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user\nI have to preface this by saying that I LOVE watching bad movies that are entertaining. This movie delivers 100%. It is hands down the worst movie I have ever seen. It is full of crappy stock footage of random stuff in a city (people walking, traffic, the skyline, etc.) that doesn't tie into anything. Then there are the overly long 'sex scenes.' These involve lots of petting and frequent rubbing of socks on each other's bodies. These are in no way erotic and are the closest thing to horror you will find in this movie. This is especially true for the shower scene where two of the so called 'barely legal' girls who couldn't be a day over 40 are spraying each other with blood but there is also a crew member squirting blood in the from the outside while one of the girls keeps smiling at him. No one had to memorize any lines for this movie, if they aren't clearly reading cards then they have a magazine in front of them they keep glancing at while they struggle through awkward dialogue. Then there's Mr Creepo. He throws Ed Wood's name around like he can somehow compare, but he is far far from anything of that quality. He walks around a cemetery babbling about random things that went wrong in the movie which really helps the complete lack of flow the movie already had going on. We couldn't stop laughing during this movie (except during the sex scenes where we were grossed out and occasionally horrified)
I give this movie a 1/10 for going so far above and beyond all my expectations for a horrible movie.
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user\nAwful, waste of time. There is no camp or trash value in this one. Seen better amateur movies done by 10 to 12 years old kids in movie clubs.
How on earth someone can spoil movie about vampires and lesbians?
It's not a movie to put together a few vampire / sadomasochism enthusiast in a same room and just shoot it.
Could not find anything good about the film. There was no plot, no real actors, no real special effects, no humor. A few overweight Goths touching each other cannot be called a sex scene. Nothing at all.
Well, cemetery was nice but one should shot a vampire movie during dark.
Purpose was probably good: make a trash movie in a spirit of Ed Wood. Problem is that one cannot make a bad movie intentionally. It takes talent and an effort to make a \"real\" movie. Ed Wood might have lacked money but he sure had effort. These guys lacked everything. Ed Wood was a genius compared to these guys.
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user\n
In the process of boring you with the wordy, rambling storyline and the complete absence of character development, it manages to enforce a few negative black stereotypes out there. At one point I was wondering if Jesse Helms co-wrote the screenplay.
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user\nI could not believe it. This film was a total wast of time out of my life. The title is appropriate. Love didn't beat the hell out of me, this film did. I kept watching and watching and waiting and waiting and hoping for something, anything to happen. And nothing ever happened! Nothing!! Terrence Howard couldn't even save this lame piece of work called a film. It was dark, and confused and I didn't get who killed the girlfriend in the end. The tone and pacing of the film was supposed to be building to a dramatic climactic ending. This only served to confuse the audience because the movie just plodded along going no where. If you want pure torture, watch this film.
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user\nThis movie isn't even good enough for the $1 bin at the grocery store.
I only purchased it because Terrence Howard was in it. Guess he couldn't be too choosy about his roles during this time.
The movie in itself was hard to sit through. It seemed they were grasping at straws with a storyline. The \"guys night out\" had to be the most boring I've ever seen. One minute they are talking and the next reciting poetry? Even the arguments were hard to follow. Most of the acting lacked any depth.
I have no idea what they were going for with this one but they certainly missed the mark.
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user\nThis was one of the worst movies I've ever seen in my life. They said this was the man's answer to Waiting to Exhale...All I'm going to say is that we really didn't respond at all. I couldn't believe that it was actually made. The director should choose another profession, because he can't make a movie. The script wasn't good. It made no sense and was very messy. Bet movies are much better than this was, and I was horribly disappointed to see the talented actor Terrence in this bad excuse of a movie. If I could turn back the hands of time I wouldn't go back to Media Play to never buy the movie, I would just keep it wrapped sitting on the shelf, instead of wasting my time watching it.
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user\nThis is far the most worst film I've seen this year from Bollywood so far. I may not lie, my wife liked this film very much. It was not Bobby Deol or Arjun Rampal what made this film become unbelievable, but it was Amisha Patel. She performs the role of a blind woman who get in trouble when she almost fall from a mountain where (luckily for her) the hero Arjun Rampal comes to rescue her (in the middle of nowhere). It amazes me here how a blind girl is aware of danger when she is about to fall from a mountain, because she cannot see her environment. From this scene I started to watch the movie very closely and in every scene there was a flaw in the acting of Amisha Patel. The way she plays a blind girl is very bad. The only way she does that is by not to look into the eyes of the person she talks with. When I saw this film, I respected Rani Mukherjee more with her performance in the movie Black. Amisha will never reach this level in performing as an actress.
