Notify Mr Scorcese: Its show, not tell.

Rating: 1/10 (22 October 2010)

One of the gravest sins of cinema is spending too long on exposition. For this reason film makers are given adages like: Show not tell, cut to the chase and so on. This lesson seems lost on Mr Scorcese.
This films consists of nothing but expository narration through out the entire length of the film. I simply could not believe it at first. I felt sure that the two narrators, De Niro and Pesci, would stop talking at some point and the acting would start. This point never comes and you realise that this is what the movie will be: nonstop narration telling you what to think about a character, what the characters think, what's happening and what's about to happen.
It is unbelievable that someone would set out to make a movie this way.
In addition there is a constant 'commentary' of old songs through out. Some of this yet more underlining of the banal obviousness of a scene, such as when we see De Niro looking at Sharon Stone intently, the previous music is suddenly interrupted with "baby baby you're the one" and, just in case we haven't got it, we told in the narration that he has fallen in love. Is this film making for the under 5s? At other times however it seems that Scorcese is simply using the score as his personal jukebox and playing favourites from his own record collection.
All of this limits what little character development there is. The characters appear on screen, we are told who they are and what we should think about them and then move onto something else. A case in point is the romance between de Niro and Sharon Stone. He sees her and we are told (in narration) he is has fallen for her. Next we see them together and he asks her for change which she says she spent in the machines. We are again told in narration that this is untrue. So much for subtlety and acting eh? Then we next see them, we see De Niro proposing to her (after a voice-over telling us he was proposing to her naturally).
Joe Pesci does his usual schtick of an Italian-American psychopath, so we see him engaging needless brutality from early on. De Niro is his usual commanding self but the non stop narrative actually diminishes him as an actor. The same applies to all the other characters.
I could not make it to the end.