stay clear of this one

Rating: 2/10 (11 April 1999)

Excruciatingly long. I have no idea why this film is still so highly rated. It doesn't have any characters; all of the people in the film are as banal as your neighbors. Your neighbors may nice enough people but no one would watch a movie about them. We watch movies to see the exceptional, to take us away from the people we see every day. Great movie characters all have a great exuberance and a vital energy. They are often grand eccentrics. All that Vito Corleone, the various Woody Allens, Kane, Scarlet O'Hara and so many others share is this vital exuberance so painfully missing from anyone in this film. Movie characters may be virtuous and good but they should never be nice and this movie drowns in its niceness, in all its stolid virtues.