I wasted 35 minutes of my life on this turkey before I gave up. The main character is completely clueless and astoundingly unsympathetic, but there is no humor in his blundering. As soon as he arrives in Germany, the screenwriter pulls the old "there's only one room in the hotel, you'll have to share a room with a pretty girl" stunt. Come on, at least you could let them develop their relationship a bit first. Watch "It Happened One Night" to see how to do it right--or any of a thousand movies since then.

The acting is consistently third-rate, and the improvised dialogue should have been left on the cutting-room floor. It meanders with no plan at all, despite the fact that the film telegraphs the relationship's destination from the moment Greta is introduced.

The first song, in the boardroom, is mildly funny but badly sung. The rest of the songs (well, to be fair, I only heard those in the first half-hour) are just pointless and awful. Most of the singers are painfully out of tune, but not in any intentionally humorous sort of way.


This movie moved much too slowly for my taste.The concept of the story is refreshingly different in that it explores the family dynamics of living with a mentally-retarded family member in a way that I have not previously seen on-screen.However,the execution of the concept was flawed.Each character was developed fully within the scene of her first appearance,then one had to endure the feeling that each character was treading water the rest of the way.That is,each character flailed about awkwardly in her interpersonal relationships with others in the movie,which I found to be a form of emotional and social retardation.I suppose this has artistic merit,given the irony that the story centers around an intellectually retarded individual surrounded by way above-average intelligence friends and family.The acting,however,was well-done without exception.I agree with other reviewers that the cinematography was beautiful.In summary,I think the film has strong artistic merit because of the fine acting and cinematography,but fails on an emotional level due to the shortcomings described.


I finally got hold of a DVD copy of this production and was agog with curiosity, since I had read so many people praising it to the skies, particularly Angela Lansbury's portrayal of Mrs. Lovett. I saw the Tim Burton movie a few months ago and thought it over the top and overly bloody; thankfully this version is not so horrifying gory but it suffers dramatically in too many other ways for it to be in the least satisfying to me.

To begin with, the casting. George Hearn is adequate and at least shows some expression (as opposed to Johnny Depp's unending wooden face in the movie). Angela Lansbury is, quite simply, annoying. At least she has enough power in her voice to get the point across as opposed to Helena Bonham Carter's piping and expressionless little girl's voice, but subtlety seems to be only a word in the dictionary to Ms. Lansbury. One cannot be drawn into the story when one of the main characters spends her entire time mugging and winking in a "look, Ma, I'm acting!" fashion and being far too aware of the audience. This is not something that is typical of stage productions, heaven knows--I have been a regular attendee of many productions at the Stratford Festial for many years and stage actors do NOT behave in that fashion as a rule (at least those who want to continue to find regular employment do not!)...

Betsy Joslyn. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Did anybody besides me notice that she can't sing this role even vaguely appropriately? And her playing George Hearn's daughter is just creepy, considering that she was married to him at the time. Isn't she supposed to be a sweet little sixteen-year-old? Yes, I realize that this is what acting is all about, but not once did she convince me that she was any younger than about thirty-five, and the phrase "mutton dressed as lamb" seems to have been coined just for her. Her butchering of "Green Finch And Linnet Bird" had me gnashing my teeth and ready to turn off the DVD player at once. That song was done so well in Tim Burton's movie, and this was a sad shock. The song requires the vocal range of Julie Andrews in the 1960's and a purity of voice that is only comparable to that of a boy soprano. Any vibrato at all kills it dead, and Ms. Joslyn spent the entire time warbling so hard that I thought she was about to fall off of her ladder because she was trembling so much from the effort at sustaining coloratura notes with a voice that is a mezzo at best. Let us pass over the spectacle of her vibrating at least a quarter tone flat on at least three of the higher notes... This is quite simply not a coloratura role and perhaps a discerning director should have told her that--but the fact that she was married to the star might possibly have tied the director's hands.

Cris Groenendaal was adequate, but again obviously far too old for the role and there is zero chemistry between him and Ms. Joslyn, which makes the whole subplot fall completely flat. I am reminded a little of past stage productions of Wagner's Ring cycle where, due to the vocal power required for the singers to bellow over the sound of a full Wagnerian orchestra they would have to cast based upon ability to penetrate vocally as opposed to any appearance or acting ability or even a good voice, which is why you have the caricature of the massive mountainous Viking-horned Brunehilde with a triple chin and a beard, when the libretto calls for an ethereal beauty who is eternally young and bewitching. The casting of the "juvenile" leads is exactly like that--if you close your eyes you can almost believe in Mr. Groenendaal's Anthony, but as soon as you look at the screen the illusion is shattered. (And at NO time can you ever believe in Ms. Joslyn's Johanna...) For me, the rest of the production was completely lost because of three out of the four major characters were so obviously miscast. I cannot give a proper review of anything else because they were so distracting that they spoiled the rest of the production. I really can't understand why people rave about this badly-shot and self-conscious filming of a stage play. Surely there's more to camera work in the theatre than just plunking a camera down in the front row? If I want that, I'll go to a decent play, preferably at the Stratford Festival, where at least they work together for the production and aren't constantly mugging for the camera. I give it three stars only because the quality of the production apart from the antics of Lansbury and Joslyn seems adequate if not spectacular.

Probably the best thing one can do is buy the soundtrack of the film and a cast recording of this play, and then combine the two to make a bearable whole. That's what I'm going to do, and try to forget that I ever bothered to rent this wholly unremarkable production.


Some aspects of this production are good, such as the performances of Angela Lansbury, George Hearn, Cris Groenendaal, and Sal Mistretta. But am I the only one who is distracted by the horrible performance by Betsy Joslyn as Johanna? She is terrible! She slauters the songs with her screechy voice and overacts in a role she clearly doesn't understand. I also think the chorus isn't up to snuff. They drag the tempo and make the worst facial expressions. Overall, I think this production is okay, but Sweeney Todd can be so much more if done correctly. This production doesn't come near the level this material demands. The concert version with George Hearn and Patti LuPone is much better.


Among the many accolades here for this production, there was one individual whose comments asked if he/she were the only one (who wasn't that enthralled by it) - i.e. giving this film 3 stars. However, the comment went on to indicate an overall liking of the story, and other production of same. Well, this person isn't the "only one," who didn't like this production (include me!) but there I part company even with him/her. If you put a gun to my head and asked me to make a choice between your shooting me or watching this flick again, I'd watch it, certainly - but I'd probably spend 10 seconds thinking about it. I'd much prefer being locked into solitary confinement, or having to watch paint dry on a wall, though. Further, I wouldn't want to see this story again, anytime, anywhere, or in any alternative presentation. Sometimes you feel like comedian George Gobel's "pair of brown shoes when the rest of the world is a tuxedo," and this is one of those for me. I liked Angela Lansbury in a favorite movie of mine, "Long Hot Summer," and while not a huge fan of the show, enjoyed "Murder, She Wrote." But HERE -- I not only didn't care for the story or other aspects, but I found Angela's squealing, squawking, singing, and everything else about her over-the-top performance, perhaps the MOST ANNOYING presence in any movie (or presentation in any other media) I've ever experienced. It was like an unending continuation of Audrey Hepburn's equally "over-the top" Cockney chortling at Rex Harrison - in the earlier portions of "My Fair Lady." But that was incident to the plot, presented for light, comedic effect, and (mercifully) brief. Unmercifully, this was anything but brief, and to me seemed as if it had gone-on for about 10 hours (Einstein's layman's explanation of "relativity" at work.) If I hadn't been with friends, with the necessity to remain, MY viewing would have been brief. I laughed, though, at the "Seinfeld" episode where Elaine pisses everyone off because she tells them how much she disliked "The English Patient." My friends somewhat regarded me the same way when I interrupted their waxing ecstatically over this movie. Give me some dragging fingernails loudly over a chalk board anytime instead.


This movie was one of the worst I have ever seen (not including anything by or with Pauly Shore). I couldn't believe that a film could actually be THIS bad!

Coolio has to be the single worst actor (again, not including Pauly Shore) to ever "star" in a movie. The temptation to hit the STOP button during this movie was huge (in fact, if there was a THROW IN THE TRASH button on my VCR, I would have been inclined to press that).

Do yourself a favor, and do something more interesting than watch this movie, like watching the grass grow, or watching golf on TV.


Okay, I just had to sound off on this one... Like a tremendous mental-gimp, I've just sat through this film in its entirety.

You'll note that the trivia section of IMDB points out that portions of the raising of the 747 were "borrowed" from Airport 1977. This really doesn't scratch the surface... Virtually all exterior shots of the plane skimming the ocean, landing in, sinking, and even the at-rest shots are borrowed from Airport '77. All of the "raising" shots are pulled from '77, including most of the interior flooding clips, with the exception of Dennis Weaver's drowning. I couldn't help but wonder if Olivia Dehavilland might come floating by at any moment, or maybe a "dead" Tom Sullivan. Another eye-roller: Dennis Weaver's name in this film is Stevens, which is to compensate for the fact that Airport '77's plane is owned by the Stevens Corporation (headed by Jimmie Stewart of course).

This is a veritable calvalcade of actors who don't work much, or at least haven't worked in a while, which might have been the first clue that it was going to be a real stinker.

I've rated this film a 2 - It's quite worthy of a "1", but if this film can't offer any other redeeming quality, at least somebody helped Coolio, Max Caulfield, Nicolle Eggert, and Dennis Weaver make their car payments that month!


Boring, ridicules and stupid "Submerged" is a waste of time. The shootouts were a joke, real people do not just stand out in the open with out any cover, hoping to get shot first! So many things wrong or bad, not worth the effort to list, except one major flaw. At 500 mph for 20 minutes = about 166 miles west of L.A. and the water is 100ft deep??? Even at that, none of the people would have survived the decompression from being subjected to 100ft of water pressure for more then 20 hours when they were brought up. Just a awful.


This is a terrible movie that only gets worse and seems to never end. The acting was bad, the plot was worse, and the special effects seemed to have been created by a 5th grade science class. Dennis Weaver is such a great actor and should have never taken such a part. My advise, DON'T WATCH THIS MOVIE!


