Other than it reassembled the characters from the first film and gave them more backstory. Essentially, Lucian the Lycan (werewolf) fell in love with Sonia the Vampire, a Romeo and Juliet scenario you know is going to end badly if you've seen the first movie. So with absolutely no suspense, we blunder forward with two hours of unremitting CGI and actors with little or no screen presence. All shot in that monotone color that the first movie had because nothing was shot in daylight.

Worth your time.. probably not. In fact, the quality has gone down, even the CGI looks like it was done on the cheap, you don't buy for a minute that these are real werewolves.


My mother forced me to watch this movie with her. She apparently will watch anything with a vampire counsel in it. I was bored throughout.

At different points, Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans is reminiscent of Spartacus, Battle For The Planet Of The Apes, The Passion Of The Christ, and Mandingo! What it reminds me most of are those Italian sword and sandal pictures of the nineteen-sixties (not the good ones) that spend an inordinate amount of time showing Greek or Roman despots in robes talking and plotting incessantly while you wait impatiently for the muscle man hero and his lover, usually the despots daughter, to do something.

This film was in desperate need of some color and suspense. The characters were pretty two-dimensional.

The sets looked as if they were constructed entirely of pewter! I wonder how many Civil War Chess Sets were melted down to make this movie.

All those wearing fishnet stockings on your arms and black lipstick, feel free to click NO.


To put it simply, this was a pompous piece of canine poopie. Overly stagey and everyone being the total melodramatic drama queen at every single moment. After a while, i was starting to wish that every character in the movie wasn't such a stuffed-up anal retentive.

And, this movie has another one of those truly annoying things that has recently come into vogue and shouldn't have: all the scenes are in a sort of washed-out, blue-steel-greyishness. Hmmm, the last time i checked, candles and torches are quite capable of putting a fairly wide spectrum of colors. In fact, the light they put out tends to be more in the warmish, yellowish-orange range of the spectrum. So where's all the blue-steel-grey light coming from?

This movie has fancy sets and glitzy cgi fx, but it's still dreck. It's pathetic junk put out for today's movie-goers who are easily placated by pathetic junk.

I very much enjoy vampires and werewolves as movie plot devices, but this was a total hack job.

Universal Studios' 1941 "The Wolfman" is infinitely superior to this even though its fx is pretty primitive compared to what could be done nowadays.

I'm done with this franchise. The first movie was reasonably decent. The second still somewhat entertaining. But this one i couldn't even finish all the way to the end because it was so boring.


"Quit while your ahead" is a phrase they never learn. Typical Hollywood sequel scenario: if the first film was only shocking, the second wasn't, expect the third to be the worst thing to hit the screen this year. Even worse are the prequels, events of which were already explained in detail. If you haven't seen to first two films you will not like this one. It's like starting to watch Lord of the rings or Star Wars with the last trilogy movie. So "stand alone" this film is not.

Remember in the first movie about Lucians revenge? Remember the second about the long lost savage brother? Well if you saw those two 5 min moments and paste them together you would get a 5 min prequel. But the creators ether thought these 5 min were vital historical events or just wanted to give a job to some actors, cast and crew and maybe make some money in the process. "I have a loot of money, I make movies for a living and I'm bored. What will I do? I know! I'll make a movie." So anyway you get this 5 min prequel and you stretch it for 90 min  that's this movie. And you know what will happen to the main "immortal" characters, so there is little suspense. By the way, all the drama of the movie is in those 5 min. The only thing that made my eyebrow rise was mom killing in the begging of the movie. Sick. The rest was Braveheart remix. If you want a comedy, see Braveheart first then this movie.

Now I'm going to rant a bit  the movie put me in the mood. Who invented the concept of "vampire vs. werewolf" in the first place? It's older than I am and got old just as fast. And why do vampires look like Goth girls in heat, while werewolves look like psycho bears? Hiding bad films behind cleavage fails. Isn't it about time we got some sane slimmer werewolves with an upright posture? How can their unchangeable werewolves even breed if they rip everybody into shreds? And why with all their powers the vampires didn't rule the world? Blaa, blaa, blaa What a waste.


The key scene in Rodrigo Garcia's "Nine Lives" comes when Sissy Spacek, hidden away in a hotel room where she is carrying on an affair with Aiden Quinn, find a nature documentary on television, at which point Quinn notes the contrivance of such things--disparate footage is edited into one scene, predators and preys are thrown together in order to capture the moment--all to force connections where none actually exist. Characters in the nine shorts that make up this film occasionally spill over into each others stories, but none of them ever seem to really connect. A woman preparing for a violent confrontation with her abusive father is later seen working in a hospital room where another woman is preparing for a mastectomy. A man who runs into an old girlfriend in a supermarket and sees how his life should have been later hosts, with his current wife, a dinner party for an unhappy couple. Garcia arranges some of his characters in front of each other, but none of the subsequent stories ever really build on what came before.

