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

[EX Q]: zero effect gets its title from the main character , daryl zero ( bill pullman ) , although we do n't understand what it truly means until the very last line of dialogue in the film .
zero is a private investigator , perhaps the best private investigator who ever lived ( at least he 'd like to think so ) .
however , he 's a socially inept being , and eccentric in every possible way -- this fact certainly makes his talents as a private eye even more bewildering than they already are .
zero 's accomplice is steve arlo ( ben stiller ) , a " normal " guy who does the business side of the job -- he 's the one who actually speaks to clients and explains zero 's greatness as an investigator .
the opening scene has steve explaining the many virtues of zero 's talents to soon - to - be client gregory stark ( ryan o'neal ) .
it turns out that stark has lost a key to a safe deposit box , and is now being blackmailed for something that he apparently knows nothing about .
zero takes the case , and the plot thickens .
his path leads to a young , pretty paramedic named gloria sullivan ( kim dickens ) .
despite her luminous and seemingly - harmless presence , she turns out to be the one blackmailing stark .
through his investigations , zero learns why , but not without developing feelings for gloria -- feelings that , because of his reclusive behavior , are new and confusing to him .
i have no particular affinity towards the mystery genre of film .
i can idly enjoy movies about private investigators , and , every once in a while , a film like chinatown comes a long that blows me away ( actually , no private eye film has ever reached chinatown 's greatness ) .
zero effect , which is jake kasdan 's first effort as writer / director , is a film about a private investigator that succeeds in all attempts :
it 's
an original , funny , and completely involving motion picture .
with so many cliches available to this genre , i find it amazing that kasdan avoided all of them .
but he did n't just successfully avoid flaws
: he has created a great film here , one that had me interested and fascinated from the first shot to the final moment .
take , for starters ,
the great cast of characters .
pullman is terrific as zero , showing a comic flair that i really have n't seen from him since spaceballs .
zero is the kind of guy who seems at ease switching personalities so frequently as he does here ; the fact that he 's an almost exaggeratedly twisted , emotionally unstable man outside of his profession is not at all difficult to believe .
pullman 's performance is much more layered than it might seem at first glance , and the occasional voice - over as he 's going through the motions of his job are insightful and often hilarious
.
ben stiller is also a very funny individual ; he 's the kind of comedian who makes normal lines sound funny .
"
i 'll shoot you , " he says to stark at one point .
"
i have a gun , and everything .
" his character is also well - drawn , with an interesting subplot involving his girlfriend ( angela featherstone ) who is not happy with the extensive amounts of time he must spend away from her due to the unpredictability of his job .
o'neal also gives his character a bit of depth ; and kim dickens , last seen ( and underused ) in mercury rising , gets a chance to show us her talent here , giving gloria the realism this kind of character really needs .
i find zero effect to be an immensely funny and witty film .
kasdan 's humor is of the best kind --
soft spoken , and mostly dialogue - driven ( though
there are some great visual jokes ) .
it 's the kind of humor that 's funny even after you 've seen it five or six times .
there 's one scene in which zero talks about how detached he is , an how that makes him such a great detective .
what we see during this narration are various shots of him sitting on a bed , or standing motionlessly , with his hair destroyed and an utterly blank look painted on his unshaven face , his eyes pointing to something off camera , but obviously to nothing in particular .
i ca n't convey to you how funny this is , but what makes it great film making is that it has a point -- scenes like this are frequent , and they provide solid characterization of zero .
as a side note , i do n't consider myself an average viewer when it comes to comedy ( not to sound elitist ) -- i find things funny
that many do not , and vice versa .
there was a clump of people near me in the theater laughing uproariously through this film , and the rest of the theater was relatively silent through most of it .
i have a feeling the humor here wo n't appeal to everyone , but there 's certainly enough story and character development to keep anyone 's interest .
jake kasdan , son of writer / director lawrence kasdan , is only 22 years old .
i found this out after seeing the film , and i ca n't remember ever being so impressed with a film maker .
his direction is stylish without being pretentious , and his writing is mature , full , and developed .
zero effect is the kind of film that i 'll buy for my collection
-- smart , original films like this are rare as it is , but this one actually has a heart and a soul
.
at the end of the film , i was involved in the characters , and
i was satisfied with the outcome .
and , with kasdan 's undeniable talent at such a young age , all i can do is hope to see a lot more from him in the future .