Anyway, she falls in love with Arjun Rampal. It is the cliché story. Sudden Arjun gets killed by a man who is madly in love with Amisha. Amisha is in despair, but then Bobby enters the movie. He also falls in love with the blind girl. Bobby Deol is a great actor in my point of view, but he cannot pull the film to a higher level where Amisha Patel buries it deep into the ground. I must say Bobby deserves better roles in better movies than he got so far. Bobby grew in acting from the first movie his lovely daddy gave him. He was so bad in acting in Barsaat, but when you see him acting now, you get the shivers and believe every word he says. Only a movie with high potential like a Yash Copra film has to meet his way.
Okay, when Amisha also falls in love with Bobby, someones enters her life. Arjun Rampal is not dead! Who believes this crap? I don't. Why didn't they give his role to one of the ugly guys from the movie family (Shushant Singh or Aryeman Ramsay) and give Bobby a role in one of the blockbusters with Amitabh Bachchan? I'm sorry if my comment sounds like a cry for an actor like Bobby to give him a great role, but he deserves so much better than a movie with Amisha (bigscreen t.v. face) Patel. This movie was so awful, that I regret buying it.
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user\nA sadly predictable, clichéd story about a woman who was no better than she should have been. Sadly, too, the screenplay is by the once-great experimental novelist John Dos Passos, from an original by French exotic potboiler Pierre Louys. This time Marlene Dietrich is Concha, a manipulative, cold-hearted Spanish beauty. Don Pasqual (Lionel Atwill) raises her from the cigarette factory, but she ditches him. He warns his tall young friend Antonio (Cesar Romero) against her, but to no avail. A duel ensues, Concha reproaches Pasqualito for trying to kill the only man she ever cared for, so he doesn't: he points his pistol at the sky, but Antonio shoots him. But instead of going off to Paris with the young victor, she goes back to the man who would have died for her. With an unexpected bit by Edward Everett Horton as a Spanish Governor. Dietrich plays the part of a Spanish woman by moving constantly, twisting at the waist and posturing and then twisting back, flouncing, tossing her head, and so forth. And she makes faces, and has a curl in the middle of her forehead. The photography is strangely crowded: no outdoor scene can be shot except through a tangle of bare trees, no interior scene can be shot without so much busy detail that it's almost impossible to follow people moving across a room, no consecutive scene of Dietrich can be shot without a major wardrobe change. The carnival scenes are so full of confetti and streamers it's almost like an underwater scene in the Sargasso Sea.
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user\nMarlene Dietrich is magnificent as Concha Perez, the temptress who drives all men to despair in Josef Von Sternberg's \"The Devil is a Woman\". Her performance has nothing to do with 'acting' in any conventional sense but she's incandescent, a true star in full command of her material. But she's the only good thing about the film, (she's so good she keeps you watching this dross; I doubt if any other actress could have done the same).
The story is an appallingly lame melodrama, (surely Pierre Louys' novel was better), in which Dietrich's amoral Concha ruins the lives of two friends played by Lionel Atwill and Cesar Romero with a stiffness bordering on petrification. And for Von Sternberg it's an ugly looking movie, (maybe in keeping with its fairly ugly subject matter). Bunuel, on the other hand, thought enough of it to remake it as \"That Obscure Object of Desire\" with a greater emphasis on the surrealist aspects of it all, down to casting two different actresses in the same role. Neither film is either director's finest hour and while the Bunuel version may be the better film, it is Dietrich's 'performance' you remember.
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user\nThis movie basically uses spousal rape as one of its main comedic devices. Now I turned it off at the point when he literally ties her to the bed and rapes her, but I cannot really imagine how that was eventually turned around into something endearing and funny. This movie not only squandered a wonderful cast and was consistently unfunny, it actually managed to be rather brutally disturbing and misogynistic. How so many people seem to find it a sweet family flick is beyond me. \"I sure enjoyed canning those apricots last night\" is not a funny joke when you know it refers to forcing an unwilling virgin to have sex with you in the hopes she will eventually learn to like it. Watching a peeping tom jerk off is not family fun. I honestly feel worse off for having watched half of this creepy \"comedy\" and am totally baffled by these positive reviews.