Garcia's first film, the wonderful, overlooked "Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her," also had a short-story structure and overlapping characters, but there were fewer of them and they had a lot more room to breathe and grow. The gimmicky premise of "Nine Lives," that each of its nine stories is told in a single, unbroken take in real time, never allows the film to build up any real dramatic tension or momentum. It's also a fairly visually ugly movie. Interior shots are often murky and hard to watch, while other scenes--particularly one where a girl walks back and forth between rooms to talk to her uncommunicative parents--are rendered annoying by the camera-work. Given that this is Garcia's third film and that he has a respectable history of directing for television, the direction in this film is rather surprisingly amateurish. Like fellow filmmaker-child-of-a-great-writer Rebecca Miller, Garcia (son of Gabriel Garcia Marquez) is focused on the writing and character aspects of his films often to the detriment of the film-making ones.

Individual scenes are touching and even affecting. I did like Jason Issacs kissing Robin Wright Penn's pregnant belly. And Joe Mantegna whispering lovingly to his wife as she slips into pre-surgery sedation. And Sissy Spacek stealing a few happy moments away from her life with Aiden Quinn before brought back to it with a phone call from her daughter. But the film (unlike "Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her") feels more like an exercise than actual drama. We are just watching people act.


I'm really surprised seeing all these positive reviews for this movie. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't like 'these kind of movies'.

While I very well can enjoy a good mindless Hollywood action blockbuster like Die Hard 4.0, I like the 'dogma' kind of movies, or 'real-life-as-it-is'-movies just as much, IF they are well made.

A good example is Festen (1998): no music, no dramatic camera angles, no special fx, no fancy locations. Just a good story combined with excellent acting and the result is an excellent movie.

Is Nine Lives devoid of dramatic camera angles, special fx and fancy locations? Yes. Is it a good movie? I'm glad you asked.

The answer is: Absolutely not.

First of all, everyone is raving about the acting performances. I'm terribly sorry, but you can act all you want, but if the story and the dialogue is not believable, the acting falls on its behind immediately. And that is exactly the case with Nine Lives.

Not once did I have the feeling while watching 'Nine Lives' that I was watching real people having a real conversation. I had the feeling I was watching actors trying to come across as 'real characters' while they were were saying things a 'real person' would never say under the circumstances.

You can hardly call it a SPOILER, but there are some dialogue excerpts below. If you think that reading ten lines of (ridiculous) dialogue will ruin your movie experience STOP READING HERE. If you want a good laugh, continue reading.

The dialogue was often so ridiculous that it was tragical. You want examples? Plenty of those in 'Nine Lives'.

EXAMPLE1:

Picture this. Couple visits their filthy rich friends in their new mansion. Woman sees this castle of a house and says to her husband:

Woman: I could get used to this (meaning the expensive house). Man: Don't. Woman: Why not? It could be. Man: No. They are who they are and we are who we are. Woman: I like the sound of that -- we are who we are.

She likes the sound of that? Her man is acting like a jerk, but she likes the sound of that. Then an elderly couple walks past them holding hands. This is what the woman comes up with:

Woman: Look! They are like children after school. They lived through so much. Shared everything. I love you.

They are like children after school? And then the most overused cliché lines you ever heard? Finishing with 'I love you'? She says this while her man is being a jerk to her? Yes, very logical, very realistic, NOT. If anything, this kind of dialogue made me wanna strangle some of the characters in the movie for saying these horrible, horrible things.

EXAMPLE 2:

Elderly mom, dad and younger daughter at a funeral. Dad: I didn't realize Andrew was religious. Mom: It's for comfort. Daughter: It's for strength. Mom: Life is fleeting. Dad and daughter BURST OUT LAUGHING.

Yeah, this one-liner cracks me up any time, especially at a funeral! Sorry, I must have missed the joke here.

And it goes on and on and on....

How about the camera work? Don't even go there. 'Boring' would be a compliment. It supposed to come across as 'realistic'; instead, you miss half of the actors facial expressions (the only thing left to watch in this movie), while half the time the camera is aimed at someone's back or side instead of the face.

Conclusion? Well, don't say I didn't warn you! It's a good movie to rent if you want to make out with your date or something during the movie, because you won't even care whether the movie is playing or not after the first five minutes.

Overrated and more boring than watching grass grow kinda sums it up.


As embarrassing as it is to admit, I was listed as production manager on this film... my very first! As a matter of fact, it was the first feature film for almost everyone who participated. Watch carefully, and you even get to see me in one of the opening scenes, as a soon-to-be-murdered asylum attendant named... "Cely" (my own last name).

