Overrated

Rating: 6/10 (21 February 2000)

I can't believe the reviews I'm reading on here. I'm seeing this film called "brilliant" and "touching" but personally, the best adjective I could use for it is "decent". Like the recent Bowfinger, another movie about filming bad movies, this one gets so redundant you feel like you're getting hit over the head many times. You keep on seeing the same scenes over and over and over again, and they lose their magic.
And enough about Martin Landau! If you read these reviews you would think he gave the best performance of the century. He certainly did a great job, but please, how hard is it to imitate Bela Lugosi's accent and make a character you feel sympathy for? That's pretty much all he did, but he did do it extraordinarily well, so I don't really object to his winning the Oscar. Plus you can never forget the reason he made you think he was the real Bela Lugosi was the makeup.. As far as the other performances go, I thought they were all great. Surprising coming from a review that has been so negative so far but I must give credit where credit is due.
Another thing I liked about this movie was the cinematography. Filming it in black-and-white was a great idea, and the film probably could have never worked without it. It's got a nice little unique look going for it.
I think the main reason I didn't like this film was the directing. The aforementioned redundancy was a big problem, and I felt like this film could have easily been 30 minutes shorter. Also, the film is presented in a manner that makes it get boring after awhile. I think it could have been a lot funnier and more informative if they showed WHY the movies were so bad. You never really got to see that, except when it was blatantly(and quite humorously) showed in the octopus scene, which elicited a laugh from me. This film has a bit of an identity crisis. It's not sure if it wants to be sympathetic to Wood, showing us the stupidity of his movies, letting us know what his friends were like, showing us how he actually got these movies made...it juggles through all and never really decides on one thing to focus on, making the film get muddled.
So I give this movie a 5/10 because it disappointed me. It could have been a lot better if it had another director, in my opinion. The editing wasn't very good either. Even though the script was redundant, there are a multitude of hilarious lines in it. That's a wrap!