Product: Gods and Monsters (1998)
Rating: 3.0
Close, but no cigar...
A promising movie, that never finally delivers. The acting is very good, most of the time. The use of a few moviestar look-alikes was fun. Brendan Fraser was ok. He could have had more depth and more presence. Ian McKellen was terrific. His devilish, weak-lipped, wry smile carried the film, as it does in his other films. The Frankenstein myth was interpolated into a grander metaphor to some extent, but not to complete satisfaction. I pretty much "got it" by the middle of the movie and was expecting the movie to traverse some higher plateau on the back of the conflict and metaphor, but it never really got there and the second half didn't add a whole lot of sparkle. I was disappointed. It didn't live up to being what I had been expecting from all the glowing reviews. Like the monster, it had all the parts, but there wasn't any transforming thunderclaps, no touch of the gods. The ending was rather simple, not at all profound, and the last scene was a bit contrived, even silly, in an amateur film-school kind of way. I suspect others are taken with this film more by the nostalgia it conjures than by the dramatic resolution of its storyline. It's just not the great film of its reputation. It's worth watching, but there are many films worth watching, and many others I'd much more recommend for your time. This one, you could easily go without, unless maybe, you're a real Frankenstein or gay buff, but even then, it's not sufficiently strong on either of those themes. It had great potential. It was "close, but no cigar"--or maybe, that should have been Mr. Whale's line.My review update: Ok, I watched it a second time--this time without the high expectation--and I'll give it more credit after the second viewing. It ranks among the very good films. I'll take back the "you could easily go without" part. It is a very tight film and worth your time for the quality of production and it does have a strong message. But still, "friend?" is not a huge message, and I still found its ending weak. Basically, it's a small very good film, still not the five star great of its reputation. I suspect some people overreact to this film out of some form of political correctness. I'd kick it up to a four star--good tight script, mostly good acting, good direction--but it doesn't aspire to the high summit of a five star film.