in by putting Martin in the film but then torturing us with what was surely thrown together in half the normal amount of film-making time at half the cost. I feel angry that I paid the money to see it and advise anyone else who is considering it not to put themselves through it; save yourself the price of the movie ticket AND the therapy bill!
My vote: Minus 18 out of 100