Once Upon a Disaster...

Rating: 1/10 (28 January 2007)

This movie combines great actors and a great director, unfortunately the formula and story does not work. De Niro is at his worst and so is Woods. Tuesday Weld, on the other hand, gives an Oscar performance as does Burt Young. McGovern, though stunning as she is, does not even measure to what being an actress is all about. This movie is such a failure on every angle, that one has to question what happened in Cannes. I presume people were trying to be nice to Sergio Leone, having become an old Gothic figure of the "spaghetti westerns". Morricone's musical score is amazing but does not fit into the mood or era for this film genre, and the theme keeps repeating till the end (Zamfir plays the Pan flute). Most of the children in this film, that play the parts of the characters when young, are not only the ugliest kids on film but the worst possible actors. The only kid that stands out is young and beautiful Jennifer Connelly. This movie is to be avoided no matter how much Tarantino praises it. PF Bondesen-David