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user\nI never thought a movie could make me regret the fact that I subscribe to the HBO service. Now I know better! Jack is usually one of my favorite actors but not even he could rescue this part. Not that he tried. Jack plays his usual Wiitches of Eastwick type character. Unfortunately it doesn't transfer over to the American southwest. He is about as believable a cowboy desperado as Pee Wee Herman. There is no edge to the performance and for that reason the comedy fails. He is almost to goofy. The remainder of the cast was worse. Timing in delivering lines is apparently something that the leading lady had not perfected as of 1978 and the others appeared to be just happy to be there. My recommendation to those of you interested in seeing this movie is that you save your valuable time for something like watching paint dry.
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user\nFor some unknown reason, 7 years ago, I watched this movie with my mother and sister. I don't think I've ever laughed as hard with them before. This movie was sooooo bad. How sequels were produced is beyond me. Its been awhile since I last saw this \"movie\", but the one impression that it has stuck with me over the years has been, \"They must have found the script in a dumpster in the backlot of a cheap movie studio, made into a \"movie\", and decided that it didn't suck enough, and made it worse. I'm pretty sure that they spent all the budget on camera work and the so called \"special effects\", and then had 13 cents left toward the script AND to pay the \"actors\".
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user\nIf you are a six-year-old boy who's into dinosaurs, you will love this movie. If you are anybody else, you'll be rolling your eyes about every 15 seconds. If you want to start picking on things like the acting, the special effects, the dialogue, or the absence of a coherent plot that makes even the slightest amount of sense, you'll have plenty of material. If all you want is a safe dinosaur fantasy movie for your kid, it will do just fine. That said, there's a lot of kids' entertainment out there that's much smarter, and some of it is even bearable or enjoyable for adults. Unless your child is in an uncompromising dinosaur mood, you're probably better off looking for something else.
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user\nIn one sense, I kind of liked this movie because of a 'mindless', positive atmosphere it sort of conveys. I had a problem with an aspect of the plot, but more about that later. First, the characters were a little goofy and one dimensional. The 'good people' had similar physical and character traits and the 'bad people' had similar physical and character traits ... hmmm. The basic storyline was OK (pretty simple and standard) - nothing too exciting or objectionable. The main attraction was, of course, the miniature dinosaurs - kind of a nice fantasy element to have. However, they had a very minimal presence in the movie.
Outside of that, the movie kept a brisk pace and didn't get too bogged down in any one place. I liked this about the movie.
The problem I had with the plot had to do with the the idea of \"stealing\". I think this movie may not have been thought out enough - something's wrong especially if this is a kid's movie. I'll keep the next sentence abstract to not be a spoiler (skip it if you're worried). The 'good guys' do some stealing and they don't have the same info the audience has - so it's just stealing and that's kind of a bad thing for a kid's movie.
Overall, if you have kids, because of a questionable plot aspect I'd consider passing. However, this whole movie is pretty low key anyway so it may not matter. Pass this one if you have any other interesting choices.
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user\nEugene O'Neill's 4 and a half hour 1927 play brought to the screen in less than two hours. The play's combination of symbolic dialogue and gothic melodrama hasn't aged very well and the cast has some difficulty with it, especially Norma Shearer's Nina and Ralph Morgan's Marsden. Clark Gable as Ned Darrell comes off better but mostly because his is a gruff character not given to the philosophical musings of the others which better fits Gable's range. Once the plot settles down to the love quadrangle and the audience adjusts to the voiceover asides the film does become more enjoyable. The technique used here for the asides is another problem. On stage the action froze while the actors spoke their thoughts to the audience. Here they're done as voiceovers. You'd think that would work better but since the action no longer freezes the actors are forced to pause speaking and grimace at the camera to match the emotions in their thoughts. Plus it's difficult for any movie buff to watch this film and not think of Groucho Marx's hilarious parody version in \"Animal Crackers.\" Added to these drawbacks are some cuts made for censorship reasons (Nina's promiscuity is soft-peddled and there is no mention of her getting the abortion that is more central in the play) and a wretched score (uncredited) that sounds like background music to a turn-of-the-century weepie. O'Neill called this film \"a dreadful hash of attempted condensation and idiotic censorship,\" and although \"Strange Interlude\" is nowhere near as great as his later \"The Iceman Cometh\" and \"Long Day's Journey Into Night,\" it certainly deserved better than this.
