Brad pitt sucks poodles

Rating: Null/10 (26 November 2004)

The book was one of those beautiful puzzles,less to do with actual monsters than the human condition.After all,it was born of Ann Rices efforts to escape the horrible grief of losing a beloved child.But that rarely translates well in Hollywood!
The exquisite costumes and soundtrack thankfully overshadowed everything else,like laughable overacting,and totally wooden Brad pit ..just concentrate and that gorgeous and authentic finery,and you might stop wondering,if only for a moment,just what the **** IS that accent ?french provincial surfer?long island creole?..it varies.As far as I'm concerned,Brad was the really the fly in this soup..NOTHING in his fleeting nordic hunkiness could be farther from the spare,sinewy,darkly angelic figure of Louis.The rest of the cast was just terrific camp.Kirsten Dunsts' turn as doomed Claudia is probably the hardest to reconcile,there is almost no way they could have re-created this character exactly ,and so much of her potency is sacrificed...at that time in history a child of that size and apparent age[Kirsten was 12 or 13] could have been passed over as"of age"the streets were filled with orphans,and children as young as 7 and 8 worked to help support their families. Claudia in the book however,was unmistakeably,a baby"Barely six years old",hence her agony at being trapped forever this way.An actress fitting this tiny image,could hardly act like a grown woman.I think Kirsten was great at portraying the torment of someone who's been so cheated,not just of self sufficiency,but of a soul.
I waited SO many years for this treasure to come to the screen.I always assumed[hoped] it would end up being some arty,small budget foreign production,imagine my surprise when they cranked up the Hollywood hunk machine.I still think it would play better as the former,if ever there was another effort.