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

SOLUTION: P

PROBLEM: movies can do the two big es very well : educate and entertain .
in the best of all possible worlds , they accomplish both .
on the red planet , they fail entirely .
in the near future , a manned mission is sent to mars to observe primitive plant growth .
this film does a remarkable job of demonstrating exactly how exciting watching algae grow would be .
after some mumbo - jumbo about an ecological disaster on earth and an interminable wait to reach the fourth planet , the ship falls apart almost as fast as the movie does .
the ground crew of people
you could n't care less about
is trapped on the surface without food , water or air and stalked by a deadly rogue cyberdog .
the one potentially interesting character ( carrie - anne moss ) spends her time alone in the orbiting ship talking to a computer .
attempting to graft " 2001 " esque space mysticism with " terminator " robot horror , first time director antony hoffman ca n't seem to figure out what 's going on .
neither
can we .
did n't he have anyone who could step back from the shooting and make sure there was a coherent story ?
could n't he have used the money saved by only having to pay half a dozen actors to hire a scriptwriter ?
there are so many mis - steps .
every opportunity to create dynamic tension is thwarted by plot holes and lackluster direction .
why introduce the theme of faith vs .
science if the crewman who could comment on it disappears early only to die
_
offscreen _ ?
the audience begins the film waiting for something to happen .
two hours later , they 're still waiting .
despite our greatest hopes , there is no life on the red planet .

SOLUTION: N

PROBLEM: keep cool , a chinese film directed by semi - accomplished filmmaker yimou zhang , was one of the kickoff films for this year 's hawaii international film festival .
on the day it premiered , lines of eager moviegoers stretched around the block , some anticipants having queued up well in advance to get a good seat in the theater .
they need not have wasted their time .
the movie is billed as a comedy , but is surprisingly bereft of humor .
there are noticeable attempts at laughs , but very few tries actually click .
i wondered if there were jokes that i was n't getting because i 'm not from china , but unfortunately my conclusion was that this lack of humor could n't be attributed to the cultural barrier either .
keep cool just is n't very funny .
the prelude to the film was a visit by keep cool 's producer who , with the help of an interpreter , regaled us of how in order to get the print to the festival in time , an assistant hand carried it on the plane from china to hawaii .
although the print made it , the assistant 's luggage was lost . too bad that story was n't in the movie , because it got a big laugh .
qu ying , the film 's female lead , was also on hand to give a few comments .
however , whereas the producer politely made regular pauses in his dialog so the interpreter could bring us up to speed , ms .
ying saw fit to say everything she had to say in one , fast - paced , incredibly long tirade .
it was dizzying ; good foreshadowing for the film .
you see , keep cool is filmed almost totally with a camera handheld by a man with a bad case of the shakes .
at least that 's the way it seems , since the camera is constantly moving .
cinema verite is one thing , but panning and shaking around until your audience has a headache is another .
although some might consider it a form which helps give the viewer an idea of the anarchic state into which chinese youth is slowly growing ,
i found it thoroughly distracting , and after a while ,
quite annoying .
headache , as i said .
the film is about a young bookseller ( wen jiang ) who is after a young woman ( qu ying ) .
they used to be romantically involved , but the woman grew tired of him and left the relationship .
the first half of the film is about the young man 's plan to win her back .
of course the thing is , she does n't want to be won back , and has a nightclub owner friend of hers rough him up a bit .
in the fight , the young man grabs a laptop computer belonging to a bystander and attempts to use it to fend off his attacker , but only ends up smashing it against a lamppost .
we later find out that the laptop belongs to an older man who wishes to get his damaged computer replaced .
there is a funny scene ( the only one in the film ) where the young man tries to use some twisted logic in order to get the older man to seek out the nightclub owner ( baotian li ) in order to recoup his losses .
there is no sense to be made out of the young woman 's behavior ; cold one minute , caring the next , so
we feel no sympathy for her character .
the bookseller would be better off without her .
although the second half of the film causes us to lose a lot of sympathy for the young bookseller as well , who is obsessed with chopping off the nightclub owner 's hand as revenge for the beating he took , it also offers us some nice interaction between the bookseller and the older man .
while the bookseller is blinded by his thirst for revenge , the older man is the voice of reason and tries to rationalize each situation .
his quest to end the dispute peacefully and equitably is the one we identify with , but it is frustrating to see that he seems to be talking to a brick wall half the time .
a friendship develops between the two men , but it occurs too late in the film for the audience to appreciate .
although only an hour and a half in length , keep cool contains extraneous material .
the whole plot of how the bookseller is after the young woman could have been taken out , since we do n't see her from the midpoint on .
a case of mistaken identity or some other device could have served as the point of conflict between the bookseller and the nightclub owner , and would have saved us from the bookseller 's boring pursuit during the first half .
but of course , this would have shortened the movie to less than an hour .
there are a few things that keep cool
does right .
as mentioned before , the interaction between the bookseller and the older man is generally pretty good .
although
it grows tiresome
, the reasoning with the unreasonable is a nice exercise in logic , and represents the differences in thinking between generations .
in one scene , for example , the bookseller quotes confucius to get his point across , but the older man claims the quote was misinterpreted , and that it means something entirely different .
also effective is the way zhang sets up tension within a scene , such as when the bookseller is getting ready to cut off the hand of the unwitting nightclub owner .
the nightclub owner is counting out money , slapping each bundle of currency on the table .
with every shot of his hand , we can hardly stand the interminable wait before the bookseller is going to pull out his cleaver and exact his revenge .
unfortunately , these crumbs are not enough to overcome the rest of the film 's shortcomings , and were n't enough to prevent that headache from lingering after i left the theater .

SOLUTION:
N