This film has to rank down there with Ed Wood films. A terrible script and bad, bad acting.

A machine gun fight in front of plate glass windows; minutes go by before anyone is hit and nobody has cover - not one window ever breaks. You'd think after a fire fight like that the big U-Haul truck might be riddled - not a scratch.

Do CIA agents and government contractors =shout= Top Secret information at a stand-up cocktail party with hundreds of people around.

There isn't one actor you care about; everyone is shallow and basically unlikable.

A Hawaii bound 747 flies out of Los Angeles and crashes twenty minutes later in the Pacific "...in 100 feet of water...". A short time passes when the stewardess announces to the five other passengers they only have two hours of air left; on a 747?

The next day the rescue teams show-up and amazingly the six passengers are still alive.

A movie that starts out mediocre and goes from bad to worse.


"Submerged" is definitely NOT "the worst movie ever". It does have its flaws, such as borrowed footage, crazy script and non-existent special effects (these are the worst), but it also has some good points too. The acting is surprisingly good, there are LOTS of familiar faces whom you probably know if u're a b-movie fan like me.

I was very glad to see Brent Huff playing one of the heroes, knowing him mostly for his 80's action films, and i must admit, he is not a bad actor at all. Fred Williamson, Maxwell Caulfield & Tim Thomerson get some limited screen time, but are believable in their parts. The "eye-candies" in this Fred Olen Ray movie are Yvette Nipar and Nicole Eggert, both looking very sexy and very mean. Michael Bailey Smith adds some muscle to the background as a Navy SEAL. Unfortunately the only cast member who (in my opinion) is completely out of place is Coolio. He doesn't act at all, talks like he didn't even read the script, and being a badass in the beginning of the movie, gets shot like a wimp a hour later. Not a good choice.

To sum this movie up - this is not such a bad choice for late night entertainment. If you can get over the special effects thing (so many guns, so much fire, and not a single wound on anyone), Coolio's annoying performance, and the recycled footage from Airport 77, you might like this no-brainer after all.


There is part of one sequence where some water rushes into the sunken plane, everything else that happens in this movie is stock footage for Airport 77. You can even make out Jack Lemmon and Christopher Lee in some of the shots. A total rip off? Well almost by definition. There may be more stock footage in this film than in Plan 9 From Outer Space.

All the new material, actors sitting around in an airplane set talking, is bland and terrible on every level. Dennis Weaver is totally wasted in a career low movie, though that's true for everyone other than this films director Fred Olen Ray, who uses one of this many necessary fake names in order to keep working.

There is a level of scant professionalism that makes this film such a waste of time, it would actually be better if shot by someone with no technical knowledge at all, because Ray has just enough knowledge about how to put together a scene in the worst old school TV fashion that this film, like most of his films, is totally devoid of life. The worst kind of hack work. The worst kind of film. Boring.

This type of film is a waste of money, an affair where the crew on all levels are ghosts hoping to get whatever scant pay check they can and that no one will see or know they appeared/ participated in this rip off. There are so many people who want to make movies it's disgusting to see Ray burn up the money given to do nothing more but fill time.

His commentary track is interesting in that he has to start it by explaining that he is really Fred Ray as he isn't credited on the film itself. That tricked me into seeing it don't let it trick you.


You have to see this movie, it's a big footnote in the history of film. When this film was made, American film industry reached the bottom of sucking. See this movie, laugh, and feel sorry for yourself for wasting the last 2 hours of your life. It's the worst acting I've seen and even worse directing. The villains laugh like they're taken from a clown circus and if the guys who did "Scary Movie" want to do a parody on superhero movies they only have to take the script from this movie and do a remake, called Black Scorpion III: The threat of really really bad movies who in some way manages to lure the production companies into a sequel suicide.


This is really a terrible film by any of the regular yardsticks. Plot, storyline, acting, effects, direction - I could go on. Suffice to say it's poor. However, it has a certain appeal. Many totally out of context sex scenes appear, it's fun looking for the Batman references. Umm - that's it. Poor really, don't bother.


Pun intended. This low budget action/horror vehicle for Don Wilson's ability to kick things is the stuff direct-to-video fare is made of.

The plot: Wilson is a humorless vampire hunter who comes under fire from local law enforcement after he is forced to slaughter creatures of the night in view of the public. Police chase him, vampires chase him, he responds by kicking...a lot.

There is a little more to the story, but it is so inconsequential that I honestly can't remember it; I think people actually spoke in the movie, but that's up to debate. The plot is nothing more than a set-up for Wilson to kill as many vampires as possible in the running time, usually by kicking them.

The technical specs are, in a word, anemic. Little color treating, amateurish use of lighting, simplistic use of camera and angle. Blood and gore is noticeably limited, odd for this type of film. The most hurtful of the filming foul-ups is the jarring shift to super-shaky cam during each and every fight scene. If the camera begins to bounce around like a reese monkey on speed, then you know Don is about to start kicking everything in sight.

All in all, this is the kind of bad movie that can be made good with a few friends and a lot of cynical humor. Otherwise, do not watch, unless you really like to watch things get kicked.

3/10


Don Wilson stars as Jack Cutter (Ooh real tough name!)a vampire slayer who goes up against a vampire army, you see the story is a little different because vampires can't be killed with silver, crosses or sunlight but rather through snapping their necks (How convenient as it cuts down on the budget) and it's here Cutter runs into a reporter (Melanie Smith of Trancers III fame) Night Hunter's action sequences shake for no reason during the fight sequences and although it's meant to emphasize the mood, it just makes the movie more jarring. What is worse is that these fight sequences are botched beyond belief as Wilson's martial artistry is disguised by disjointed editing. Of course the most interest comes from the fact that indeed this predates Blade, however the problem is that this was done on a small budget and that it had Don Wilson in it. It's from Roger Corman and basically this turkey is a movie most people would pay NOT to see. I unfortunately am a bottom feeder and I cater to the section of the store looking for gems, in this line of work you always run into turds. With Night Hunter, I just may have the world's stinkiest turd.

1/2* out of 4-(Awful)


I think vampire movies (usually) are wicked. Even if the film itself isn't all that good, I still like it 'cos its got vampires in it. But this stinks. It really does give vampire movies a bad name.

For a start, the cheapness really shows. I'm not usually that bothered about low budget films - one of my favourite all-time movies is El Mariachi which only cost $7000 - but I hate this. The actions a load of crap as well, resorting to a 'stylish' wobbling camera which gives you headache.

Theres not much more to say other than don't watch this. I bought it for £1.50 as it was an ex-rental and I feel cheated out of my money, even for that low price.


While credited as a Tom and Jerry cartoon, this is not the cat-and-mouse team but an earlier Mutt-and-Jeff rip-off featuring them going to Africa and disguising themselves in the stereotypical burnt cork makeup to try to blend in. While the dialect humor is mostly lame, there is a brief musical sequence involving "black skeletons" that was entertaining. I have to ask however, how could Tom and Jerry still have their makeup stay on even after being dumped in the water a couple of times? One of many entries produced by the Van Beuren Corporation for distribution by RKO Radio Pictures before RKO made a deal with Disney. Only worth seeing if you're an animation buff or is interested in how certain ethnicities were stereotyped as entertainment way back when.


Tom and Jerry are transporting goods via airplane to Africa. But being white men, they're worried they won't be safe, so they put on blackface to fit in. Once they're wearing it, they adopt black dialect and fully inhabit their new characters. They crash into the ocean and use the wing of the plane as a raft. Before reaching land, they suffer the advances of an over-affectionate octopus and more serious danger from sharks, a swordfish and a whale. Once on land, they're frightened by fantastic creatures, and duck into a cave. Inside it's even worse when they encounter living skeletons in blackface. And upon exiting the cave, things are even worse than that when they are discovered by cannibals.

"Plane Dumb" is an especially sloppy effort from Van Beuren Studios. One example: a lion, unknown to Tom and Jerry, enters the cave before they do. But the animators must have forgotten about it, because the lion never appears again. Another example is the ending that's not an ending: it's just an arbitrary stop.

According to a YouTube poster, the cartoon "was originally intended to feature the voices AND caricatures of a popular 'Negro' comedy team known as Miller & Lyles. But Aubrey Lyles died of tuberculosis before the recording session was completed, and co-directors John Foster & George Rufle were forced to rework the animation into a 'Tom & Jerry' story."

They shouldn't have bothered. The crude animation and poorly-executed gags make the film a loser from beginning to end.


I was under assumption that this was the cat and mouse duo but it wasn't instead it was something that shouldn't have been made not even for its time. They disguise themselves in the "blackface" fashion because they fly to Africa and they even act like Stepin Fetchit and all the others rolled into one. There are some cartoons that are racist but they are classics, being a mixed woman I have the right to say this, but if you are into the historical aspect of these cartoons try Merrie Melodies "Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs" or "Angel Puss" you won't find them on DVD because the distributors promised not to put them in the mainstream, but you can find them on a site as YouTube. I don't recommend little kids seeing this but if you want to see how early America was racist and ignorant these are better suggestions, not to mention this particular cartoon has poor animation, i know it was 1932, but I have seen better for its time.

"Plane" unnecessary. -1 out of 10.


My God, the things that passed for entertainment in this country...

This is *not* the "Tom and Jerry" you may have enjoyed on Saturday Mornings, featuring a hapless cat and a clever mouse. This is a much earlier animation series, featuring a pair of Mutt-and-Jeff clones who get themselves into various scrapes that result in any of the then-typical dancing-skeleton-type gags that made up so much of early animation.

This particularly vile outing, apparently originally intended as a vehicle for a pair of actual black stage comedians of the time, has the pair crashing in the ocean while flying to Africa, necessitating black-face make-up, exaggerated "negro" dialect and "Feets, don't fail me now" situations.

It only shows that in the 70 years between emancipation and this film, the American view of Africans hadn't progressed much. Then again, at least one of them apparently had a pilot's license.


For a scientifically-engineered super-dog that was supposed to be the answer to petit crime, CHOMPS was a chump.