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user\nEugene O'Neill is acclaimed by some as America's leading playwright, but for things like The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night, The Emperor Jones. Strange Interlude was a piece of experimentation he concocted where the characters on stage, look aside to the audience and say what they really are thinking and then resume conversation. It was a nine hour production with a dinner break on Broadway, so you can safely assume a lot has been sacrificed here.
For the screen the voice over regarding the thoughts is used for all the characters. It probably is a technique better suited to the screen. Sir Laurence Olivier did very well with it in his version of Hamlet. But Bill Shakespeare gave Olivier a lot better story than O'Neill gave his players in this instance.
Players like Clark Gable, Norma Shearer, Ralph Morgan, May Robson, etc. are a lot more animated in most of their films than they are in Strange Interlude. The story takes place over a 20 year period. Norma Shearer is a young woman whose intended is killed in World War I. She starts playing around quite a bit, although that part is not shown in this version. She makes the acquaintance of Alexander Kirkland and his friend Clark Gable. She also has as a perennial suitor, Ralph Morgan, a friend of her father's Henry B. Walthall.
She marries Kirkland, but then is warned by his mother May Robson and shown that insanity gallops in that family to quote another literary work. Since Kirkland wants kids and Shearer and Robson think Kirkland's train will slip the track if he doesn't get one, Gable is recruited for breeding purposes. Of course you can see all the complications this can cause and O'Neill explores them all.
Gable is so terribly miscast in an O'Neill production, but he was an up and coming player at MGM and did what they told him. Shearer does what she can to lift a very dreary story, but she seems defeated at the start. Best in the film is possibly Robson who puts some real bite in her dialog.
Strange Interlude ran for 426 showings on Broadway in 1928-1929 and starred Glenn Anders and Lynn Fontanne in the Gable and Shearer parts. Perhaps no one could really have saved the film because two years earlier, Groucho Marx lampooned the stuffings out of it in Animal Crackers. After seeing what he did, I don't think the movie going public took it too seriously.
And since it's not the best of O'Neill, neither could I.
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user\nThe movie gets a score of 3 because it dared to be so very different. It features a cast acting while you can hear their thoughts and desires! This is truly a weird film and an experience I won't forget. The only problem is that the experiment, though in some ways interesting, is generally quite dull and unengaging. In fact, it's amazing that a Norma Shearer and Clark Gable film could be THIS dull! The film is based on a Eugene O'Neill play and it really does seem quite stagy. In fact, it would have been best just to keep it as a stage production--it just didn't translate at all to the big screen.
So this movie is only recommended to die-hard cinemaniacs and those who love Gable films so much they just have to see all his films!
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user\nA four-and-a-half-hour O'Neill play gets boiled down to a little under two, and much of that running time is devoted to actors with frozen expressions on their faces as they read their characters' thoughts in voice-over. It can work onstage, but it looks hilariously stilted in this soap-opera adaptation, which soft-peddles its heroine's bad behavior and never explains why she has so captivated so many men. Norma Shearer and Alexander Kirkland, overacting ludicrously, are outclassed by a naturalistic Clark Gable--he's the only one who makes the frozen-face technique work. It gets even funnier when Shearer's and Gable's son, a surly moppet, does the frozen-face shtick. There are also Frank Morgan's brother Ralph as an unsuccessful suitor, given to soliloquizing \"poor Charlie!\" over and over again, and a young Robert Young and Maureen O'Sullivan. By the time they show up, the voice-overs have largely been abandoned, and it plays as a ripe soap, with a sentimental fadeout that actually plays \"Silver Threads Among the Gold\" as background music. Robert Leonard's direction is stodgy and he shows little facility for reining in hyperactive actors. It's certainly entertaining--there's nothing else like it, unless you count Groucho's satirical parody in \"Animal Crackers,\" or an old Mad Magazine satire that rendered Shirley Booth's sitcom \"Hazel\" a la \"Strange Interlude\". But it isn't good.
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user\nI can only guess that this movie was an experiment that misfired. Years earlier, it would have been moving images accompanied by music. Later, it would have been sound added to silents. Eventually it would have been Technicolor, Cinemascope or Imax. This movie must have been a misguided attempt to introduce a new element to the talking picture. During all the emotional scenes, the character stops in mid dialogue and their inner thoughts are narrated while they gaze off into the distance or appeal to the camera. This interruption is painful at it's very least. Imagine these top tier actors trying to look busy while the narration drones on. Painful. I have no idea who came up with this gimmick, but it was the only time I ever saw it used - and for good reason. In every scene the actors were forced to roll their eyes, wring their hands, or overact to such a degree, I actually wondered if this was really a comedy.
