In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.

Q: ever watch a very young child try and tell a joke that is beyond his , or her , sophistication ?
it 's full of stops and starts and usually , the punch line is ruined .
i felt the same way watching drowning mona .
skip a stone across water and you approximate the depth of this attempt at an ensemble comedy .
there are some slightly successful attempts at humor , but they only serve as window dressing .
there is a running gag about the town , verplanck , n .
y .
, being a test town for the then new yugo .
everyone drives a yugo , differentiating their cars with personalized license plates .
even the police chief drives one .
there is a certain sublimeness to the image of a lights and siren decked out yugo skittering its way through the town streets .
there also is a running gag about one of the characters , jeff , missing a hand and how it occurred .
it pokes gentle fun at the notion of urban legends .
it turns out the truth is more horrifying than any legend .
there are some sight gags that pop up as well , such as mona 's tombstone , which reads " demoted " , instead of devoted .
still , the core of the story maintains the flatness of a still pond .
the lynchpin of the film falls on the redundant and sporadic scenes involving mona ( midler ) .
each scene with her is the same : scream at someone , hit someone , then scream some more .
there 's no uniqueness or modulation to her or explanation for her meanness .
anyone off the street could have played the role , such as it is .
the other characters are walking cardboard cutouts .
each one is defined by one trait and no further attempt is made at deeper characterization .
there is a burly , female car mechanic , so of course , there is a forced lesbianism gag .
mona 's son , jeff ( marcus thomas ) is a simpleton , hence
you can predict his dialogue before it even plods its way from his mouth .
chief of police rash ( devito ) likes broadway musicals and loves his daughter .
there 's nothing more to him .
elle , the chief 's daughter ( campbell ) , is bland personified , a dutiful girl with no higher aspiration than to have a child and be married .
mona 's husband phil ( fichtner ) jeckle and hydes from shirking coward to reptilian letch .
bob ( affleck ) , elle 's betrothed , and business partner to jeff , is a mumbling , obvious dullard .
there is no contrast to any of the characters .
by having at least one character with some wit , or wits , to serve as counterpoint to the others , perhaps steinfeld 's attempt at satirizing a small town infested with ambitionless people might have come off better .
ostensibly a murder mystery , drowning mona gives you almost all the clues immediately , then lets you sit back and feel superior as you watch the cast of paper people fumble their way to finding the killer , who could be anyone due to mona 's loving manner with everyone on town .
even that aspect of the film fails , throwing in a convenient , ridiculous and unsatisfying wrap to things .
it 's been a while since i walked away from a movie theater in an angry mood .
what makes it all the more remarkable is that i rarely remember a comedy making me so angry for wasting my time at it 's ineptitude .

A: N
****
Q: you know the plot : a dimwit with a shady past is seduced into committing a crime only to be double - crossed by a fatal femme .
in " palmetto , " the dimwit is harry barber ( woody harrelson ) , a reporter who 's just been released from prison ( he was framed by the gangsters and corrupt officials he was investigating ) .
enter la femme : rhea malroux ( elisabeth shue ) , the sexy young wife of the richest man in palmetto , florida ( rolf hoppe ) .
she and her stepdaughter odette ( chlo ? sevigny ) have a plot to extort 500k from the old man : harry will " kidnap " odette .
after groping both women , harry agrees .
as everyone except harry can see , he 's being set up as a fall guy .
sure enough , before long , harry has a dead body in his trunk and the cops on his tail .
his brother - in - law ( tom wright ) , an assistant da , has hired harry to be the press liaison for the case , so harry gets a front row seat for his own manhunt ( and we get to watch him sweat - literally ) .
there are several plot twists , of course - a couple of them even took me by surprise .
apparently every woman in palmetto is a raving horndog , and they 're on harry like he 's the only bone in the kennel .
shue vamps so broadly that i expected tex avery 's wolf to show up .
her incredible performance in " leaving las vegas " seems to have been a fluke .
here , she could easily be mistaken for melanie griffith .
shue 's character is supposed to be a savvy schemer
but she comes off as a brainless bimbo
.
in addition to shue and sevigny , the kennel includes gina gershon ( who filled the dimwit - with - a - shady - past role in " bound " ) as harry 's girlfriend nina ; when harry gets out of jail , she licks his face ( now there 's a horndog ) .
the parts are so overplayed that with a little push " palmetto " could have been an over - the - top parody of film noir
a la " romeo is bleeding .
"
as it is , it 's best watched at 2 am on showtime ( the love scenes seem to have been written for one of that channel 's soft porn programs anyway ) .
" palmetto " has a well - known director , volker schl ?
ndorff , who 's best known for his adaptations of major literary works , especially " the tin drum .
"
i suppose he must have been drawn to this plot - by - numbers script by the same admiration for classic film noir that led scorsese to remake " cape fear .
"
schl ?
ndorff tries hard - he makes an interesting motif out of the ubiquitous palmetto bugs - but
nothing can freshen up this stale script .

A: N
****
Q: susan granger 's review of " two can play that game " ( screen gems ) since the success of " waiting to exhale , " there have been several romantic comedies about african - american professionals .
this female revenge fantasy , vivica
a . fox plays shante smith , a stunning ad exec who seems to have reached the pinnacle of success : a mansion , a sporty car and an idyllic relationship with a hunky , hot - shot lawyer , morris chestnut .
she 's at a point in her life when she dispenses advice to her grateful girl - friends (
mo'nique , wendy racquel robinson , tamala jones ) .
"
when your man messes up , no matter how small it is , " she smugly decrees , " yuh gots to punish him .
"
so when she catches her hot man dancing at a bar with a smart and sexy rival , gabrielle union , she devises her own version of " the rules , " a 10-day " tough love " emotionally punishing plan to get him back .
unfortunately , writer / director mark brown ( " how to be a player " ) breaks the cardinal rule of romantic comedy : you have to like the protagonist - and shrill , self - congratulatory
shante smith is a smirking , superficial , spiteful shrew who does n't realize that rational rules can not always be applied to love .
having her talk directly into the camera gets stale very quickly and the " day one , " " day two " title - card device underscores the tedium . comic anthony anderson scores as chestnut 's boisterous best - friend , and singer bobby brown does a cameo as a scuzzy mechanic who 's given a smooth makeover by ms . robinson .
but the out - takes over the closing credits contain more humor than the film itself .
on the granger movie gauge of 1 to 10 , " two can play that game " is smarmy if slick 4 , filled with misogynistic attitude and blatant product placements
( coca - cola , miller genuine draft ) but little else .
in this r - rated ( for explicit sexual language ) , pseudo - hip battle of the sexes , the audience loses .

A:
N
****