All I ever saw Chomps do was sit, or walk, or run. Or run, then walk, then sit... and then get back up again and stretch, and then walk, and then jog to K-Tel dance hits. And sometimes it had all the answers to the daily Jumbo. But mostly it just sat a lot.

All I am saying is: In a Celebrity Death Match, Chomps couldn't take out Mr. Bigglesworth.


C.H.O.M.P.S. is very much like any number of cheesy late 70s Disney family comedys-The Cat from Outer Space or Unidentified Flying Oddball, for instance. Utterly devoid of anything creative, beating the same cliches to death, yet vaguely entertaining in a mindless sort of way. The actors won't win any awards, nor will the director, writer, or FX crew, but in its inoffensive ness and bland predicatability there is some vague entertainment to be had. The idea of the robot dog as security system is so full of holes you could use it as a colander. The incredibly repetative disco soundtrack will stick in your head, so beware.


i think south park is hilarious, and i have no problem w/them taking shots at people on the left, but you'd think that, after taking a whole movie to attack celebrities for risking their careers taking on an illegal war, and then being GASP right along, they would have the sense to start giving w. and the bastards ruining the country a shot or two. bush seems to get a pretty free run from these guys for as stupid and messed up as he is.

gore is fair game, but please, what do the republicans have to do, how bad do they have to f^&k up the country before these guys finally act like maybe they aren't just trying to do the best they can, and that they have done some true screwing up...or maybe just go after rush limbaugh...hes a good target...or even just make fun of condoleeza rice's gap teeth.


An awful film; badly written, badly acted, cliched, hackneyed, dross. The premise is such a good one and a chance to educate about black cowboys but the film is truly dire. It is a curious mix of a bad 1950's Randolph Scott B movie and a bad 1970's spaghetti western. The villains are cardboard, the flashbacks laughable, the dialogue excruciating.

The deliberate anachronisms (such as 'Victorian' rap singers and modern swear words like "motherf****er"), are irritating to the extreme.

A Frankenstein monster that died on the lab table.


This move is bad on so many levels I don't even know where to start. OK - the good points - Peebles is beautiful as a dirty outlaw in black leather. Some of the landscape photography was stunning. That's about it. Oh, and it was a nice touch having the buffalo head above the bar door in Freemanville, I figure it was a nod to the Buffalo Soldiers. The movie starts sort of OK but the characters are so flat, so comic book, so 'much', the bad guys are just over the top bad, I choke trying to describe them further. The Spanish-Cuban-American war was 1895-1898 with America being involved only in April to August of '98. I think the movie said it took place in 1893 (I could be wrong but I don't want to look at it again to check). A big part of this movie hinged on the KKK killing Jessie's daddy. Well boys, the original KKK started in 1865 and was destroyed by President Andrew Johnson in 1871. The Klan wasn't even around during the time period of this movie. Of course the nasty bas**rds got busy again in 1915 and we know the rest of that. BUT for the purpose of the movie it is historically incorrect and that was a major part of the plot. I think I could make myself crazy going into it a lot more so here a few jabs and I'm done. I didn't know that Boyz2Men and other bands like that got their inspiration from New Orleans street singers from the 1890's. I also didn't know that fetish necklaces were all the rage for Sioux women in the 1890's...but then I was surprised to see a bar singer doing jazz while wearing acrylic 1" nails... We just about died laughing and I like a cheesy western more than most people do. Such a waste of talent and money - this really had the chance to show a part of American history that isn't well known. http://www.coax.net/people/lwf/bkcwboy2.htm for some more information. This could have been so good but it was just....bad from 1-10 this gets a 1 instead of a zero because Mario looks good in his hat and there was an Appaloosa horse in the film.


It's not just that the movie is lame. It's more than that. This movie is just unnecessary. Do we need another Western? How about a western with afro-Americans in the titles roles? Sound stupid, implausible and a lame attempt at modernizing the genre? It is. Incredibly lame and simple minded. It's like that lame Baz Luhrman film "Romeo and Juliet" where he set it in modern times to attract young folks and create some hype with his revamping of a classic tale. Well, Baz Luhrman failed miserably and so does this mess. The story is actually not bad however the whole idea of removing the racism out of a racist genre by casting an all afro-American cast is racist in itself. It's also puerile and simple minded (like Baz Luhrman-man he's a bad director). Hey (I hear you say) this was directed by Mario Van Peebles! He's also IN the film! How can it be racist? It's not. I said the idea of casting all afro-Americans instead of Caucasians was. The film isn't racist, it's just pointless, stupid and very very boring.


This is the worst movie of ALL TIME! It's one of those that is so ridiculous and the acting so bad that you turn off the video 1/3 into it so that you can use your time for better purposes like cleaning the toilet. If you actually watch the whole thing, GOD help you.


Wow, what a racist, profane piece of celluloid garbage, and what an insult to the great genre of Westerns.

Exploitive? Sex scenes abound, profanity abounds, violence and gore abounds.....everything that gives modern movies such a good name, especially among those who prefer classic-era movies. This is the kind of sleaze that gives the old folks ammunition against today's films.

Somehow I just can't picture nude male bathing scenes in Randolph Scott or Gene Autrey films. Nor can I picture hearing "motherf---er!" exclaimed here and there. I sincerely doubt that word was even around over 100 years ago. Yet, the f-word is so prevalent here you'd think you were watching a story centered in today's urban areas, not the old west of the 1800s.

Prejudice? Well, what if all the white characters were good guys and every black person was the nasty, brutal villain? Do you think someone might complain about a racist movie? Home come we don't hear an outcry when the reverse - as demonstrated in this film - is shown in hundreds of theaters across the country?

Mario Van Peeples wrote, directed and starred in this bomb. Remember that name. Apparently, he is the "Ed Wood" of today's filmmakers. Even Spike Lee wouldn't be this racist. You can't get much worse than this movie.


In my opinion, the movie was laughable--bad dialogue. Whoever wrote the script--please keep your day job. It's definitely NO Godfather or Goodfellas. It's good to be on the otherside of the table--poor choice of words. Some of the characters were clowns. But what do you expect from a low budget movie with no name actors.


Sometimes, changes to novels when they're made into films are not only necessary, but a good thing. However, in the case of Northanger Abbey, it's a very, very bad thing. Not only is the story itself ripped to shreds, but the satire is almost completely absent from the film, and it's mixture of romance and intrigue doesn't even touch upon the biting commentary that Austen put into her work. It fails to be amusing or satirical at all, and instead turns the character's fascination with her fantasy world into mostly a drama.

This affects the romance as well. It's meandering and aimless. Chemistry and interest are never established. The reasons Tilney is attracted to Catherine are completely absent from the film, leaving the audience to wonder what it is he sees in her at all.

Hopefully some day soon, we'll get a more faithful version if Austen's satire.


Poor Jane Austen ought to be glad she's not around to see this dreadful wreck of an adaptation. So many great Jane Austen movies have come out recently that this one deserves to be permanently buried along with two other movies I despise-The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and the 1969 version of David Copperfield. My main beef with the movie is that it completely misses the point of the book. Jane Austen was poking fun at the Gothic mania in her society, and much of the novel is tongue in cheek. The movie, however, is serious and comes across terribly melodramatically. The lighthearted, fun-poking flavor of Austen's writing is completely and conspicuously absent from this ponderous foray iinto horror meets period drama. The scenes of Catherine's imagination are both gratuitous and uninteresting. Also, Henry Tilney is dreadfully unappealing. Why, I ask, would anyone fall for him? If you are looking for a fun-filled Jane Austen evening, watch Emma instead!


Normally BBC productions of Jane Austen are pretty good but Northanger Abbey is just odd. What were they thinking? This film has little of Austen's charm and ironically mimics the Gothic novels that Austen so wonderfully mocked. Not only that, the "gothic" sequences are tacky, over-the-top, and frankly silly. The actress playing Miss Morland is poorly cast with no obvious appeal to attract the attentions of an eligible bachelor, and though I rather liked the creepy Peter Firth as Mr. Tilney, he is not a bit like the novel, even when delivering dialog straight out of the book. Robert Hardy as General Tilney turned in one of his few terribly "ham" performances. This film was so bizarre and strange that I actually watched it again just to savor how freakishly wrong it was.


Is it possible to give a 0 out of 10 rating? Because this one deserves it. While I'm not a big fan of Jane Austen's books, I sat through this one with two women who are. Well, at least we had a big laugh about how bad this film is. Robert Hardy was the only actor with any charisma in the whole thing, though he overdid it as he usually does (nearly as bad as William Shatner). But that wasn't enough to save this stinker from total suckitude. It's often hard to separate the girl's dream sequences from what is "really" happening, and so many holes are left in the story that you can barely figure out what is going on. Too many loose ends and the ending feels like a "tune in again next week" climax. The lead actress is too ditsy and weird-looking to be a heroine, the leading man is too goofy-looking and effeminate to be a convincing hero and the music sounds like some kind of cheap new-agey pet project of the director's hippy daughter (I mean saxophone??? mixed in with some kind of spacey operatic female wailing?). So, in conclusion, I suggest you blow the budget and order a DVD of this one as soon as possible. Especially if you like disappointment.


My first hugely disappointing BBC/Jane Austen flick. The tone is off, the costumes are off, the hair is off, the music is from outer space, and Robert Hardy, bless him, looks like he's really annoyed to be in such a stinker. Even some of the casting is off. No, I take that back, a good director can make a silk purse out of a sows ear, so to speak. The performances in this thing are so over the top and melodramatic that it's almost a farce of a Jane Austen story, which is ironic since Northanger Abbey is a sort of homage/send up of the early Gothic novel. I wanted to slap the female lead after awhile; who made the decision that she should be such a ninny? I had to watch Pride & Prejudice ('95) immediately to get the bad taste out of my mouth. Phew!


My mom, my cousins, and I are pretty big Jane Austen fans. We know all the words to the 1995 Pride and Prejudice masterpiece, and have watched Gwyneth Paltrow's Emma an embarrassing number of times. I've read all the books, and I've even sat through Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion a few times. So my mom and I thought it would be nice to see Northanger Abbey on film.