The story is a hopeless soap opera that takes place over a couple of generations. Norma Shearer, disappointed in love, searches for a reason to live. She has a friend, played by Ralph Morgan, who worships her - but she takes him for granted. She is attracted to a doctor, played by Clark Gable, but he is self absorbed and isn't interested in her. She settles for a weakling that needs her desperately. She marries him only to find that there is insanity in his family and she can never have a child with him. Along comes the doctor who selfishly pops a bun in her oven, only to find out later that he loves her after all. The child builds confidence in her husband who becomes a success, but she realizes that it's really Clark she loves after all. Confused yet? Forget the rest, just watch a couple of episodes of \"As the World Turns\" and it'll all become clear.
If your are ever forced to watch this movie, hold out for the final scene. The gyrations of the actors put Harold LLoyd to shame. It is not to be missed.
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user\nThis is a piece of Hollywood product that should have never left a film can. Dialogue without a plausible thought, plot without a point, staging without skill, directing without direction, and acting without the worth of some backwater high school's freshman class play. The entire cast should have been arrested for over acting.
But otherwise, okay!
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user\nThis film is supposed to be about the frustrations of film making. It certainly frustrated me with its endless boredom. The setting is an attractive Spanish seacoast resort with his usual large cast. The script is very poorly written or maybe there was no script. Just all ad-lib.
A far superior film about the frustrations of film making is Francois Truffaut's \"Day For Night\" made in 1973. It shows all the delays and how the cast can misbehave in an intriguing manner. It doesn't bore the viewer and you gain sympathy for the director who somehow must complete the film.
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user\nI have loved the book \"A Little Princess\" for most of my life, and was very excited that there was a movie. But I was appalled at this adaptation. Not only is the acting wooden, and the plot a convoluted mish mash of various incidents in the book, but the theme is all wrong. The real theme of the story should be that a girl can be a princess only when she behaves like one, as Sara does when she gives 5 of her 6 buns to a beggar child, even when she herself is very hungry. The theme of the movie seems to be that all girls are princesses, which cheapens Sara's actions considerably, and seems more like it should be written on a Hallmark card than applied to this story.
There are many other things wrong with this movie- too many to list, but here are just a few of the larger ones: This story should be set in Britian in the mid 1800s, not America during the first world war. Miss Minchen is harsh to Sara from the start, making her actions when Sara is left penniless much less startling than they would be if she was syrupy sweet at the beginning, as she is supposed to be. Nowhere is it mentioned that Becky is black. Sara's father does *not* come back, he is dead. It is his closest friend, and collaborator in the diamond mines who finds Sara, and restores her to her proper place. In fact, the diamond mines are not even mentioned at all, though they are the source of Sara's wealth.
All through everything that Sara has faced, she always acts like a Princess, giving what she can, and forgiving those who hurt her. She would never have called Lavinia a \"snotty two faced bully\". Such a thing is completely out of character for her, and undermines the entire philosophy that she is to be well behaved no matter what.
This is by far the worst adaptation of a book to the screen that I have ever seen (with the notable exceptions of \"Ella Enchanted\", and \"Anne of Green Gables the Continuing Story\")The plot of the book is wonderful, and skillfully written, so I do not understand why the director felt that it needed to be changed to make it interesting. I would suggest that anyone wishing to know this story should watch the 1987 version, which is far superior. Or better still, read the book. It will be more worth your time than the hour and a half wasted on this version on the movie.
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user\nI absolutely despise this film. I wanted to love it - I really wanted to. But man, oh man - they were SO off with Sara. And the father living was pretty cheesy. That's straight out of the Shirley Temple film.
I highly recommend THE BOOK. It is amazing. In the book, Sara is honorable and decent and she does the right thing... BECAUSE IT IS RIGHT. She doesn't have a spiteful bone in her body.
In the film, she is mean-spirited and spiteful. She does little things to get back at Miss Minchin. In the book, Sara is above such things. She DOES stand up to Miss Minchin. She tells the truth and is not cowed by her. But she does not do the stupid, spiteful things that the Sara in the film does.
