an opportunity missed?

Rating: 3/10 (2 June 2007)

I was enthusiastically recommended Barry Lyndon by a friend who loaned me a video of it insisting that I must see it. Now its not often that I don't watch a film through but, unfortunately, this was one. I struggled through 'part one' then turned off the machine somehow feeling that I had lost a large proportion of my life! Undeniably beautiful to look at (but not for three hours...) astonishingly wooden acting by some (whatever was Ryan O'Neil doing in there?), seriously corny and intrusive musical score (God! That corny Irish theme!! and couldn't the army bandsmen play anything but British Grenardiers?), poorly scripted and unnecessarily detailed to the point of tedium. Kubrick should have left this well alone and stuck to what he excelled at.. What might David Lean have done with it? Still you can't win 'em all and others will love it.