ridiculously personified

Rating: 1/10 (11 February 2005)

Its more nodoze a la Spielberg. What a bad bad bad director. Even though I did not know who directed this until nearly the end and checked the DVD I had checked out from the library. So at least I did not have to ask for my money back. Hanks lets his accent jump around like a ping pong ball, and the only reason I kept watching the thing was to see just how bad it would get. Probably, and this is only probably, Spielberg wanted to go after no calorie Kafka with this, kind of a ho ho combo of The Castle and The Trial thrown in. Though this baby makes Welles Trial a bloody masterpiece, and that movie is plenty bad enough. But I should throw in a proviso here: even Jaws never frightened me. Robert Shaw did a lot more than the shark, he is such a fine actor, so I am still waiting for Spielberg to scrape together ten minutes of continuous celluloid that I can enjoy. For those of you who can, rave on, more power to you. Even Schindler's List struck me as a crafty shuck, carefully avoiding the real horrors of the holocaust, though in all fairness, thus far only Resnais's Night and Fog approached them. Wait. Nearly forgot. There were a few moments in Catch Me If You Can that I thought were well done. Just the sort of territory that might make Spielberg work: the De Caprio character a figure of fantasy taken from the canvas of reality, though greatly hoked up by Spielberg. But at least it was a fairly enjoyable movie. However that's just me. Seem to be the only one around saying that this particular emperor not only has no clothes but big big warts all over him.