Raging Dull

Rating: 1/10 (4 January 2006)

I cannot believe that this movie is on the IMDb top 250. It is a bore. There are closeups and dizzy camera moves. It reaches in for tears from the first five minutes. It seems as though it were written for a couple of housewives before their husbands come home. Just horrible.
Ron Howard, the poor guy wants to be Scorsese, Coppola, Spielberg, Kubrick... everything that he isn't. He wants to be Welles, Altman, Peckinpah... What I'm trying to say is that he wants so bad to be classic that he cannot settle for pretty good. And that, my friends, is what he is, pretty good at best. And he hasn't even been that for many years.
A BEAUTIFUL MIND was overrated, but at least it was entertaining. This film was depressing. Yes, I know, it's about the depression, but it's so full of clichés my TV needed Pepto. Paul Giamati plays the manager, and swears for swearing sake, trying to be Joe Pesci in RAGING BULL, and so did the boxing/fight scenes, but it was just dull, dull, dull.
Russel Crowe was boring. Renee what's her name was boring. None of the characters mattered. And Crowe's big claim to fame was that he beat up a guy who looked like a fat slob from Cheers for gods sakes.
Ron Howard always shows us who is bad and who is good. Bad directors do this. Clint Eastwood, also overrated, does this. "This character is bad, because he is a jerk, and this character is good, because he isn't". This is what their movies tell us, as if we're children.
But the fact that this film made the top 250, maybe we are children. Because anyone stupid enough to vote this as a classic should go back to kindergarten and finger paint with Opie Cuttingham.
A horrible, horrible film.