instruction:
In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
question:
some movies ask you to leave your brain at the door , some movies ask you to believe in the impossible to really have a good time .
playing god asks just one simple , eensy , teensy thing so it can fully entertain you ,
it 's accomplished in just four easy to follow steps : crack open your skull , scoop out your brain , squish it under your foot several times and reverse steps two and one .
congratulations , you now have all the necessary requirements to fully enjoy a whole lot of nothing .
some movies fail at the box office but you manage to see why the producers thought it could have been a good movie , others are simply good ideas that are badly executed .
then there 's playing god , which enters the esteemed category of movies which seem to have grown from the union of a drunk director , actors satisfied in the knowledge that this horrible flick will have no lasting impact on their careers and a bunch of rip - offs
( or homages as they like to call it ) from other , better movies that end up looking like an unflushed toilet .
harsh ?
maybe .
justified ?
hell yes !
this is a movie that is not just satisfied in ripping off other movies but feels the need to remind us of that fact every ten minutes .
for example , a gunman bursts into a garden with the two guns in his hands firing away .
this does look moderately kool , but the camera lingers on the actor for so long you can almost hear the director yelling : " oooh , look look !
john woo !
two guns blazing !
slooooow motion ! "
and if that was n't enough , you can also hear the script grunting under the effort it must take to try and make every single line of dialogue sound like something deep and meaningful like in a tarantino movie .
poor timothy hutton gets to deliver most of the corny lines , you have to admire the effort he puts into it , this guy deserves better .
unlike most movies this one does not suffer from " stupid bad guy " syndrome , just to make things a little different this time
we get stupid heroes .
example : duchovny manages to distract a bad guy by making him go into the bathroom to get some bandages .
now the bad guy is , like , stoned , man , so he leaves his shotgun next to our hero .
( term used as loosely as possible ) survival instincts and a good dose of common sense seems to suggest grabbing the shotgun , which our hero does , but only after contemplating it for about thirty seconds .
even when he does grab it he seems unsure how to hold it , going so far as to actually wonder if he should place a finger near the trigger .
mind you , i 've never fired a shotgun in my life but believe you me that the bad guy would be missing most of his vital organs , be he stoned or not .
some will argue that our hero does not have a killer instinct , the hell with that !
two fbi guys have just been shot in front me , along with one bad guy and the other looks like he might go ballistic at any second .
solution ?
boom !
i 'll take the time to feel sorry about it later
thank you very much .
another prime example of the idiot hero syndrome
: our boy duchovny needs to reach his girl before something bad happens to her .
he knows the head bad guy has her on the tenth floor of a building and that he might be running into a room full of people with itchy trigger fingers .
he still has his shotgun , bring it along
you say ?
no thanks , i 'll just ditch it in the back of my car .
and the real kicker is this : when he reaches the room and people start shooting at him he has the nerve to look surprised ! while we are on the subject of getting shot , why in hades were those fbi guys sitting with their backs to the door ?
i 've got no formal training but
even i know you never sit with your back to the door .
ask mr .
wild bill , the first and only time he did not sit with his back to a wall cost him his life .
this is the major problem with this movie , any mook could have thought of a hundred ways to make it better .
is it so much to ask that hollywood actually put a little common sense into their characters ?
for instance : our heroes hide at duchovny 's summer home , now the bad guys could come knocking at any moment .
ok , this time our hero does get himself a gun and has it at his side most of the time .
but see , our hero is a drug addict and guess what ?
he chooses now to go clean and suffer through dt .
oh sure , he 'll be really impressive when the bad guys come calling .
going clean is really honorable of him , but i would have waited until i did not need to be conscious or being able to fire a gun .
for an enjoyable performance by timothy hutton , plot holes the size of godzilla , getting our intelligence insulted and several " oh come on !
" moments .
answer:
N