Bad idea! This is just about the worst movie I've ever seen. It's even worse than the 1998 version of Alice Through the Looking Glass, or the 1939 Nancy Drew movie I bought at Wal-Mart for $1 (my previous "worst movies.") The first thing wrong, which you notice in the opening scene, is that the "heroine," Catherine, has a gruesome and weird imagination, inspired by trashy novels that a Jane Austen heroine would never touch. Throughout the novel, she has dreams (day and night) in which she is carried off by some hideous man with a greasy wig, dragged across a field headed for God-knows-what-all, and suddenly rescued by a dashing guy on a white horse.

The second thing any viewer of the movie will instantly notice is the high-pitched wailing and saxophone music that is supposed to be the soundtrack. No dainty classical music or English country dances here! It is also evident, almost at first glance, that the actress (for lack of a better word) chosen to play Catherine is completely off. First, she is rather unattractive, and is rendered even more so by her un-Austenlike behavior. Her looks and movements are just wacky! Plus, they're completely affected and unbelievable.

This sad lack of acting skills affects pretty much all of the actors in the film. Not even Mr. Tilney, the supposed "dashing young suitor" is decent.

As more and more characters are introduced, a strange taste in costumes on the part of the filmmakers becomes evident. Huge, Marie Antoinette-style headdresses clash with the (for the most part) correctly styled Empire gowns. A French woman, apparently a friend of General Tilney's, is made up all in black as some sort of ancient Goth nightmare--she bears a striking similarity to Michael Jackson in a black dress. Her appearance is made even sillier by a HUGE half-moon beauty mark on her cheek. I also had to wonder about the historical accuracy of the bright red lipstick that almost all of the women were wearing.

Another anomaly that kept my mom and I howling with laughter for about ten minutes was the "bathing" scene. The first thing we noticed was that men and women were bathing in a big bathhouse together--probably not very likely in the early 1800s. Then we saw that all the women seemed to be wearing large china or plastic plates, worn around their necks with strings. The plates floated horizontally on the water, containing some mysterious pieces of...something. We guessed it was soap, then aromatic herbs, then finally, when the mystery substance began disappearing between shots, we deduced it was food. But I'm still not sure.

And that's not even half of what's wrong with Northanger Abbey. My warning to anyone who is considering renting this movie: stay your hand. And if anyone is considering BUYING it--well, I don't even know what to say to that.

You'd think that when the actors and others making this film got about 1/4 of the way through, they'd realize what a monster they were creating and stop. Unfortunately, they didn't, and Northanger Abbey was let out into the world.


This movie started off well enough, sticking to the mood of the book fairly well even if the acting was not top notch. The soundtrack was torturously bad. Saxaphone and electric guitars? It was gratingly incongruous. The female singer was positively dreary! In the second half of the film the story takes a decidedly darker turn. Too dark for Austen. Northanger Abbey is made a dark and scary place whereas in the book it was disappointingly tame and modernized to Catherine's eyes.

Who in the heck is this Marchioness with the ghastly makeup and wig? A totally extraneous and unnecessary character.

One of the key elements in the book is the General is not a Gothic monster like the characters in Catherine's books. His monstrosity is far more complicated in his oppression of his children's spirits and his treatment of Catherine based on money concerns alone. He does not lock up his wife or kill her but he does send Miss Morland on a 70 mile trip alone in a hired carriage with not enough money to pay her way home. Only her friend Miss Tilney's thoughtfulness in handing her some money on the way out the door saves her from being stranded. This whole point gets seriously muddled in the film. They make the General too dark from the outset.

Peter Firth should have not sung! This part was painful to watch. His depiction of Tilney wasn't too bad but it was a shade dark in places. Henry Tilney of the book made sport of Miss Morland's imagination on trip to Northanger but he was never dark. Firth would have benefited from better direction. The young lady who played Isabella needed a better acting coach. John Thorpe was appropriately odious. The striped waistcoat and coattails combo he wore was ghastly! It certainly fit his character.

I think the film would have fared much better with a completely different soundtrack. It cast an oppressive pall over the entire movie. If I watch it again it will be with the sound OFF and subtitles on. Perhaps I would give the film a 4 then.

The sound quality of the DVD was quite poor. The picture quality was not much better. This is glaringly noticeable on a digital television.

When I think of what this film could have been, I think of Persuasion with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds.


The BBC and the Arts & Entertainment Network should be ashamed of themselves for foisting this unfortunate production onto the world. The acting is, with the exception of Robert Hardy as General Tilney, amateurish at best and excruciatingly painful at worst. The costumes are over-the-top and feature some truly ghoulish excesses -- was the costume designer obsessed with feathers for women's hats? Surely EVERY woman in Bath didn't have feathers in her headpiece in the early 19th century. The production values are poor and the pacing of the film makes one feel it was hastily and clumsily edited at the last minute. Altogether an agonizing film that I had to force myself to watch to the end. It's a shame, as the producers obviously spent a lot of money on costumes and location shooting. Compared to Emma Thompson's sublime "Sense and Sensibility" or the extraordinary 1995 production of "Pride and Prejudice" or the subtle intensity of 1995's "Persuasion", this production of `Northanger Abbey' surely has Jane Austen turning in her grave.


Shaky hand held cameras (this piece was shot for television mind you, not film) not only keep you utterly conscious of how horrible the cinematography is in this film, but make you absolutely unable to become immersed in the story. Poor Miss Austen must be rolling in her grave. All I can say is, if you enjoyed the novel, stop there, until the BBC creates one of their smart & sensible period masterpieces (like Pride & Prejudice with Colin Firth, which, speaking for what I imagine in my opinion, Austen would have revered). The BBC would never dare overdub cheesy saxophone solos and Indigo Girl hollers over a shot of an historic castle and a loving embrace. Giles Foster seemed to be often confused that they were editing the music to The Specialist. If you want Austen as you love her, look for the BBC logo...


The filmmakers were clearly on drugs. That's the only explanation I have. How else do you explain this travesty of a Jane Austen adaptation? Northanger Abbey is a parody of a Gothic novel. But this film was made as if it WERE a Gothic novel. The bizarre music and dream sequences to me suggest drug-induced hallucinations rather than a naive, innocent girl with an overactive imagination, as Catherine of the novel is...

The actress who played Catherine just stands around bug-eyed all the time. Peter Firth looks at least 10 years too old to play Henry and he actually seemed a bit on the gay side to me. I don't see the attraction between him and Catherine. John Thorpe's portrayal was rather odd but Isabella actually wasn't that bad. But nothing could save this PIECE OF CRAP movie! One more thing- This film invents a character not in the book, a French friend of General Tilney's, "The Marchioness." Why exactly they added her is beyond me. Must have been the drugs. She is scary-looking beyond belief, with white foundation, red lips and black lines randomly painted on her face (dimples?).

You'd think this would at least be entertaining in a "so bad it's good" quality but unfortunately, it's not. It's just BAD.


Northanger Abbey is not my favorite Jane Austen novel, but it has its charms. This movie doesn't. It has some of the same character names as the book, but the story is drastically altered, and the sweetest man in the whole Austen canon (unless Emma's Mr. Knightley gets pride of place) is made out to be a heartless and mercenary creep. One or two totally extraneous characters are introduced, and a palpable air of corseted perversion hangs over it all. I was so disappointed when I first saw it on its release in 1986; even today it ranks high on the list of films that disgrace the books on which they're based. Even Robert Hardy fans should give this one a wide berth. It has nothing, and I mean N-O-T-H-I-N-G, to recommend it.


What an awful adaptation. The worst part was the music. Saxophone muzak and synthesizers playing in a story set in the early 1800's?????? The only character that didn't bore me to sleep was Robert Hardy. I had to fight to keep my eyes open on this one, and I love Jane Austen movies usually. I didn't even rent it, I borrowed it from the library. They should have paid me to take it. I don't quite understand how Catherine and Henry managed a passionate kiss at the end when throughout the movie they had no chemistry or indication whatsoever that they cared for one another. Isabella and her brother were way overdone; it was no secret to me immediately that she and her brother were the "bad guys" and part of the excitement of Jane Austen movies is the discovery that who you think is good, isn't. This is probably on my list of the ten worst movies I've seen.


I'm afraid I did not like this adaptation. When I started watching it I had a strange feeling of watching some 70s TV series, due to the filter and the musical score. I did not like the end scene. Mr Tilney appears dressed only in his waistcoat. Jane Austen would never have a gentleman ride out without a frock coat. Looks like the producers made a modern misinterpretation of a romantic girl's dream. I appreciate the more modern JA adaptations much more, that show an eye for these details, that makes the BBC series so worthwhile. Sorry, looking forward to the 2007 adaptation. I hope that will be better and will show the benefits of 20 years of Jane Austen adaptations.


Poor Jane Austen. This dog of a production does NOT do her wonderful tongue in cheek novel any justice. Starting at the top ... poorly adapted. The screenwriter deserves extra low marks for trying to -- come to think of it, I don't know WHAT she was trying for, but suffice it to say she missed the mark by light years!! Couple that with all the over-acting and awful production values, this is one adaptation that should never have happened. It would have been far better if they just gave all the money they poured into this flop and donated it to a worthy charity. Do yourself a favor, read the book. It is almost certain that you will enjoy it a thousand times more than trying to sit through this excruciating production!


(This might have a spoiler)

When I first started watching this movie, I thought it was OK. The music was good and that bizarro dream sequence I was willing to forgive, but the lack of looks in the main character and all of the other characters for that matter made me uninterested in watching the rest of this film. (I know, totally vain.)The music at the beginning was spirited and fitting I thought for a mock Gothic novel. But, come on! Saxophone music for an early 19th century film? It totally didn't fit. This movie was totally boring and if you're looking to watch a good period film or an Austen don't rent Northanger Abbey! I give it a 30%. 30% = a failing grade!


