TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
PROBLEM: and now the high - flying hong kong style of filmmaking has made its way down to the classics , and it is n't pretty .
this time out the nod to asia goes by way of france in the excruciating bland and lukewarm production of the musketeer , a version of dumas 's the three musketeers .
by bringing in popular asian actor / stunt coordinator xing xing xiong -- whose only prior american attempts at stunt choreography have been the laughable van damme vehicle double team and the dennis rodman cinematic joke simon sez -- our musketeers are thrown into the air to do their fighting .
the end result is a tepid and dull action / adventure rip - off that stinks of indiana jones and bad asian kung fu .
the story is so simple my grandmother could have adapted the screenplay .
d'artagnan ( justin chambers ) is the vengeful son of a slain musketeer .
he travels to paris to join the royal musketeers and find the man that killed his parents .
in paris , he meets the cunning cardinal richelieu ( stephen rea ) , who is trying to overthrow the king , and richelieu 's man - in - black associate febre ( tim roth ) , the killer of his folks .
he finds the musketeers in paris disbanded and drunk , so he rounds up aramis ( nick moran ) , athos ( jan gregor kremp ) and porthos ( steven spiers ) to free the musketeer 's wrongfully imprisoned leader treville from the king 's prison .
d'artagnan and his new frisky love interest / chambermaid francesca ( mena suvari ) play footsy and coo at each other as the cardinal hunts down the musketeers until finally the queen ( catherine deneuve ) ends up being captured by the menancing febre , forcing the musketeers to regroup , with d'artagnan leading the charge , and save the day .
director peter hyams ( end of days ) obviously wanted to blend eastern and western filmmaking styles , but here it 's a disaster .
one problem is that , in reality , most eastern films have taken their lead from western ones .
jet li 's high risk is a rip - off of die hard -- not the other way around .
ironically , there is awfully little swordplay or action in the film at all -- maybe ten minutes of swashbuckling spread over five scenes .
most asian action films carry the bulk of their production with 20- to 30-minute action sequences , because they know the scenes have to carry the picture .
the musketeer instead weighs itself down with a predictable and monotonous screenplay by gene quintano ( sudden death ) , horrible acting
by stephen rea and tim roth , and the prosaic attempt of justin chambers ( the wedding planner ) to deliver his mousy self as a leader .
chambers ' d'artangnan is n't a musketeer -- he 's a mouseketeer ! and hyam 's use of candles and torches to light the grime and filth of 17th century paris are well - noted , but that 's the only standout in
an overall flat production .

SOLUTION: N

PROBLEM: except for a few bright moments of good verbal comedy , that old feeling is embarrassing to sit through .
bette midler and dennis farina play lilly and dan , actress and author , once married
, now violently divorced , and back together one last time for their daughter molly 's ( paula marshall ) wedding .
lilly and dan hate each other passionately -- so passionately that they have sex at the wedding and fall in love again .
each ditches his or her current spouse of 14 years and runs off with the other .
molly , married now only 24 hours , runs off in search of her irresponsible parents while her husband keith ( jamie denton ) tries to console the abandoned spouses .
in molly 's search for her parents , she somehow falls in love with lilly 's paparazzo joey ( danny nucci ) .
meanwhile , the newlywed keith ends up consoling dan 's wife rowena ( gail o'grady ) in bed .
the audience i saw this with apparently thought that all the adultery was hilarious .
i 'm no dan quayle , but i thought it was a bit creepy
.
the message seemed to be " ignore your responsibilities unrepentantly and have fun fucking who you wish .
" " family values " aside , there 's something cruel about all this .
perhaps this movie would have played well as a black comedy , but the movie is a romantic comedy .
we are supposed to be rooting for these creeps .
reiner and screenwriter leslie dixon tried to make it easier on us by making the victims unlikeable .
lilly 's husband is a new - age flake who rambles about " emotional valet parking , " so we can write him off as irrelevant
.
dan 's wife is vain , manipulative , and jealous so
we can write her off as a bitch .
molly 's husband is a career - conscious , self - centered republican politician who thinks she 's too fat ( and just for good measure , he also fucked dan 's wife ) , so we can write him off as a prick
.
everyone else falls in love .
but still , that somehow does n't justify the actions of the movie 's main characters .
"
he 's a prick " or " she 's a bitch " is no defense .
the movie is somewhat redeemed by some funny dialog -- often during heated arguments -- and by above - average performances by midler and farina ( breaking out of his character - actor mold ) .
other than that , it 's a standard romantic comedy with a very substandard gimmick .

SOLUTION: N

PROBLEM: of circumcision , psychic wounds and the family sitcom the opening segment is something of a foretaste of this film .
there 's a guy 's voice telling us how he tries to imagine what his biological parents look like , and on the screen we see images of a variety of oldish men and women .
as his imagination plays o n , he ( and we ) picture these motley characters in a mix - and - match shuffle of unlikely marriages , businesswomen with bums , matrons with paint salesmen , the images coming on in a faster and faster frenzy .
it 's not just a witty , funny summing up of the film 's themes - you might not guess it yet , but it sets the pattern for the way the story goes on .
what starts out as a step in a fairly sensible direction , gets taken on a road trip , put through a detour or two and finds itself freewheeling towards an immin ent crash .
that may not sound so different from the average family sitcom , and the general idea of the film does n't , at first , seem so wildly distant from standard - issue hollywood comedy : man who was adopted as a child ( ben still er ) sets out on a journey to meet his real parents , along with his wife ( patricia arquette ) , his baby , and a pretty psychology - researcher ( tea leoni ) in tow .
various mix - ups , shenanigans , oddball characters and , yup , disasters follow .
but if you think you 've been here before , the dialogue and the direction ( by david o . russell , who made spanking the monkey ) take it into another dimension .
the dreaded t - name seems an inevitable reference point ( what with a drug overdose scene and the casting of arquette from true romance ) but really the point is that the foot - massage master has n't got a monopoly on plot twists and fast , funny , irreverent lines , or on the absurdities of ordinary speech .
whether it 's about circumcision , psychic wounds , oral sex , carjacking , the beauties of the armpit area , or ronald reagan , the script never seems to run out of hilarious invention .
the best thing is how these words are n't just there for the punchlines , but are great precisely because they 're said in character , like tea leoni 's neurotically - charged psychobabbler who 's able to say under assault , " it 's understandable if you find this threatening " .
the cast is excellent throughout , and , rather than singling out anybody , kudos are due to the fine ensemble acting , with the sometimes frenetically overlapping dialogue and the sense of a dozen different reagents colliding to the point of fission .
there are some elements of a woody allen film in this ( not to mention the hand - held camera and loose , improvisational feel of some scenes ) .
like allen , russell 's interests are in the volatile sexual politics of couples and the neurotic obsessions in both pare nts and children ( and everybody , really ) .
still , if you 're expecting a privileged moment of revelation and emotional outpouring a la " murphy brown " / " frasier " / fill - in - the - blank - american - comedy , well , it wo n't happen .
the film sets up expectations like these , with the lead character 's search f or his origins and his hopes of self - healing , only to knock them down .
if the conventional sitcom structure is to put a slightly loopy family in catastrophic conditions only to rediscover their essential lovey one - ness , flirting with disaster 's charact ers embark on a journey to seek that essential state but find themselves only plunging into more weirdness and dysfunctional chaos the further they go .
and that , the film suggests , is the essential family state - and you better learn to love it .
somehow , this is perversely feelgood cinema , right up to its manic end .

SOLUTION:
P