It's really rather unsettling to me that so many here say they loved the book and they love the movie. I can't help but wonder... did we read the same book? The whole point of the book was personal responsibility, behaving with honor and integrity, ALWAYS telling the truth and facing adversity with calm and integrity.
Sara has a happy ending in the book - not the ridiculous survival of her father, but the joining with his partner who has been searching for her. In the book, she is taken in by this new father figure who loves and cares for her and Becky. And Miss Minchin is NOT a chimney sweep - that part of the film really was stupid.
To see all this praise for this wretched film is disturbing to me. We are praising a film that glorifies petty, spiteful behavior with a few tips of the hat to kindness? Sara in the book was kind to the bone and full of integrity. I don't even recognize her in the film... she's not in it.
Good thing Mrs. Burnett isn't alive to see this horrid thing. It's ghastly and undeserving to bear the title of her book.
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user\nI was looking forward to this so much, being a big fan of the book. However, when it came out I remember thinking it was one of the biggest wastes of money and time I've ever spent at the cinema.
In principle, the acting, the sets and the music were excellent, and are the main reason why I'm rating this a 4.
In this version, Sara is a little too self-sacrificing for my taste. There is no way she would have deliberately lied to Miss Minchin just to stop her punishing the other girls; in the book she makes a point of describing lies as \"not just wicked, but vulgar.\"
There's also far too much of a Disneyfied ending for me; Sara's father coming back from the dead and all of them trotting off into the Indian sunset. While the book does have a happy (and critics might say equally improbable) ending, it doesn't leave you thinking, \"Oh puh-leeze.\"
About the only things true to the book were:
1. Sara's father being a soldier 2. The lines between Sara and her father (\"Are you learning me by heart?\"/\"No. I know you by heart. You are inside my heart.\") 3. Sara's friendship with Becky, and her 'adopting' Lottie (although this last one wasn't developed as much as it could have been) 4. The changing of her room by adding various luxury items. That part was brilliantly done. 5. The basic core - a rich girl being flung into poverty suddenly - is there, but that's about all that is.
People might say that this adaptation is more for the younger audience. Possibly. All I can say to that is I have two cousins - aged 7 and 12 respectively - who were big fans of this film until they read the book.
If all you want is a 'feel-good' family film, then this delivers. If you're looking for a film that actually tells the story of A Little Princess (in fact, if you've read the book) don't waste time with this one. It's such a shame; with a cast like this, if they'd stuck to at least the basic story it could have been fantastic.
Am I harping on about 'read the book' this and 'read the book' that a little too much? Very probably. But if someone attempts to adapt a book - especially such a classic - into a movie, then they should at least have done the same thing. Preferably more than once.
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user\nMilla stands out in this movie because of her personal sense of style and the way the clothes hang on her. I have learned to hate that crumpled little three-year-old face she makes whenever she pretends to cry. It makes any points she is trying to make as a serious actress drop off quickly. Of course, in a movie with a BALDWIN and Denise, she still shines as a mature actor person. David seemed to be doing Woody Allen by way of Howdy Doody. Not a single word or gesture in the entire movie seemed sincere or even sincerely acted. \"How Harry Met Sally\" and \"Two Weddings and Funeral\", even \"Sleepless In Seattle\" had scripts, locations and ACTORS. The script seemed to be a string of bad and crude gags separated by a LOT OF TALKING. The locations seemed to be within a few blocks of each other. There are only two actors in this dishrag of an indie flick, Milla and the lady who played the chick who was into the stars. I watched most of this through the first time with the sound off, just watching Milla. That subscript gag was old the first time I saw it and it's a silly rip off of a song in \"How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying\".