This is a terrible movie, that is barely recognizable from the book, although they have sort of similar plots. The time it takes to watch this movie (which is only 1.5 hours) would be much better spent doing anything else, including watching grass grow. The addition of poorly done fantasy scenes make Catherine seem insufferably silly. The actress who plays Catherine also comes across ditzy as all goodness and looks constantly surprised, even when she's supposed to be looking lovingly into her Tilney's eyes. Honestly!! The movie ends with a Catherine fantasy-like scene where one can't help but wonder if it's happened or if she's merely delusional, and not in the good way that makes you think but in a perfectly horrible way that basically sums up the terrible movie. The only good thing about the movie is the title, which was written by Ms. Austen herself. I generally love the BBC's productions but this one is horrid.


It is hard for a lover of the novel Northanger Abbey to sit through this BBC adaptation and to keep from throwing objects at the TV screen-in fact, if Jane Austen herself were to see this, she would be somewhat amused and possibly put out. Maggie Wadey's adaptation has made Northanger Abbey into what it satirized, the Gothic novel (and the readers of Gothic novels).

The role of Catherine Morland in the adaptation is portrayed fairly closely to Austen's Catherine, a open-hearted, generous girl whose imagination simply runs away with her. But the Henry Tilney of the novel is not a snuff-taking, cane-wielding, sappy-line-making hero of a Gothic novel-he is a tease, a nearly-handsome man with a messy room and a living (that's right, Henry Tilney is a clergyman, a charm that is completely dropped from the script). Some of the best scenes from novel, when Henry, completely deadpan, outrageously teases the literally-minded Catherine on diction, journals, Mrs. Radcliffe, etc., are not portrayed in the adaptation. A large section of Henry's personality is lost when those scenes are not adapted. Besides, Peter Firth's appearance is not accurate-Henry Tilney is supposed to be 24 or 25, dark hair and a brown skin, not 35 or 40 and blond.

There are so many other absurdities within the adaptation that invoke surprise and disgust-who is the Marchioness, and what is she doing in the story?! Why is John Thorpe less of a dunce and more of a schemer? Why is Northanger Abbey a castle? Catherine of the novel, with her romantic visions, expects hidden passages and dark tapestries, but is very disappointed to discover that Northanger Abbey is actually a comfortable, modern house-another element of satire! Why portray General Tilney as a drunk? Why does Catherine have those strange visions of Mrs. Allen threading her finger, etc.? Catherine's imagination only runs away with her at Northanger, with Henry there to correct her gently. And lastly, why are so many facts concerning the Tilney family and Mrs. Tilney's death altered unnecessarily? To make the story more `horrible?' All of these oddities and more simply are too strange to be overlooked.

 >


We really don't know where to begin when talking about this movie. But we'll start with the plot. We sincerely suspect that whomever wrote/produced/directed this movie never read the book. Because they missed the entire point. SATIRICAL, not horror. Just a hint. Second, the bath scene. Enough said. Third, the added characters. The sketchy Gothic french lady and her black page who enjoys holding hands and cartwheeling. We don't understand where this came from either. And then there was the casting. All of them were really unlikeable. We were very upset that Catherine and Mr. Tilney ended up together, because they were so unlikable that no one would ever wish to see them happy. And...the music. We think that the BBC producers ran out of money, so raided their grandmother's attic. And they found some old records. Saxophone, wailing female voices, and an occasional electric guitar. *shudder*

Plus, the best line ever: "Since you left, the white rose bush has died of grief." If anybody has any explanation, we would love to hear it. Because it makes absolutely no sense.

We are still wondering what on earth everyone involved was thinking when they cruelly released this pathetic excuse of a movie out on the public. We think it should be considered a federal offense. Torture is illegal.

This movie is by far the worst we have seen to date. And I've seen a lot of movies.

Our recommendation: Give this movie to whomever you hate. They will watch it, and want to kill themselves. And we agree with a previous post, we would give this 0 stars, if at all possible. DO NOT WATCH!! And we strongly suspect that everyone who commented so far in favor of this movie were involved in its production. Or were mentally insane. These are the only reasons we have been able to come up with that would instigate giving a favorable review.


I've seen some terrible book-to-film adaptations in my day, but this one tops them all! The bizarrely unattractive cast detracts from the story, which is, in itself, untrue to the book. Mr. Tilney is nothing like handsome; as for Catherine Morland, a rat-like appearance makes this heroine a difficult one to sell to a sympathetic audience. Isabella is nothing like the Aphrodite one reads about in the original text, and James Morland appears in the film far too little to leave the viewer with any understanding of his important role in the story. Also, as others have pointed out before, this novel was intended to satirize the Gothic craze prevalent in Austen's time, but it appears that this "soft horror" film was designed and meant to be taken seriously. I'm sure Jane Austen turns over in her grave each time one of her fans is disappointed by this awful interpretation of what was supposed to be a joke.


Awful, dreadful, terrible. The actors are bad, the music is ridiculous and the filming pathetic. I rented the DVD and had to force myself to watch it until the end.

My advice: read the book, it is much better and you won't have to put up with all these silly images and ridiculous dreams Catherine has.

I think I have never watched such a bad movie.


Now and again, a film comes around purely by accident that makes you doubt your sanity. We just finished studying the novel, "Northanger Abbey", at school and decided to refresh our memory of this unexciting piece of humourless garbage with the BBC adaptation.

The funny thing about Northanger Abbey is that it actually makes you want to kill yourself. The film is NOTHING like the book, for example, the subtly evil characters seem to have been turned into transparent stereotypes. John Thorpe looks like a leprechaun on acid while Isabella plays the role of slut. Catherine, the main character, is the most depressingly stupid and irritating actress on god's earth (she looks like a coffee addict, her eyes are like basketballs) whilst Mr Tilney looks and acts like a retired porno stunt double. The plot goes completely off the rails at certain points of the film, I don't know what the hell the director was thinking when for no reason at all, a 7 year old black kid who we've never met before takes the main character out of the abbey and starts cartwheeling in front of her. Yes, that's right, cartwheeling. Nonsense of this kind is occasionally interrupted by Catherines "fantasies" in which she is being carried around a cathedral by an ogre.

Northanger Abbey is basically visual euthanasia so if you want to murder your boss or something like that, BBC have basically discovered a new way to kill someone. Northanger is a barely laughably bad film. Don't watch it unless you're in a padded cell.


I watched "Fuckland" a long time ago. I lied if I'd tell that I remember it in detail; what I remember most vividly is the irritation it provoked me and the feeling of a total waste of precious money and time, not only my time and money invested in watching the movie but also the director's.

Supposedly, "Fuckland" is a critic of Argentinians, presenting us (I'm an Argentinian too) as little people who take credit for and even boast about petty, ridiculous victories, and think we're the best thing that God (who is also an Argentinian) created. I'm not going to argue that. It's probably a true statement about a quite big part of the population (the part I despise, by the way). And even if this weren't true, that's not my point. The worst sin "Fuckland" committed was to express such a statement about its own director.

The continuous impression I received was that the director was too busy trying to impress us for sneaking a camera inside the islands to worry about making a good (even a mediocre) movie. Many of the takes made with a hidden camera are pointless. The director chooses to show off with a silly edition of old war takes and his own ones. And there's no plot at all.

Moreover, this movie proudly presents a Dogme certificate before the opening titles, only to disrespect its principles afterwards (for example, by including the director in the credits - another sign of his pride?).

I found the movie offensive, not as an Argentinian, but as a watcher. I felt underestimated. "Fuckland" is simply one of the worst movies I've ever seen.


I will confess that once I started watching this movie, it had a hold on me that forced me to watch it through to its conclusion. Quite possibly this was some latent voyeuristic tendency in me that wanted to see our hero get it on with his victim, or maybe fascination that they got funding to make, distribute, and show this film that kept me searching it for merit, or possibly some bizarre wish-fulfillment fantasy that there might be a point at the end of all the pain. But no such luck.

So you are warned to not start watching it in the first place, lest the same thing happen to you. There's nothing here worth wasting your hour and a half on.

The first-person mockumentary and the schtick about Fabian's "quest" to impregnate women of the Falklands comes out even more like a sophomoric (maybe Freshman - high school Freshman, that is) film student project than you might imagine. The effect ends up being both sneering at the local inhabitants (who, other than the two professional leads, are in fact real people) as well as engaging in rather disgusting sexual politics (no matter whether you take it all literally or symbolically, it's pointless and sexist).

The reason I ended up watching it all the way is the same reason that once one starts to pick at a scab, there's an irresistable fascination of continuing to do so until it's completely off, even when you know it's bad for you. You just want to see what happens.

In the end, this is rather dishonest filmmaking, because it seems ultimately to have no moral center, no elucidation of the local political situation, nor any place in the type of political-sexual-personal film universe a la Goddard. In short it's got nothing to say and spends a long time pretending it does. Smug would be the one-word tagline.

I'd suggest the filmmakers rent 'Waiting for Guffman' a few times, or hell, even 'Blair Witch Project' if they want to pursue the schtick with a little more style and a little more genuine emotion. Or at least entertainment value.


The preposterous premise of this flick has to do with Argentina reclaiming the Falkland Islands, having failed through force in 1982, by impregnating the European women inhabitants with Argentinean sperm thereby diluting the ethnic purity until it favored Argentina. Yeah, right. The reconnaissance is done by our hero/villan and cad, Fabian, who hauls his fish-eye camcorder from pillar to post secretly filming his encounters with the Falklanders including his courting and eventual conquest of one woman, Camilla. An unfortunate indie and fraudulent documentary, this flick favors us with lots of boring tourism shot from the hip....yada, yada, yada. The film has no plot potential and only begins to become interesting as Fabian and Camilla wend their way through the usual moments of awkwardness and uncertainty as they get from the handshake to the bed. "F*ckland" is only for those cinema purists who can appreciate the bleak, no frills, jigglecam austerity of Dogme indies.


This is an absolutely horrid excuse for a show. People say its witty and intelligence? I don't see how? Maybe because the characters use fancy words? Maybe because they are snooty, use dry humor, and have 2 dimensional personalities. I went to an Ivy league school and nobody acted anywhere near as obnoxious as these characters. In fact had I met someone like them I would have likely strangled them! The men act like little emotional pre-teen girls and all the minority characters are based off stereotypes... The characters are no AT ALL AUTHENTIC. Simply put they sound like a trailer park family trying to be rich and sophisticated. This show is just another cookie-cutter hit that brain-dead prime time viewers eat up on a regular basis.