Originally titled "Hostages" this picture was changed to "Another Son of Sam" by the Producer-Director who wanted to cash in on the serial killer in the news at the time. Nothing could have helped. I don't even think this picture was good enough to be shown on "MST 3K!"

The film was shot primarily with a collection of old Mitchell cameras and early Arriflex hand held cameras. Matter of fact, the shot of the helicopter during the hostage siege was filmed with my own WWII era Arri. The picture was filmed entirely in Charlotte and Belmont, North Carolina in the mid seventies. Most of the "Stars" were local TV newscasters, and the rest of the crew were just inexperienced enough or gullible enough to believe former stuntman and Producer-Director, Dave A, Adams' delusions of adequacy.

If you enjoy watching this kind of picture, you might love the work of another North Carolinian, the legendary Earl Owensby.


Another Son of Sam is definitely not an Oscar winner. Technically, it's horrible. The acting is not too good either. But there is something about it that makes you want to watch more (sort of like a car wreck). The ridiculous close-ups of the killers eyes are more funny than anything. If you are looking for a scare...this ain't the flick for you. It's very obscure and nearly impossible to find. I'm sure there's a reason for that. For a while, it was titled HOSTAGE. It don't matter what you call it, it's still a poor choice for entertainment. It might be good for a MST3000 party or something. Can you believe they would use such a title as ANOTHER SON OF SAM? If that don't have exploitation written all over it, I'll eat my hat. I remember when this was shot in Belmont, NC. A lot of local personalities were used as talent.


Wow. I just saw Demon Wind a little while ago, and I don't think I'll ever be the same. It has the power to inspire nightmares, but for all the wrong reasons, actually.

Never before has humanity seen such a gratuitous change in make-up, for no damn reason. Or, similarly, so much bad zombie (?) makeup that makes you hungry for those Halloween green marshmallows.

Or so much naked old lady, for that matter. But then, there was "The Shining."

The plot here is so amateurish that it actually almost holds a little bit of charm, as does the dialog. The last shot of the film is just so silly that its beyond description. It's like some drunk college student got together with some pals and decided to throw Bruce Willis type dialog together with (I guess?) teenybopper dialog from some Elm Street film. The result is jarring, and it'd be truly funny if it was intended that way.

Ah, what the hey. I'll laugh anyway.

Hell, get together with your friends and watch this. But make absolutely sure you're drunk first. Or, you may go insane. Particularly if you're a college film student.

Cheers.


I've seen this movie about 6 or 7 times, and it truly gets funnier every time. Perhaps what I enjoy most is the tired character paradigms that the movie offers us: the somber all-American male protagonist, his blonde girlfriend, the theater nerd with glasses, a brunette girl, the antagonistic jock, and brunette girl #2. However, we're then presented with two magician martial arts experts with mullets driving a convertible. If anyone can explain that, please contact me. Among other highlights are Bobby Johnston's portrayal of the jock character, Dell, and his trademark line, "That's why I keep her around." In watching Johnston's performance, it comes as no surprise that his career quickly descended into the realm of soft-core porn. (SPOILER) Also, after multiple viewings, I STILL have absolutely no idea what that big demon at the end says at any point; it's just electronically muffled noises. Oh well, that's probably for the better. And lastly, why are all the demons so slippery? Is wet skin scarier? It certainly didn't help in this film.


In another of the dreadful horror films I seem so masochistically attracted to, we have a bunch of friends stuck in a haunted house slowly being killed one by one thanks to a horde of zombies that spurt yellow blood and have very bad dental problems. The first 45 minutes is all talk however, and considering the young thespians cannot act their way out of a paper bag and are given the most banal dialogue ever to dispassionately recite, this is especially painful to sit through. If you manage to stay awake through that nonsense, things don't get any better.. with bad make-up galore and cheesy, bargain basement (not-so-special) effects. As for the conclusion.. well, what's the betting that the old-timer who warned them against going to the spooky mansion in the first place will turn up and save the day for the last two survivors (a boy and a girl, of course) with his mystical powers? Please.. life is too short for these kind of movies. Donate the time you would otherwise have spent watching this tripe helping out the community, do a couple of shifts in a soup kitchen or something. You'll feel you've actually done something productive with your life, and you won't have put money into the pockets of studios who churn out irredeemable rubbish such as this.

Unfortunately, it's already too late for me.. now, where did I put that copy of 'Pumpkinhead'? 1/10


I truly love horror films & try to give every one I see as much credit (or sometimes more) as possible, but this is really pushing the ticket...most of the cast were very like-able but hardly any of them could act at all - but then again think about the writing/dialogue of this mess...some good make-up but absolutely ridiculous special fx. All in all I give it 3 out of 10 - & am having second thoughts about that!!


