Complete Rubbish!

Rating: 1/10 (21 April 2002)

This film is despicable garbage. It has the bare-faced cheek to use a mental illness as an excuse to switch up cinematic genres and it's deeply offensive. The first hour is completely incomprehensible filmmaking--why does no one, except the viewer, realise there's something wrong with Crowe, I mean, aside from all his bad acting? Howard straight-jackets all the other actors to prolong his device of dual realities that once revealed, makes no sense whatsoever. Why don't we as an audience view the sets as any normal person would and focus on Crowe's bizarre behavior? Just so Howard can make us think we're watching a bad espionage thriller? Why does every other actor in the film just stand around dumbfounded, forced to give maximus (erm, I mean, maximum) room to Crowe's showboating performance? And what were the details in Jennifer Connelly's pact with the devil to make this wretched film? Her's is a great beauty that can be used to tremendous effect when a director knows what to do with (like Aronofsky in Requiem). Howard just heaps on the mascara and probably made her wear curlers to bed every night. I can only thank God there was a fire alarm in the cinema so I missed the wretched "old age make-up" scenes that looked likely to rival those in "For The Boys." This is dire filmmaking and further proof--as if it were needed after the success of The Sixth Sense--that America has no culture. Or taste.