[EX A]: P

[EX Q]: when walt disney pictures announced a live - action feature based on the ' 60s cartoon series of " mr . magoo , " special interests groups representing the vision - impaired let out a cry of dismay .
mr .
magoo , they claimed , would be an insult to the men and women they represented .
in fact , they were wrong .
mr .
magoo is not just an insult to the blind and near - blind ,
it 's an insult to every human being who has the misfortune to suffer through this dreadfully unfunny , 90 minute atrocity .
it 's stating the obvious to remark that disney appears to have run out of original ideas
.
look at their roster of 1996 and 1997 releases , and you 'll see a shocking list of retreads , including 101 dalmatians , george of the jungle , jungle2jungle , that darn cat ! , flubber , and now mr . magoo .
the best of these ( george of the jungle ) was mildly entertaining .
the worst , mr . magoo ,
exposes just how painful a bad movie experience can be .
the first problem with mr .
magoo is the script .
despite the collaboration of naked gun scribe pat proft , mr . magoo is comically barren .
from beginning to end , there 's not a laugh to be found .
every attempt at humor -- and there are lots of them -- falls flat with an audible thud .
you 'd think that out of the dozens of gags jammed into this film , at least a few would work , but that 's not the case .
i 've had more laughs during ingmar bergman pictures .
then there 's leslie nielsen , who looks , sounds , and acts absolutely nothing like the animated character ( memorably voiced by jim backus ) .
in the past , nielsen has proven his comic aptitude with roles in movies like airplane and the naked gun .
lately , however , he has been getting lazy , taking parts in the likes of dracula : dead and loving it , spy hard , and mr . magoo .
even if nielsen was in top form , it would take an incredible stretch of imagination to see him as magoo ( especially since we 're reminded of the original by the short cartoon segments that open and close the film ) , but " top form " is not a phrase i would use to describe his performance here .
this is strictly a take - the - money - and- run operation .
the story , which , like many disney stories , can be described in one long sentence : magoo is the only witness to the theft of a rare jewel from a museum , and , as he is trying to apprehend the thieves on his own , the police mistake him for the robber .
the cops are played by ernie hudson and stephen tobolowsky , who take their lumps early and often .
the bad guys are kelly lynch ( who does a lot of martial arts - type kicking ) , nick chinlund , and malcolm mcdowell ( who has the good sense to look embarrassed ) .
matt keeslar portrays one of magoo 's sidekicks -- his nephew , waldo .
the bumbling man 's other , more interesting companion is a dog named angus .
most of mr .
magoo 's humor comes in the form of failed slapstick .
the cartoon violence level in this film does n't approach that of home alone 3 or flubber , but it 's still pretty acute , with characters getting hit on the head with sledgehammers and knocked off snowy precipices .
there 's a non - violent bit with magoo preparing a chicken dinner that could have been funny if it was handled better , but , compared to mr .
bean 's recent , similar misadventure , it does n't hold up well .
then there is the series of lame jokes that result from magoo 's near blindness , such as the occasion when he mistakes a wild animal for a baby .
i 'm willing to cut director stanley tong a little slack .
tong , a hong kong film maker trying to break into the hollywood market , has helmed several jackie chan movies , including first strike , rumble in the bronx , and supercop .
his chief talent , that of choreographing martial arts fights , is wasted here ( despite some high kicking by kelly lynch ) .
like john woo ( hard target ) and ringo lam ( maximum risk ) before him , it appears that tong has been consigned to the purgatory of making a bad movie as his entry into the american mainstream .
it is worth noting that , unlike many disney films which hold a perverse appeal for the under-10 crowd while driving parents to distraction , mr . magoo appears to bore viewers of all ages .
the screening i attended was wall - to - wall kids , and , for the most part ,
they did n't seem to be enjoying themselves .
when the film was over , i asked one little girl what she thought of it .
her pained expression confirmed the adage that a picture can indeed be worth a thousand words .
mr .
magoo is the kind of movie that should be rejected by any potential viewer
, sight unseen .
[EX A]: N

[EX Q]: capsule :
the much anticipated re - adaptation of the pierre boulle novel comes to the screen as a dark and a little dreary film with lots of chases and fighting , but very little intelligence .
visually there is much to like about this version , but the approach is to take an adventure after the style of gulliver 's travels and treat it as an action film .
that makes it a film without much center . , 0 ( -4 to +4 )
pierre boulle , author of the bridge on the river kwai , wrote planet of the apes ( a . k . a . monkey planet ) , the novel , as a social satire .
it reads a lot like a fifth book of gulliver 's travels .
humans discover a planet in which the roles of apes and humans have been reversed , not unlike the roles of horses and humans on jonathan swift 's island of the houyhnhnms .
the novel moves somewhat slowly to create some suspense in revealing all the things most film fans know to be true about the nature of the planet .
it seems to me there is also a statement about human cruelty to animals , but perhaps i was just looking for that .
when rod serling adapted the novel into a film released in 1968 , he added a number of serling touches , familiar from episodes of the twilight zone and changed the ending to make it more serling - ish .
the final irony of the original version has become film history .
without it there could never have been a " planet of the apes " film series .
i can surmise only that serling ran into serious script problems in how to handle the tricky question of language .
in the book the apes had their own language and the human eventually learned that language .
that could have been done in the film , but that would have required the entire film to be subtitled for the non - ape - speaking .
serling avoided this by having the apes speak english and , of course , there is some justification for that by the end of the film .
justifying why the apes spoke english may have even been the inspiration for his surprise ending .