Usually when I don't see a show on an original run, I find it later on cable and realize it's a gem. The "Gimore Girls" is one of those rare exceptions. I'm glad I missed it.

I truly despise shows that fill every minute of the actors space with rambling, stupid, boring banter. This is one hour of just that. The mother, Lorelei, made me wonder if she is Bipolar and off her lithium. She never stopped talking; every minute, every second, talking to every person she interacted with. Worse yet, her speech is childish and soooo, like, Valley Girl. She talked about guys, her hair, her mother, her clothes. Like, what's the sitch?? (for situation). I've watched this show three times and still don't get the point of this series. It's not a comedy, it's not a drama, it has no point except to make three generations of females in one family look like the "Girls" from Planet Mars. The males by comparison are smart and make the show somewhat watchable. If Lorelei ever existed and attempted to latch onto me with conversation, I'd have to mace her to get rid of her. She obviously doesn't know how to take a subtle hint to stop talking and start listening to someone else. She also doesn't know how to really notice the existence of others.

In one show Lorelei comes home from a date close to 10 pm. She got the date after pursuing a guy she met at an auction. She goes into her daughter's room where the daughter asks how it went. She dithers on about how boring the guy was. Her date somehow got a few words in edgewise. Lorelei complained about how the man didn't stop talking (choke). Hopefully the date learned how fortunate he was.

One other person here commented on how the mother acts like a teen and the daughter is the adult personality. Lorelei even dresses like her kid. This obviously 40-something mom dresses and looks like she hit the mall with her high school pals in tow.

I thought that this show should have been followed by "Just Shoot Me," because that's exactly how I felt.


I tired on several attempts to sit down and watch this program "Gilmore Girls". It baffled me for I just couldn't put my finger on what this was about. Was this about a young woman having a baby young in life and never growing up? Was this about the daughter being more responsible than the mother? Was this about a rebellious rich girl and her non-rebellious daughter? What the heck is this show about? Finally, I just didn't care. The cast makes me want to scream. The writing is neither "smart" or "intelligent" it's syrupy and tedious.

So why did I watch? Because I heard SO many good things about this and I am not one to voice an opinion until I have watched. Knee-Jerk reactions are usually wrong, so I watched a few times. The first time I watched this, I saw the mother running around like she was 12 and the daughter acting like she was 40. Maybe that is what didn't attract me. I never liked any of the "Freaky Friday" films - not to say this is like that, but there are some similarities.

Also I have a friend who watches this show every week. So I asked her, "What is this show about?" A very bright young lady, usually articulate she never could give me a straight answer. So I asked others who rave about it - they really don't know either.

Gilmore Girls is turning out to be a TV program that's like an "art house movie". Many of us wont get it, but those that go try desperately to find a meaning where there really isn't one, just to be "hip." Yes, I find Lauren Graham's Lorelai annoying - whine, whine, nasally WHINE. A whole hour of that. Wow. And the rest of the cast is about as memorable as yesterday's cheese sandwich. The town is hokey, the men are wimps, the grand parents are boring, and sadly I find nothing redeeming about any of these characters or care about anything they do. It's like watching paint dry on the wall.


When I first watch this series, the impression I got was that the characters were charming and funny, Lorelai and Rory in particular were witty and intelligent conversationalist albeit a bit too talkative. After watching it for some time, however, my opinion changed.

The main characters slowly revealed themselves to be self-centered self-obsessed narcissists, who treated tiny wounds to their pride as the worst insults in their existence. For example, Rory wouldn't speak to her mother for months when Lorelai didn't consult her on her impulsive marriage, while Lorelai dumped Luke for simply wanting a little time to adjust to his new life circumstances. These people are shallow, see themselves as the center of the universe where everyone else should behave exactly according to how their own rigid rules, and if they don't, they will hold grudges against them for an eternity. They don't want to see other people's problems and treat the smallest slight as the gravest offence. Most of the characters appear to lack the ability to behave in a grown-up way. They think they should do whatever that they wanted and everyone else be damned.

The series is character-based, so when the main characters became so unlikeable the show also became impossible to watch. I still have the rest of the series, but I doubt if I will ever finish watching them. I will also hold anyone who think highly of the show and its awful characters with the greatest suspicion - they must just as horrid as Lorelai et al.


I decided to watch this show and give it a go but I found it to be boring, and more importantly dull.....Dull.

There is far too much sarcasm and the characters are all dull, there is far too much talking and the character Lorelai...just keeps talking on and on and on.... During a second glance felt like suffocating the characters, the banter doesn't work and the whole love and romance thing just ruins what is already a crap show....I can't believe this show survived past the pilot.... This seems to be a show which forces the 'Listen to your parents' line....No actual drama exists....

Should have stayed a pilot.....and a pilot alone...


It's been mentioned by others the inane dialogue in this series and I agree.

If Mom and daughter were really that sharp-witted they should be Queen and Princess of the Universe, not kicking around in some little town.

I've really tried to watch a few episodes but when the witty staccato mumbling pop culture drivel starts I flip the channel.

I watched a bit of a new episode to see if anything had changed (for the better I'd hoped) but nope, same old "we're so clever with our references to pop culture" that I nearly barfed.

Long time fans who aren't happy with the newer seasons might just be wising up and getting sick of the regurgitated pablum that never stops.


This is one of four 1970s movies by TV writer Lane Slate about sensationalistic murders in small towns. They feature likable TV personalities as police chiefs and quirky characters as town regulars, including light-touch love interests. The others are: They Only Kill Their Masters (James Garner, 1972); and The Girl In The Empty Grave and Deadly Game (both Andy Griffith, 1977).

Alda's is set near Vermont ("Mount Angel" next to "Horse Creek"); the others in California, Garner's at seaside ("Eden Landing") and Griffith's in the mountains ("Jasper Lake"). All try to capture the feel of a small town, to move at a relaxed pace among comfortable characters, and to tell a mystery with at least some complicated twist or turn to it. On that level, they are somewhat entertaining (that they were often re-run itself suggests they have some appeal). But they suffer from overall thin stories and dialogue, slack pacing, bland settings, flat or exaggerated characters, and off-putting, forced attempts (often juvenile or crude) at color or humor.

Alda's and Garner's are the most serious about story, characters, pacing, and tone. They have the best supporting casts, though Alda's is put to better use; the Griffith casts pale in comparison. Alda's has the best director.

"Shocking" has some surprise and drama. The killer's method is inventive. The tone is more even, and the dialogue more natural, than in Griffith's. Alda's film does not suffer like the others from smug big-city transplants to the town or from hokey, exaggerated local characters, both of which come across as figments of a Hollywood scriptwriter, not as genuine (the worst offender is the Griffith movies' pipsqueak, mumbling moron "Whit," who, we are told, tried to hook a jeep up to and make off with a trailer serving as a temporary bank branch, dragged away the dock for the police boat, stole tomatoes from a farmer's truck only to get nothing for them, and filled out $11 on the withdrawal slip of "Spiro T. Babylis" only to be discovered by the teller). Mercifully absent is the clunky, heavy-handed repetitive-style dialogue from the Griffith movies ("You going to lunch?" "I'm going to take out the boat." "You going to take the boat to lunch?" "I'm not going to lunch." "You're not going to take the boat to lunch?"; "There aren't any fish in this lake. Why are you fishing here?" "It's illegal in Horse Mountain." "It's posted here too, you're breaking the law." "Some law. There aren't any fish in this lake." "Then why are you fishing here?" "I told you, it's illegal in Horse Mountain."; "Please call me Lloyd. My name is Lloyd." "Okay, Lloyd..." "Call me Lloyd. That's my name. My name is Lloyd.")

But Alda is too low-key and unimpressive to be taken seriously as even a small-time police chief, certainly not a red-hot lawman in demand by a rival town. Slate has the character admit as much, when he comes late to the scene of a by then obvious clue, as a result of an accidental name recognition. Rather than detect or investigate, Barnes strikes out blindly in emotional denial. His secretary Lasser feeds him a key clue ("Why didn't I think of that," he says!). An embarrassing funeral scene, plus a plot contrivance, leads to another gift clue.

Worse, Barnes is more interested in deriding the military-style helmets of the county police sent to help him (Deadly Game also suggests Slate has something against the military) than leading them or his own men effectively. He allows a late murder by incompetently guarding a known target. Barnes allows his car to be repeatedly rammed by the killer fleeing one crime scene, without drawing his gun or trying to take control. Again, he is ineffective, and nearly killed, in the climactic scene, which results from multiple errors on his part that are only partially corrected, by accident. The erratic Northeastern accent that Alda affects does not help believability.

There are plot holes. Why would the killer strike after all these years? And committing the first two murders without a trace seems implausible. But they are nothing compared to later ones -- a couple together, a shopkeeper in his store during business hours, a fully clothed deputy seated in his office and, unbelievably, his dog!

Alda's movie also suffers from some offensive elements that Slate injects into all the movies. Barnes first appears in a motel clerk's bed. He then treats her rudely at every turn and insults and tries to avoid her kids. This, and talk about the female doctor, smack of a crude, mean-spirited pattern (Garner's film has been described as "sleazy," including a scene where he and a deputy laugh about how a girl in the back seat of a car that hit a bump in the road had part of her anatomy bitten off by a guy in the car with her. Griffith's feature an ersatz Ropers routine, in which the woman embarrassingly tries to coax the man into "the supply closet"; a gratuitous locker-room-type exchange with a deputy in discussing a young woman's car accident death ("Did you take her out?" "I took her in once."); a reference to bank teller "Bernice" as "swollen-up in places" and to "sticking a pin in" her and to "hating" and firing secretary "Maude" because she was "too hairy"; a description of the female doctor's practice as "two stirrup tables and a flashlight"; a humiliating scene in which Fran Ryan propositions Griffith, offering "some home grown"; and an insulting subplot in which a woman, pursued by a deputy played as a drippy buffoon, seems to "sleep around").

