In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
--------
Question: jacques tati 's 1953 classic " les
vacances
de m . hulot " ( also known as " mr .
hulot 's vacation , " in english ) ought to be the textbook on how to do non ?
dialogue comedy in film .
the characters hardly ever speak to each other directly , and the film operates on the paper ?
thin premise that monsieur hulot , played by tati himself , is awkward and clumsy and generally manages to annoy the other guests at the beach resort hotel where he is taking a week 's vacation .
yet the film had me beside myself laughing more consistently than any in recent memory .
part of the reason the film works so well is the clever setup for the various gags .
slapstick has often been regarded as an unsophisticated and even crude form of comedy , but i think part of the reason for this is that it often seems forced : you can only see movie characters start running after something and then crash face - first into a pole so many times before you start to wonder what all these poles are doing there in the first place or why these people do n't watch where they 're going .
in " les vacances de m . hulot , " the gags build upon each other and often start out relatively low - key .
in one sequence , for example , hulot is painting the side of his small row boat on the beach when , while his back is turned , the paint can gets caught up in the oncoming waves , washes away , then comes back up on the other side of the boat .
while crossing over to get the can , hulot steps in the boat and unknowingly cracks it .
when he actually takes the boat out into the water , it breaks in half , but the two halves flip up against each other , trapping him inside as the bystanders mistake it for a shark fin and panic on the beach ensues .
tati does n't waste a single opportunity for humor ;
scenes that might have yielded one joke in most comedies are good for at least four or five in this film .
it has been said that comedy relies on frustrating the audience 's expectations , and " les vacances de m . hulot " succeeds brilliantly in that area as well .
tati accomplishes this largely through a sort of deadpan understatement .
when hulot goes into a separate room during dinner and starts playing a record at defeaningly loud volume , no fights or shouting matches ensue ; instead , the waiter calmly walks in and shuts off the power in the room , disconnecting the record player and leaving a puzzled hulot sitting in the dark .
tati also uses running gags to this effect , allowing them to keep running far longer than most comedy directors would ; more often than not , we can see them coming and think , " oh , he 's not going to do that again , " but , lo and behold , he does .
for example , there is a recurring joke in which hulot 's noisy , sputtering car engine wakes everyone in the middle of the night as an exterior shot reveals the hotel 's lights coming on one by one .
then this image turns up again in the finale , which i will not give away other than to say that involves a lot more noise in the middle of the night than a car engine could ever produce .
the ending is one of two elements that really make this a four - star film as opposed to merely an above - average , clever comedy . as much as i was laughing during this film , i was thinking to myself occasionally that tati had to top himself at the end to really make this work as a complete viewing experience ; suffice it to say that he did .
the other important aspect is that the film never seems disdainful of its characters .
it easily could have turned the tables on hulot and had the other guests exact some kind of revenge on him ; alternatively , it could have portrayed the others as humorless curmudgeons .
instead , tati seems to regard his characters with cheerful amusement more than anything else and invites the audience to like them , however strange or irritating they might seem .
" les vacances de m .
hulot " is not subtitled , but the dialogue is sparse and for the most part not terribly essential to the flow of events .
anyone with a taste for this kind of absurd humor ought to make this film their next rental from the video store .
note : " les vacances
de m . hulot " was not rated by the mpaa .
it would at most receive a pg rating .