but serling never tackles the all - important question of why a supposedly intelligent human never shows any curiosity or even surprise that the apes speak his own language , a language they had no opportunity to ever hear .
few viewers questioned this serious plot hole , however , and the film has become well respected in cinema history .
partial credit at least should go to jerry goldsmith whose extremely inventive score is one of goldsmith 's best if not his best .
when the film 's success called for sequels , the filmmakers turned up the violence and they added well - intentioned , though not very subtle , political messages about what was happening in the united states of the 1960s and 1970s .
while the first film had a little shooting of guns and what was there seemed a little half- hearted , by the second film , beneath the planet of the apes , there was a good deal more violence and from that point on the series had a lot of violence and chases .
the series concluded with battle for the planet of the apes in 1973 .
now director tim burton tries his hand at adapting the original book again .
for those who thought that the 1968 version was not very faithful to the book , burton 's new version is even less faithful .
first , he does not really reverse the roles of the humans and the apes .
he has them both be intelligent , articulate races battling for a dominance of the planet currently in the hands , uh , make that paws , of the apes .
that could be a good story too , but it is not planet of the apes .
as with the mission impossible films and so many other cinematic homages to the third quarter of the last century , the title makes promises that the filmmakers have no intention of honoring .
in 2029 leo davidson ( mark wahlberg , not this world 's most expressive actor ) works on a space station increasing the intelligence and usefulness of apes .
then a convenient time storm sweeps him up wizard - of - oz - fashion and drops him on an alien planet .
( yes , he survives this storm , but then no storm is perfect . )
he quickly finds , not greatly to any surprise he shows , that on this planet apes rule and humans drool , but everybody talks .
and the language they talk is earth- english .
apparently it does not even occur to leo that there is a mystery that needs to be explained about that .
the fact it does not occur to leo and apparently did n't occur to tim burton either is the heart of the real horror of this film .
both just assumed that if apes were going to talk the language they would speak would be english .
in any case having one talking race dominating another makes this not a look at human - animal relationships and more one of the master - slave relationships .
outside of sudan and a few other countries this is a less relevant topic .
leo is captured to be used as a slave but also is discovered by ari , played by helena bonham carter .
ari is an attractive ape with close ties to high political power .
she is bent on making the world a better place .
perhaps in a previous draft of the script she was called hil - ari .
in any case with makeup that stifles her usual pout , carter is just about as attractive as she has ever been in a film .
she may want to consider this to become her standard look from this point forward .
it is not long before leo escapes with some human and only a couple of sympathetic apes .
this is a further abandonment of the source material .
the chase severely limits the interplay of ape and human and the examination of each 's place in this reversed society , each important in the book .
we can not see how the society works because most of the screentime society has broken down .
we see the humans either separated from the apes or fighting them .
burton chooses visceral thrills over cerebral ones at almost every turn .
this is a miscalculation , as characters so lacking in empathy value are difficult ones to place much emotional investment in .
they are basically chess pieces and the viewer has little reason to root for them to win .
the 1968 script had little subtlety , with lines like " i never met an ape i did n't like , " but at least we cared for what happened to taylor , the main character .
most of what this film has to offer is in the visuals .
the visual work is spotty but generally nicely done except that so much of the film takes place in the night or in fog .
this tends to limit close looks at the makeup .
in general it seems much improved from 1968 .
the makeup team is led by rick baker instead of john chambers , who did it for the 1968 version .
in 1968 chambers makeup was a jaw - dropper .
it was realistic enough to almost be believable but flexible enough to show emotion .
chambers is good , but if anyone had a chance to best him it would have to be baker .
today audiences have higher expectations ; baker 's visualization is really an improvement .
these visuals work nicely .
what does not work is the wire- assisted leaps some of the apes make .
they look like they were inspired by the physics- defying leaps of crouching tiger , hidden dragon .
apes spring incredible distances .
some of the best scenes are apes running into battle looking like they have ape posture , but when they start flying through the air
the effect is lost .
one final visual problem is that the film frequently shows its budget in what should be spectacular battle scenes the camera shows us only a small group of people close - up . since the days of lon chaney and boris karloff few actors have crossed over to stardom in a role that required heavy make - up .
the one actor who has a shot is paul giamatti .
it is not that his lines are so good , most are silly jokes .
but he delivers them very well .
he was always a watchable actor , but has not yet made stardom .
as the ape - trader limbo he over - emotes to overcome his ape make - up , but does it very well .
in doing
so he makes himself the most interesting thing on the screen .
he is probably the best thing in the film and conjures up memories of peter ustinov 's performance in spartacus .
as an in - joke there are several lines in the script borrowed from the 1968 film and an old ape played by charleton heston becomes an allusion to the first film by itself .
danny elfman 's score has a nice primitive feel , but jerry goldsmith 's 1968 tour de force score is a real classic .
that score and the whole film will be remembered when the 2001 film is forgotten .
i rate the remake 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale .
[EX A]:
N