Finally, Alda's film has a grim, bleached-out, colorless, lifeless look and feel. Only Louise Lasser adds spark. At least the other films had some spirit, scenery, and pleasant music; Griffith's got out onto the mountainside, onto the lake, and even out into the big city. You feel more like re-watching Masters or Empty Grave than Shocking.


at first i thought 'nasaan ka man' might be one of those progressive new filipino films. as someone noted earlier, the movie does not look poorly made. it's clear that the directors used more expensive cameras to shoot, better angles, better sound equipment, good-looking actors, and nicer locations.

however, the improvements are all purely superficial. if it weren't for all the polish and expensive filters, 'nasaan ka man' would feel just like your typical, second-rate local movie - - hyperactive drama, predictable plot twists, "yeah right!" moments, crying, screaming, and characters you could care less about, all shoved down your throat.

a couple of things annoyed me about this movie. first of all, since when is it okay to have sex with adopted family? that not-blood-related argument does not make an ounce of difference. second, would a woman really not tell anyone for 40 years that she was raped, simply because the father told her to keep it secret? and, where the hell were the lights in this movie? i know the director tried to make things look super dramatic, but i was simply forced to turn up the brightness feature on my TV set.


Derek Jarman has shown us time and time again that dialog is not his strong suit. He is a painter, and paint he does. His films are almost always visually splendid, but about as exciting to watch as paint that is already dry. Watch his movies in fast forward, the really fast setting that you can only get on DVD. In The Tempest, Jarman does very little with the script or the characters, using them as simply a lattice to hang a very long and well-constructed cinematographic frame. He even goes so far as to contradict Shakespeare's original script to achieve these excrucriatingly slow and lifeless scenes. There is none of the romance, magic, trickery, or urgency the script calls for, little spontaneity, and the character of Caliban in particular is reduced to a quivering and insane idiot of sorts, similar to Gaveston in Jarman's Edward II. It is too bad that this is just about the only film version of The Tempest available.


I was loaned this DVD by the director of a film I am working with, in which I play an actor who is playing Prospero. Knowing his own style, I did not expect anything resembling a "classical" interpretation of the text.

What I have found is sometimes striking, sometimes evocative, but often meandering and tedious. Like most experimental music, I find that in films such as this, the building blocks of powerful film-making are crafted, even if they have not found their most useful form in a more coherent format.

Thus we have a Caliban who is more a clown than a threat, and who not even Miranda seems terribly afraid of (which is odd, since we know that he has attempted to rape her at least once). A Stefano and Trinculo who are more annoying than funny. An oddly young Prospero who looks like Amadeus. And a great loss of character development and plot through creative editing and highly stylized posturing.

Interestingly enough, I do not have an issue with the way in which Ferdanand or Miranda are portrayed. His stunned rapture and her slightly freaky innocence are actually quite appropriate.

I do not say that this is a bad film, but an experimental one. One that takes huge risks, but is meant more for students of art and film and not really for anyone with an interest in the Tempest for its own sake.


This was an interesting adaption of William Shakespeare's last known solo play but in my humble opinion, a terrible one. Jarman tries to change the personalities of the characters for a start. He makes Miranda seem insane after being stuck on the island for so long, Prospero is no different - a mix of madness and self-pity on his part. I could not imagine Shakespeare thinking his characters to be anything like the way Jarman portraits them.

Caliban's appearance is maybe the only thing he got right, but then again, I was under the impression that Caliban was a tormented, deformed monster but turns out to be an insane rambling, northerner who is constantly cackling, not as I would have imagined him. Ferdinand makes a brief appearance, naked most the time and quiet.

In fact, to the point I stopped watching this awful adaption, their had been so many lines cut from the play. If anything, I think Jarman was trying to re-write Shakespeare and include his own scenes most the time. So much text is cut out in the first part it makes it not a Shakespeare play, but a load of 70's melodramatic, preposterous rubbish.

An attempt to interpret this play more realistically in the end, but this play was never a realistic one and it was made nothing like the text displays it to be.


I have read all of Shakespeare's plays, seen productions of a majority of them and even acted in and directed some. I do not necessarily believe that Shakespeare must be done in the "traditional" fashion, but I hated this movie.

There is nudity that is gratuitous and unnecessary. There is grotesqueness that is far beyond what I believe Shakespeare intended. Some of the dialogue is incomprehensible, and there are those elements, like the singing and dancing that add no meaning to the movie, but replace Shakespeare with the director's self-indulgences.

I am sorry to say that I wasted perfectly good money to buy the DVD of this movie.


This movie was recommended to me by some academics. From their comments, I had some pretty lofty expectations. But this movie was nothing but disappointing. The aim of the director is obvious--to use an interweaving of speeches/poems as a way to argue against the Bush doctrine. But the director fails miserably at this. Also I seriously question the director's choice of main character. It's a bum who is definitely not worthy of being heard. The rise of corporation power, so what? Most importantly, this movie gets a failing score in its persuasive power; it's clearly intended for those who've already formed their opinions. It's true that the movie's aesthetics are quite pleasing. But pretty much everything else in the movie simply sucks.


Despite the fact that the plot follows the well-known recipe of "who did it", which has characterised all the Perry Mason movies so far, the characters of the present film are not so well-developed and the selected cast fails to give them flesh and blood. Of course, in general, the Perry Mason movies are not significant, but, even for their low standards, this one is weak.


Of all of the post-1985 Perry Mason movies I have seen, this one is my least favorite.

I confess I have never liked Diana Muldaur as an actress. She only seems to know how to play one type of character - a hard-bitten career woman with some undefined chip on her shoulder who for that reason is extremely difficult to in any way sympathize with. This one is no exception - it runs true to form.

The only thing that saves this movie, in my opinion, is an earnest performance by Scott Baio as the prosecutor - I actually found myself rooting for him to win, and the movie is worth seeing for him alone.


"People stranded in a country house during a storm discover that the home was the sight of an unsolved murder years before. During a dinner discussion of the incident, the lights go out and, when they come back on, they discover that one of the guests has been killed. Fearing for their lives, the guests attempt to find out the secrets behind the death before others can occur," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.

There are a couple of clever twists in this murder at the "Old Dark House" story, with the "Play within a Play" being its most interesting feature. However, the direction is rather ordinary, which serves to highlight a certain cheapness of production. Like most movies of this type, there is (or, should be) an ensemble of intriguing characters. Herein, only old-time Broadway producer Richard Carle (as Herman Wood) and his fey secretary Johnny Arthur (as Homer Erskine) maintain interest.

**** The Ghost Walks (12/1/34) Frank R. Strayer ~ Richard Carle, Johnny Arthur, John Miljan


I find Herzog's documentary work to be very uneven. Fata Morgana, a companion piece of sorts to Lessons of Darkness, lacks not only the harrowing spectacle but mostly the discerning eye of an author. It is by comparison amateur looking, aimless pans left and right across the desert the kind of which you would expect from any German tourist equipped with a handycam, the camera left running from the window of a car picking up all kinds of meaningless images, wire fences, derelict buildings and patches of dirt going through the lens in haphazard order, intercut with shots of sand dunes. At one point Herzog encounters a group of starved cattle rotting away in the sand, yet the image is presented much like you and me would, perhaps worse, the camera peering hand-held from one cattle to the next. For a documentary that attempts to be a visual feast, a hypnotic, surreal excursion in uncharted landscapes, it lacks the visual orchestration and conviction of a disciplined author. It's all over the place, half-hearted and tedious, Mayan creation myths recited in voice-over, then some other text Herzog fancied for literature. It's not until near the end that Fata Morgana jumps alive through a series of bizarre encounters. First with a man and a woman playing music in a room, the man singing in a distorted voice through a mic, both of them apathetic in their task. A man holding up a turtle. A group of old people trying to get out of some holes in the ground. Other than that, this one seems to have very little of substance to offer or visual splendor to offer.


This is not a movie. This is a collection of random shots taken in a fascinating part of the world, dubbed over with some random text. The footage is not that great and the text is not that great either. The end product is excruciatingly dull.

On the DVD, turning the commentary on can provide some entertainment value, as the director makes a rather deranged argument that this is a sci-fi movie. It's also fascinating to read about the extraordinary risks and hardship that the crew endured to collect this footage. Too bad it's rubbish. But I think "The Making of Fata Morgana" would be a fascinating film, sort-of like 'Ed Wood" was.


Released at a time when Duvivier was going again from strength to strength ."Black Jack" which was sandwiched between the overlooked extraordinary "Au Royaume des Cieux" and the dazzling stunning "Sous Le Ciel de Paris" , is a jumble,which Duvivier himself hated,which is not surprising.There's almost nothing to write about this dud.We can notice that:

1.Orson Welles used to admire Duvivier .That may explain why Wellesian actors were featured in Duvivier's movies :Joseph Cotten in "Lydia" (1941) ,and here a totally wasted Agnes Moorehead .It's the first time

I have not enjoyed Moorehead's performance!On the other hand,Welles borrowed his Desdemona (Suzanne Cloutier) from Duvivier's "Au Royaume des Cieux" for his "Othello".

2.In any Duvivier's movie,there's one or two worthwhile sequences and this one is no exception: the search in the caves where Duvivier's sense of mystery works wonders (for a short while);then the chase when Dalio gets caught up in the fishnets.Duvivier's touch can be felt in the unhappy end too.

As for the rest ,as my dear pen pal writer's reign writes,it's a black joke.


OK so it's not great either, but only because of how great Laurel and Hardy have been in the past. If this film received a total overhaul, with picture quality enhanced, add new dubbing to the badly dubbed voices and added a nice unobtrusive background music then this film would truly start to take shape. As it is, it does have it's problems. People do slate it for how old the boys look. Quel surprise! they were in their 60's and had led a 'life'. However, to me, they still came across as having bucketfulls of charm, and while this doesn't even come close to tickling the feet of their classics( I gave it a 4), it's worth a watch simply because it's them. To think otherwise would be impostorous!!


Oh, why did it have to end like this? Laurel and Hardy's last film, from the crudely cranked-up Cuckoo theme (with erroneous credit to Hal Roach) to the closing "Nice mess"/"I couldn't help it" schtick, this is the duo as a grotesque parody of themselves. In between, their relationship is now solely constructed of uncertain acting, asinine dialogue and half-hearted slapstick. People slate King of New York, but Chaplin's final bow-out was nowhere near as undignified as this.