question:
much ado about nothing .
ah , how sweet the irony !
it 's accepted wisdom in some circles - among english literature nuts , mainly - that whenever a critic knocks shakespeare they are only doing so through ignorance .
he just does n't " understand " shakespeare , you will hear them say .
the bard 's work is apparently beyond criticism .
what a load of old cobblers .
if these arbiters of public taste think kenneth branaugh 's film of shakespeare 's " comedy " much ado about nothing is comedy in any modern sense of the word
, it 's time to get a life .
get monty python .
get woody allen .
get john waters .
whatever .
just get a real taste of some clever , witty , risky comedy . and banish this nonsense
to where it belongs .
drama and tragedy was shakespeare 's strength .
to my sensibilities - and i 'm no stick in the mud - much ado about nothing resonates with no spark whatsoever .
no kidding : this film ranks among the most embarrassing two hours i have ever spent in a cinema in my 20 years of movie going .
the only thing that stopped me walking out was loyalty to my lady friend , as this was our day out
and i had n't seen her in ages .
but boy , does she owe me one !
i wo n't spend too much time on the plot .
basically , we follow the trials and tribulations of two would - be couples - one young , the other older .
there 's some dark treachery amongst all this , but everyone is so awfully jolly that you 'd hardly know it .
mind you , there 's nothing wrong with the basic story .
good romantic comedies based on similar premises abound .
nothing wrong with most of the cast , either .
branaugh , emma thompson and denzel washington are all talented performers .
the problem is the script , or more accurately , shakespeare 's original text .
light comedy should n't be complex .
yet wrapped in elizabethan english , the dialogue becomes difficult to comprehend .
for this alone it will be a problem for modern audiences unschooled in shakespeare and in search of nothing more than a good , undemanding laugh .
the only laughs to escape my belly were brought on by the gloriously inept performance of keanu reeves , the actor once again miscast as a jealous half - brother or something .
but when dissected and understood , what it all boils down to is that this stuff is just so goddamn lame .
this is comedy so clean and nice and corny and so devoid of danger that it leaves this viewer
totally cold .
ho , ho ,
ho ,
boy likes girl !
ho ,
ho ,
ho , men are such klutzes !
ho ,
ho ,
ho ,
she 's so awfully clumsy !
oh please !
there 's wit in here somewhere , i 'm told .
i call it pretentious
.
something lightweight striving to be something sophisticated through clever wordplay .
in the end , it 's cringeworthy .
watching some of the cinema patrons around me collapse with laughter made much ado about nothing a very weird movie going experience .
comedy ?
bah , humbug !
answer:
N


question:
upon first viewing of this movie , the phrases " been there " and " done that " come quickly to mind .
spy hard manages to steal almost every joke from the zucker brothers films , the most popular of which are airplane and the naked gun series .
stealing stuff can be profitable in this industry , but only when you steal the right stuff .
what little plot there is involves dick steele , aka .
agent wd-40 ( leslie nielsen ) trying to save the world from an almost deranged madman played by andy griffith .
along the way to it goal ( goal ? )
, the film manages to spoof mainly the james bond type films , but also manages to hit on films such as home alone and sister act .
the trick about spoofing is that you have to actually be funny , or at the least , satirical .
spy hard achieves neither , as
it borrows all of the wrong elements from the superior zucker brothers films .
the " dick , the world is in danger .
what is it ?
well , it 's a big roundish ball floating in space around the sun . .
( i 'm paraphrasing ) " type of exchange is used at least four times in the opening ten minutes of the film , each time getting progressively less funny .
what they should have stolen were the background sight gags which were so effective in the zucker brother 's films while writing their own dialogue .
director rick friedberg focuses more on the mug shots of his actors ( especially nielsen , who can do this quite well ) than on the delivery and context of their lines , much of the time cutting the punchline short .
the whole film seems to be in a race with itself to be over , as is evident in the final sequence , where there is no comedic denouement after the climax .
as was usual in the zucker brothers films and in spy hard , the end credits tend to replace this by being out of context .
one of the more amusing was , " captain of the enterprise . . . . . .
james t .
kirk " .
overall , i thought this was a very weak effort .
while all of the right films to spoof were chosen , they used none of the right spoofing methods .
next time they should " spy " a little bit harder .
*
*
* * = excellent .
one of a kind .
must see .
*
* * = entertaining .
worth the price of admission .
*
* = fair .
nothing much special .
* = what were they thinking ? ?
answer:

N