Answer: P


Question: writing a screenplay for a thriller is hard .
harder than pouring concrete under the texas sun . harder than building a bridge over troubled waters . and incidentally , a whole heck of a lot harder than writing a movie review .
thrillers are all variations on a theme .
you have a smart , resourceful , and powerful bad guy , who has a goal he has to meet .
you have a noble and brave good guy , who has to protect the innocent , kill the bad guy , and not get killed himself in the process .
the trick of thriller writing is doing all of this in an interesting and novel manner .
this simple formula can lead to classic movies like north by northwest , high noon , or silence of the lambs , or big summer blockbusters like men in black , the fugitive , or air force one , or it can lead to utter dreck like masterminds , event horizon , kull the conqueror .
.. . is anyone else getting depressed here ?
point is , it 's not enough to follow the formula .
you 've got to throw in something extra , something good and new and better than the last version .
something to surprise and move all of us people who buy the tickets and the popcorn and the happy meals .
this is a hard thing to do , but it is absolutely necessary in every way .
without that something extra -- whether it 's a great plot or a well - written screenplay , or great special effects or great locations or great casting or great performances or great big hungry dinosaurs -- the movie fails .
that 's why the jackal , with all its starpower , with all its budget , with all its hype , gets a big fat f. bruce willis is the bad guy , the jackal , a legendary killer for hire .
richard gere is the good guy , a former ira assassin with a vendetta against the jackal .
the jackal is trying to kill someone .
gere is trying to stop him .
will gere be able to stop the assassination in time and kill the jackal ?
( i 'll give you three guesses , and the first two do n't count . )
there are no surprises awaiting the audience in the jackal , no moment when you say to yourself , " i wonder what happens next ?
"
the script for the jackal is n't ripped straight from today 's headlines .
it 's ripped off , straight from an episode of millennium .
throughout the movie , we learn what the jackal 's plans are and how he intends to accomplish them .
no surprise .
the fun of a movie like this should come from richard gere figuring out what the jackal 's plan is and developing a clever plan to foil the bad guy .
instead , we get two ( count 'em , two ) scenes where gere is sitting in an fbi conference room somewhere and instantly divines the jackal 's plan just as if he 's frank black ( or more likely , just as if he 's been handed a copy of the script ) .
and we never get more than a superficial clue as to why gere has had this flash of insight .
it 's like gere 's character is psychic , but neither he nor the fbi ( or the screenwriters ) seem to know it .
and just like in millennium , the bad guy has an overwhelming need to go after the people the good guy cares about , whether or not they are important to what he 's trying to do or not .
what 's more , in the last half of the movie , the jackal , supposedly a super - smart professional terrorist who never makes a mistake , comes down with a major case of the stupids .
as for the performances .
.. bruce willis manages to get through the whole movie without a wisecrack , which is a major achievement , but not enough reason to see the movie .
his disguises are good , but not as good or as interesting as val kilmer 's in the saint .
richard gere is made to talk the entire movie in an irish accent , which detracts from his otherwise lifeless and dull performance .
sidney poitier is probably the most disappointing element in a overwhelmingly disappointing movie -- not that his performance is bad or anything , it 's not , but it is sad that hollywood wo n't use this talented actor in any part other than an fbi agent ( shoot to kill , sneakers ) .
writing a good plot and a good screenplay , like i said , is hard , but it can be done .
it was n't done here .
it is our job as consumers to reward good screenplays and to denounce bad and uninteresting ones .
do not go see this movie .
you 'll only encourage the producers to make more just like it .
instead , stay home and rent day of the jackal , or in the line of fire , or a fire safety video , for crying out loud .
anything other than the jackal , which lives up to its name by gnawing the dead bones of other , better movies .

Answer: N


Question: plot : two sister witches have to live with a curse placed upon their family , which prevents them from ever enjoying a full life with a lover .
the hex invokes the eventual demise of their loved one .
when one of their past loves comes back to haunt them , they have to figure a way out of their eternal dilemma .
critique : i 've been waiting for a good witch movie for a while now , but hold on to your brooms and incantations , cause this puppy is far from being it !
for a film that has the word " magic " in its title , this movie contains very few moments of magic . . .
or humor for that matter , drama , suspense , or romance .
well actually , there is some manufactured romance within a plot that is so muddled
, it never lets you in on whether it 's a comedy , a drama , a horror show , or a murder mystery .
or maybe it 's a romance , eh ?
it does n't really matter , cause the characters in the film are so boring and uninteresting , that you have absolutely no basis on which to care for them , or the film as a whole .
if only the filmmakers had spent as much time on the plot as they did the sinfully obvious soundtrack , this film might 've had a chance to be more than what it is now . which is an unentertaining , crappy film that uses the witch angle as a diversionary tactic to weave us away from its grab - bag of stupid voice - overs , overdone songs , melodramatic romance , undeveloped story and uneven acting
.
i only wish that i could make that one hour and forty - five minutes of my life re - appear , but alas , it is lost in the spiritual world of " interesting ideas gone wildly awry " . little known facts about this film and its stars : this film is based on the novel written by alice hoffman .
co - screenwriter akiva goldsman also wrote the screenplay for 1997 's batman & robin .
director griffin dunne is known mainly as an actor in such films as an american werewolf in london and after hours .

Answer:
N