Corelli on Cruise Control

Rating: 3/10 (6 January 2003)

Several people I know were really excited to see this movie, because the marketing made it look very dramatic and romantic. There were shots of this beautiful, peaceful, idyllic Greek island and of pitched battle shattering the paradise. An intense romance was supposed to emerge from this twisted set of circumstances. If the movie had moved dramatically from peace at the beginning to fury near the end, the romance that emerged probably would have been pretty dramatic. The problem with this movie is that neither peace nor war is actually in this movie. The majority of this movie takes place during an unstable and unpleasant, but not necessarily volatile, military occupation. And because the action cruises at such a middling pace, refusing to commit to one ideal or the other, the idyllic, star-crossed romance people expected never materialized. I was disappointed.
The most fitting word to describe this movie is probably "Petty." The film seems to strive to show how everything that happens on this little Greek island is completely unimportant to everybody involved, but they still act really serious about everything they come across, even when they're supposed to be having fun. The characters all seem to be in vaguely bad moods all the time, as if they wouldn't even bother to talk to one another unless the film required them to in order to advance its plot, slowly and inexorably, toward its garbled, mistimed conclusion.
This movie is a major watch-looker, folks. That is, as you sit and take in this movie, you will look at your watch frequently. Very frequently. And if you don't, you won't have any idea when it's going to end, and the answer you'll want to hear is "Now."