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user\nOwen (David Krumholtz) and Chloe (Denise Richards) are a youngish couple living in Manhattan. Owen is a moderately successful magazine writer while Chloe is an aspiring actress. Happily for her, Chloe gets big role on a sitcom and temporarily moves to Hollywood. Missing her, Owen books a flight to LaLa Land, as a surprise. When he arrives at her set trailer, however, the \"house\" is shaking, as Chloe and her hunky co-star are having a little romantic tryst. The writer and the actress are through. Hurt and mad as a hatter, Owen goes back to NYC. Sympathetic friends decide to set him up on a blind date with Nadine (Milla Jovovich) to get him out of his sulky funk. But, it goes badly, as the duo mix like oil and water, mostly due to each having a strong personality and Owen's huge shoulder chip. Yet, over the next few months, astonishingly, Nadine and Owen become pals, who confide in each other and hang out. Can it turn into something more? Well, who the heck cares! This film is so STUPID that most folks will yank it out of the DVD player after the first ten minutes. The script is pathetic, dismal, and, oh, stupid, too. Then again, Krumholtz gives a very obnoxious and offensive performance as well. Jovovich is not much better but who could look good with the lines she has to spout? William Baldwin, too, reaches a career low with his crude and sex-crazy role as Owen's brother. The only cast member who is any good is Richards but she must cringe when she looks back at this one. Okay, the costumes and production values are adequate. Then, too, there is ONE clever element in that, occasionally, the characters will speak their lines but cartoon bubbles will appear above their heads with the words of what they are truly thinking. That doesn't save the film from \"bomb\" status. Don't be stupid, dear film and romcom lovers. Do not rent, buy, or borrow this gigantic turkey. I am the stupidest person on earth, today, for watching this THING until the bitter end.
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user\nWriter/Director Brian Burns has obviously seen a few romantic comedies, and he seems to think that he's discovered the formula for success: plenty of location shots in New York (preferably in the winter), allusions to old Hollywood films (especially musicals), enjoyable musical soundtrack. Alas, all of this is mere compensation for Burns' lack of talent as a writer. (The great mystery of many writer-directors making independent films is not why they cannot get on with major studios, but how they get any backing at all for their films.)
Normally our interest in romantic comedy is motivated by the lead characters, but the couple in this film simply has no appeal. This is not the fault of either David Krumholtz or Milla Jovavich; their characters are just poorly written. What we respond to in such classics as When Harry Met Sally or Annie Hall or older films such as His Girl Friday are quirks and flaws of the lead characters' personalities. Lacking the ability to create individuals, Burns gives us an after-school special inspired by Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.
How anyone can see Burns as the successor to Woody Allen is beyond me. I did not laugh once during this film, and the screen-play is full of echo chamber dialog (\"I want to paint the town red.\" \"You want to paint the town red?\"), which is the most tell-tale sign of someone who has no business writing for a living. In one of the early scenes, we see Krumholz's actress girlfriend filming a mindless TV sitcom. It's the only moment in the whole film that the dialog feels right; maybe that indicates what Burns talents are really suited for.
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user\nSeeing that this got a theatrical release nowhere around the globe, it only serves as a reminder of were the careers of those talent-free ladies Denise Richards and Milla Jovovich went. It also is a particular grating kind of movie, the kind that think they are smart, funny and original while being poor in every aspect. Full blame can go to Brian Burns, who wrote and directed this potboiler. His script takes a quite unoriginal situation and goes exactly nowhere with it. The situations develop completely without any inner logic, besides that of a desperate scriptwriter. Characters are thinner than cardboard cutouts, behave stupid and without any real motivation. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the inclusion of Mrs. Richards. We don't believe her relationship with David Krumholtz's character for one minute and the way she is brought back into play after the one-hour mark is particularly pitiful. Why would anyone fall for a egocentric, self-obsessed, arrogant b**ch like this in the first place, much less a second time? Especially after having supposedly found his..erm...true love? And if any of these things aren't enough to completely sink this movie, than the central couple is. The coupling of Krumholtz and Jovovich is only slightly more believable or developed than the Richards-one, but it is to no avail. There is no chemistry, no spark, nothing that we might loosely accept as a credible couple. Worse, these two central characters are particularly annoying and irritating, doing annoying and irritating things the viewer finally has no interest in, whatsoever.
Overall, a very poor showing. Even die-hard rom-com fans might want to pass on this one, as there are dozens of movie made with more skill or more charm.
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user\nOccasionally on talk shows a good topical debate sparks some interesting opinions from the audience, unfortunately there is always some desperately sad person seeking acceptance who will end any interesting debate instantly by getting up and saying the proverbial \"Everyone should get along and love each other\" as they know they are guaranteed to get applause and affirmation, as no one would dare disagree.
Well they are the same people who marked this film as good, why did they do that? INSECURITY. Anyway that's all I'll say on that matter.
The Film, it starts of reasonably interestingly so you hope it will build, and if like me you've settled in with a nice couple of glasses of wine and some cheese then you will give it even more of a chance simply because you can't be bothered to move.
