More swings than hits in this 1950 Hollywood "adaptation" of Kipling's masterpiece. Mahbub Ali may have been a perfect Flynn role, but making him the hero of the piece in place of Kim himself and Hurree Babu -- gratuitously killed off, as is the old lama Kim follows, loves and learns from -- leaves out the crisis of identity Kipling's Kim must face, the central theme of the book. Also missing are Kipling's picturesque vistas of the India he knew and recalled so well, scenes he paints with words easily surpassing all the Technicolor location shots. One who has read and appreciated the book on all of its many levels will also miss its many memorable and important "minor" characters; its sensitive and sympathetic treatment of Buddhism and other non-Christian creeds; and will be left wondering whether it was the star, the writers, the producer, the director or some combination of the above who thought they could go Kipling one better by, among other things, replacing his almost-accidental crisis with a Flynn-caused avalanche, then neatly tying all his lifelike loose ends into a big Tinseltown bow. Three stars because it's probably the best job they could have done with it at the time -- sad to say.
Reviews
3 Reviews
Jungle Fever
(1991)
Race relations riffs, idiosyncratic Lee
3 January 2005
Warning: Spoilers
Spike Lee uses a somewhat tawdry interracial affair as a jumping-off point for his idiosyncratic, challenging riffs on race relations in America, especially New York City. But the central relationship (and one of the few authentic ones) in the movie is that between Flipper and his daughter. Successful architect Flipper wants more than anything to keep his daughter from falling into the cruel fate that ruined his crackhead older brother. At the same time, he's caught up in all the complicated, demanding, exhausting business of living in a white man's world. The final scene delivers one answer: hold tight to your less fortunate brothers and sisters; shout "No!" to the cruelties of the world. Taken to one logical extreme this could mean abandoning the dubious dream of checking all the boxes expected for success in a world you haven't made. It might also call more positively on the community as a whole to make a greater effort to help its least successful individuals. Typically, Lee refuses to tie up the ambiguities, including those in the companion story of a young white man who courts a black woman, into a neat Hollywood package. He forces the thoughtful viewer to confront his or her personal contradictions as well as those of the society in which we all live.
Lee spins his tales with a sterling cast including Oscar nominee Samuel L. Jackson as Flipper's brother Gator and, making their film debuts, Oscar winners Halle Barry as Gator's ho' and nominee Queen Latifah as a waitress. An often-intrusive music score provides the only false notes here.
Lee spins his tales with a sterling cast including Oscar nominee Samuel L. Jackson as Flipper's brother Gator and, making their film debuts, Oscar winners Halle Barry as Gator's ho' and nominee Queen Latifah as a waitress. An often-intrusive music score provides the only false notes here.
Female Trouble
(1974)
The Ravel's Bolero of trash
3 December 2004
A relentlessly building, frame-by-frame crescendo of deliberate offensiveness. It grows increasingly difficult to separate the broad satire against square society from the equally obvious, near-Sadean delight John Waters and his uniquely talented company of offbeat Baltimoreans take in discovering and displaying new combinations of the perverse and outrageous in nearly every scene. But tracing the roots of crowd pleasers like 'Polyester,' 'Serial Mom' and 'Hairspray' here (and even further back to 'Pink Flamingos') is somehow yet more odd. Edie Massey alone remains above it all: charmingly oblivious, preternaturally sweet despite her physical unloveliness and, well, human as always, even locked in a cage threatening to gouge out Divine's eyes with her hook. Her best line: 'I don't want no G-d d-mn eggs!'
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