What really hurts to someone who loves Laurel and Hardy is the appearance of the two comedians. The video cover I'm holding shows them at their prime, all boyish smiles and glowing skin, with a blurb on the back that reads "The photograph on this sleeve is for illustrative purposes only and does not necessarily reflect the content of the film." Necessarily? It doesn't even come close. The actual film sees them at least fifteen years older than the photographs that adorn the sleeve, with Ollie distressingly overweight. This is not humorously, or comically, fat, as he would normally appear, but ill looking and on the verge of obesity. He would be dead seven years after this film was made, after a series of strokes. Stan, meanwhile, suffering a prostrate problem and dysentery, looks ghoulish as his weight has plummeted drastically. Every time something bad happens to him, such as getting squashed between a lifeboat and a table, you fear for his life. Even Ollie giving him a traditional slap makes you terrified he could be killed. He would last for another fifteen years after the completion of this film, eventually passing away from a heart attack in 1965. It's upsetting to think of such cherished performers growing old and dying painful deaths. And it's distressing watching their deterioration, both in health, and in performance, on screen. When I, and, I'm sure, almost everyone else, likes to think of Laurel and Hardy, I think of Way Out West, Busy Bodies or Our Relations. Seeing them in such physical ill health and performing dire routines at the dog-end of their career is a blight on my happy memories of them.

The warning signs are clear right from the opening credits, which list not only four writers, but also someone to come up with the concept, and a credit for "gags". So if Monty Collins was writing the "gags", then what were the other four writing? And in that case, why was Monty Collins paid a fee, given that there's no evidence of a single "gag" in the whole film? Over 40% of the movie is spent travelling to the eponymous island, during which we experience some of the most painfully unfunny scenes the boys were ever involved in. When I saw the bat scene I wanted to curl up and die, so great was its childish ineptitude. Yet what kills the film stone dead is that all of the support cast are dubbed, unable to speak English. Not only does this make the film disjointed, but also it severely depletes Stan and Ollie's reactions to their co-stars. Flatly directed with appalling film stock and absolutely atrocious editing, this totally belies the rumoured $2 million that was spent on it. Frankly, it looks terrible, and while a DVD release might clean up the picture, the sound and image quality is vastly inferior to any of their Hal Roach work.

Stan and Ollie's "friends", Giovani and Antoine are charisma-free bores who stand out greatly against Laurel and Hardy's outdated repertoire. This is another major problem with the film, in that none of the supporting characters are funny, or keyed in to the boys' innocent mentality. The dubbed harshness shown to L & H ("you - the fat one") makes them stand out as isolated social misfits, rather than loveable sub-anarchists. There is evidence of some darker political satire - though Duck Soup this ain't - and the concept of an island with no rules is an interesting topic. Perhaps more relevant now than it ever was, a film that looks at the problems of immigration and the American constitution suddenly becomes most topical in 2003. Sadly, however, beyond an amusing scene where Stan is elected "the people", this doesn't really go anywhere. And this somewhat black humour does have its harsh edges - or is a Laurel and Hardy movie where rape is directly implied and Stan threatens a man with a bottle, only to accidentally glass someone in the face, your idea of a good time? After all the years of Stan and Ollie sharing a bed, we also get a definite reference, with Stan accidentally kissing him - Ollie wipes off the kiss in disgust. Also worrying is the implication that Stan and Ollie's illegal immigrant friend, Antoine, ends his life being eaten by a lion. Mind you, I never thought I'd see a Laurel and Hardy movie where they were due to be hanged, either. The need for the intrusive and unfunny narration is a further pointer to how messy the whole thing is, with the American release (the same version available on video) hacking out 16 minutes in a vain attempt to improve it.

Almost completely unwatchable, this horrifically made, relentlessly unfunny movie serves only to tarnish the reputation of Stan and Ollie - avoid at all costs.


I just watched Atoll K-Laurel and Hardy's last movie together and known here in the states as Utopia-on Internet Archive expecting to see some extra footage since the IA version had a running time of 2 hours and 21 minutes. Turns out that it's basically the same version I previously watched on the bargain basement VHS tape from Goodtimes Home Video that ran an hour and 23 minutes (with the exception of no product placement of the Welch's Grape Juice label being inserted when a bottle was shown) with the rest of the running time devoted to dark blank space. While Stan does look like he might be dying anytime soon, he still performs fine physical comedy with Ollie during much of the first 45 minutes or so. Then the plot of taking a yacht with a stowaway and a man with no country aboard-not to mention a charming female French singer also coming to inhabit an uncharted island they all end up on-takes over with eventual complications that pretty much bogs the comedy down and never really recovers despite the familiar ending of Ollie saying for the last time to Stan, "Here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!" before Stan cries uncontrollably before the fade out. In other words, if you're a die-hard Laurel and Hardy fan, this movie is recommended for you to see at least once. Anyone else wanting to get familiar with this classic comedy team should seek their earlier work they did for Hal Roach from the '20s up through 1940 when they completed their final Roach film, Saps at Sea. Come to think of it, even some of the L & H Fox flicks (have yet to see the two they made for M-G-M) from the '40s are better than this one...Update-8/29/09: Just watched some missing scenes that appeared in the Italian version on YouTube. Cherie sings in one and has a conversation with the Captain. In another, that Captain's wife pulls a gun on Cherie. In one more, Giovanni explains why he left his country with a flashback scene. Stan is dubbed in high pitch here!


This movie was difficult for me to watch. Stan looked very old and ill compared to what I remembered, and Ollie was heavier than I ever recall in another film. Most difficult though were gaps in the script/production where I found myself wondering, "How did they get from here to there???" It took nearly half the film before I could deal with the dubbing of non-American actors -- that was also a distraction.

Although I miss great actors such as Laurel and Hardy -- will there ever be great actors like those of the old studio era??? -- this film helps me understand why actors sometimes "bow out" in their prime.


When the movie begins, it's obvious just how old and sick the boys are. Although Oliver Hardy is enormous, it is Stanley that looks like death warmed over. Apparently, he was deathly ill during production and had obviously lost a lot of weight. Although he would eventually recover and live another decade and a half, here he looks like a dying man. Additionally, as I watched the film I was shocked how many pratfalls Stan took--I half expected his to drop dead from the exertion. I really can't understand WHY they came out of retirement considering their health--especially when the story and production values are as poor as they are with this film.

Stanley inherits an island and a boat. He and Ollie are ready to leave when Antoine, a stateless man, is literally dropped into their boat and they begin their voyage to find the island. Along the way, they discover that Giovanni has stowed away, but despite this the four men become friends and land on a different island. It seems like paradise and they are all very happy. A bit later, a pretty young lady joins them and everything looks grand.

Unfortunately, uranium is discovered on the island and the place becomes flooded with riffraff. Eventually, the mob decides to hang the four men and take over--at which point the island sinks back into the sea and the men are spared.

I will give the film some credit for being original and for being interesting. However, one thing it is not is FUNNY--and that is unforgivable for a Laurel and Hardy flick. While not a bad film, it certainly isn't a good one. A sad end to their brilliant careers.

All the actors, except for the duo, are dubbed into English, as the movie was made in France. While it may not be the very worst film they made (this would be THE BIG NOISE), it sure is close!! Watching this film is painful and like watching people clean up after a severe accident.


"Atoll K" aka "Utopia" is one of Hollywood's saddest swan songs. Filmed in France, "The Land That Loves Lewis (Jerry)" in 1950 and released the following year after a five-year layoff, the boys are in truly terrible shape physically. However, they aren't in nearly as bad a shape as the script.

This movie is one of the un-funniest "comedies" ever filmed.

It's painful to see this legendary team, the funniest duo in the history of motion pictures, the twosome that made "The Devil's Brother" (1933), "The Music Box," (1932),"Pack Up Your Troubles" (also 1932), "Babes In Toyland" (1934), "Bonnie Scotland" (1935), "Flying Deuces" (1939) and so many more gut-wrenching, laugh-til-you-choke classic comedies, in a film such as this.

But fighters and ballplayers do it all the time. They stay in the game one season or one fight too many. In this case, while is morbidly fascinating to see Laurel & Hardy at this late stage in their legendary careers, they, too, stuck around for one too many.


First, let me start by saying that I am a Laurel and Hardy buff. I have read every book printed about them, and have seen all of their available films more than once. I even took a chance once, and called Stan on the telephone. He was very kind, and spoke with me for over ten minutes. I followed with a letter, and he wrote me a letter back. I still have that letter.

This film has some fine comedy moments, but Stan and Ollie are not up to their usual form. Stan was gravely ill during the production and looked worse than he did ten years later. In my opinion, any Laurel and Hardy film is worth seeing.

But the Ultimate opinion of this film comes from the great Stan Laurel himself. To quote him, "This film should never have been made."


I never want to see this movie again!

Not only is it dreadfully bad, but I can't stand seeing my hero Stan Laurel looking so old and sick.

Mostly I can't stand watching this terrible movie!

Frankly, there is no reason to watch this awful film. The plot is just plain stupid. The actors that surround Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are really really bad and Laurel and Hardy have been funnier in any of their earlier films!

I warn you don't watch it, the images will haunt you for a long while to come!


I could almost wish this movie had not been made. Stan Laurel was dying, and it shows in his face, even more angular and gaunt than usual. A poor script, and inept supporting cast.


This is one of the worst films i've ever seen, don't watch it even if your life depends on it.

This Laurel and Hardy film is when they inherit an island, become shipwrecked and are set to be hung. An incredibly boring film that is no where near funny.

This was the last Laurel and Hardy film and what a very low note to end such a superb career. The 40's films weren't great, this film was made in 1950. If you want to remember Laurel and Hardy, remember them in their prime, the 1930's. The short talking films are better than the feature length films, my favourite is "Me and My Pal". Another reason this film is awful is because it's dubbed. The actor opens there mouth and the words come out three days later. Absoulutley crap, but let's end on a high note, Laurel and Hardy have been, in my opinion, the best double act ever.