But then you daydream, you wander, your mind drifts of onto other things, why? because the Director did too! he took his foot off the gas, and then he realized 'ooops' so to compensate he accelerates hard, but then he drifts again, and again so do you, the story slows, the plot thins and almost disappears, you even wonder to yourself 'so what happened again?' as you ponder your screen will show Nick Nolte running around with some supposed purpose, but you will have long since cared as to what he is doing and he will appear as nothing more than a screen saver in the background to your day dreaming.
Michael Moriarty who plays John Converse has an amazing ability to speak without moving his lips or indeed his face, somewhat like a ventriloquist, he must have gone to the Nicolas Cage school of expressionless facial acting, or he was attacked by the Phantom Botox injector.
Tuesday Weld was to play Marge Converse, but instead she played Mia Farrow to perfection.
In all there are hundreds of thousands of films to see, so leave this one to one of the last, you see I've just wasted an evening watching it when I could have watched or done something else, learn by my mistake, nights off relaxing are precious so don't waste one watching this boring tale, do anything else, dust off that old game of Cluedo, practice gurning for the evening or have an argument with a loved one, trim your nose hair, get rid of unused files on our laptop, it will be time better spent what ever you should choose.
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user\nJust plain terrible. Nick and Michael are WAY better actors than this. A \"C\" rated flick at best. The plot was weak and the characters totally undeveloped. Even the film and sound quality was terrible. I suppose that these were all young actors at the time and this script just filled a job nitch.
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user\nStart with the premise that you will do anything to replace your lost love with a look-alike. Throw in your scientific knowledge of a deforming disease (isn't this the stuff that Leo G. Carroll contracted from the spider venom in \"Tarantula\"). Throw in the fact that the main character, instead of finding some way to attract the young woman, engages in heavy-handed stalking, until he totally draws attention to himself and has to hatch this insane plot: If he can make the girl's father sick, then help him recover, she will marry him. The problem is that most of the events are random and unpredictable. Anyone with half a brain would have seen through things. There's a third party, a woman that the doctor, played by J. Carroll Naish, has treated with great insensitivity. You know she is going to be a factor. There's also a gorilla kept in a cage who is used occasionally for heaven know's what. Oh well. There is so little sense to this who thing that it plays itself out and people get their just desserts.
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user\n\"A scientist has developed a serum which grotesquely distorts the victim's hands and heads. The scientist decides to use his serum on a concert pianist to extort money from him for the cure as well as take the man's daughter for a wife,\" according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis. J. Carrol Naish (as Dr. Igor Markoff) plays \"The Monster Maker\" in the low budget Bela Lugosi mode.
Mr. Naish's serum causes a real disorder, \"acromegaly\", which American Heritage defines as, \"A chronic disease of adults marked by enlargement of the bones of the extremities, face, and jaw that is caused by overactivity of the pituitary gland.\" Ralph Morgan (as Anthony Lawrence) plays the afflicted man with some dignity. Pretty blonde Wanda McKay (as Patricia \"Pat\" Lawrence) is the daughter desired by mad scientist Naish; in early scenes, Ms. McKay and Naish emote hilariously.
Watch for Tala Birell (as Maxine) in a surprisingly good supporting performance; she plays the somewhat Garbo-like, and long suffering, assistant to Naish. Ms. Birell definitely steals the film; and, you've got to question Dr. Markoff's sanity in casting her aside. Glenn Strange (as Steve) and a crazed gorilla (Ray Corrigan) add to the fun. The monster makeup (Maurice Seiderman) is very good.
**** The Monster Maker (1944) Sam Newfield ~ J. Carrol Naish, Ralph Morgan, Tala Birell
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user\nDr. Markoff is a mad scientist who is experimenting , trying to find a cure for a viral cause of acromegaly. When he attends a piano concert, he is stricken by the beautiful daughter of the pianist and sets out to woo her. But when she wants nothing to do with him, he infects her father with the acromegaly virus in an attempt to extort money and his daughter in exchange for a cure.
That is the basic premise for this B-grade low budget thriller. I have to say I was underwhelmed by this movie. Not that it was terrible-it wasn't, but there was nothing particularly noteworthy about it either. It was entertaining enough for a viewing but is not one that will stay in my memory.
The dialog is a bit corny at times and the acting is just mediocre. The story is fairly predictable and doesn't really give us anything new. Of course, I can't complain too much about a movie that has a guy in a gorilla suit who serves almost no real purpose and a doctor with a Svengali-like stare that fails to mesmerize his victims.
It may be worth a watch if you like this sort of movie, but don't go into it with too many expectations.
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