Pretentious, mediocre

Rating: 5/10 (12 July 2002)

My parents bought me this years ago because I play piano. I thought the description of it looked dumb, so it has sat here for years. Last night, I had absolutely nothing else to watch, so I watched it.
There are a lot of really major problems with this movie, most of which killed my ability to enjoy it.
First, close-ups of someone playing the piano should be done with an actual pianist playing a piano. The old cliche of some "actor" banging away randomly at keys while the soundtrack plays perfect music just bugs me no end.
Second, the concept of the "Rach 3" (ick) having the power to break someone is about like the Monty Python sketch about the joke that kills whoever hears it. It may make nice fiction to those who don't understand the performance of music, but it's actually also very annoying.
Third, the overall tone of the movie is uneven and jerky. The overbearing father is too much of a cliche, the actor plays it like a cartoon character. Mommy Dearest meets Prodigy's Father, I'd say.
I'll skip a lot of other problems, and jump right to the horrifyingly bad ending. I was about to leave the room to get some food, expecting to come back and watch the ending, but they started to roll credits! Did someone forget to end the story here or what?
Maybe to some people this movie was excellent, and wonderful, or a "celebration of the human spirit". To me it was a perfect example of something the critics didn't understand, so they figured it must be beyond their comprehension, so they rated it highly. Bottom line: it was pretty bad, deserving of the obscurity to which it has now descended.
I wish I had left the movie off and watched CNN instead.