I swear I didn't mean to! I picked this out only since it looked good on the back! This movie wasn't scary at all and actually was very confusing. The demon wind was only actually used a couple of times and people were killed off pretty cheesily. The one major bright spot was seeing Sherri Bendorf from Slaughterhouse play in it. Seeing what happened to her, however, made up my mind for this little turkey of a film. A 3 out of 10. NEXT!


Demon Wind is about as much fun as breaking your legs. It is definitely an awful example of a film. So awful in fact that I don't even consider it a movie. I describe it more as a thing ... a monstrous thing. A thing that must be stopped at all costs. My friends and I first discovered this ... thing buried under a big box of video tapes at my friend's house. It was a late night and we had nothing better to do so we decided to watch some cheesy horror movies (we unfortunately picked this one.) Well, during the 90 minutes that this thing played we ended up laughing so hard that we almost threw up. The thing is literally pointless in every sense of the word. It's just a cheap, poorly done rip-off of Evil Dead. The whole "story" seems to be nothing more than some guy wanting to knock off his friends by inviting them to an abandoned house and letting demons rip them to pieces. I have a bet that the writers were actually writing the story while it was being filmed. I've seen bad horror movies before (Manos, Troll 2, HOBGOBLINS!!!) (shudder) I would have to say that Demon Wind could definitely contend with any and all of these films on terms of sheer stupidity. Watch it only if you enjoy laughing at stupid films.

Fun fact: This film is like a cockroach on steroids! Much like the ouija board, every time we try to get rid of it, it always seems to mysteriously reappear. Kind of scary huh?


You can generally ask two questions concerning 80's low-budget horror films. and this `Demon Wind' in particular. 1. Is it a good film? No.. 2. Is it a fun film?? You bet! Demon Wind is a gruesomely filthy and nauseating tale, filled with cheesy make-up effects and nasty violence. The story is pretty much non-existent and involves a group of young people revealing the horrible secrets of one of the groups' ancestors. Apparently, his grandparents used to live in a devil-worshiping neighborhood, and evil (in the form of demons and fog) still dwells around there. But, I got to hand it to this film.from start to finish, it breathes morbidity! The diabolical undertones, the playful gore and the (relatively) decent acting all together make this film raise high above the mainstream, uninspired 80's slashers for sure. It shows some creativity and guts (literally) where other productions from this decade fall into routine and oblivion more easily. This creators clearly got inspired by the success of `the Evil Dead', and perhaps even Lamberto Bava's `Demons, but what the heck! It's fun and made with lots of enthusiasm. Although.this film does have a pretty high `what the f***'- standard at times. Especially near the end, when flashbacks and laser shows are happily being mixed. And what the hell is the story on those two wannabe magicians? Nonetheless, `Demon Wind' gets my recommendation if your likes aren't too high concerning crap horror!


From 2002 on Dutch cinema finally got better again. This movie is still part- and a schoolbook example of the bad period of Dutch cinema.

The story is needlessly told in flashback style. All of the 'present' sequences set in France are completely redundant and add nothing to the story, emotions or power. For some reason European filmmakers often find it necessary to tell the story not chronological. I never understood why, or what the appeal of it is.

The story self also isn't exactly the greatest. It isn't always clear were the movie is trying to go to and what it tries to tell. The story of a young unexperienced boy falling in love with a wild young girl, who later turns out to be quite psychotic might sound good enough on paper and even shows some parallels to Paul Verhoeven's "Turks fruit", to which this movie often was compared to before and at the time of its release. However the end result is far from comparable. The story fails to capture the right emotions, which is also due to the unimaginative performances from the actors. The way the story is told also makes the movie far from always interesting or compelling. I lost interest for this movie at about 40 minutes through the movie.

At the time this movie was made, both Antonie Kamerling and Angela Schijf were promising rising stars, with great potential and ambitions but both their careers have pretty much dried up by now. Angela Schijf seems to give her family more attention than her career (that is not a bad thing of course), while Antonie Kamerling tried to start a career in Hollywood. He never got any further than playing some small bit parts in 2 Renny Harlin flops. To be honest I'm not surprised. It's not that he is a bad actor and he certainly has got the right looks but his English just isn't good enough, to put it mildly. Just listen to him speaking English in the beginning of this movie and you'll understand what I mean. They are really not bad actors but for some reason it doesn't show in this movie. It's probably also due to the poor dialog. I still kind of liked Beau van Erven Dorens. He's been criticized a lot but his acting seems very natural. He always keeps the characters close to who he self is.

It by no means is one of the worst movies ever made but it's not exactly one I would recommend either. Bad and uninteresting storytelling makes this a bad movie.

4/10


Yesterday was one of those days we decided to go to the movies. We picked "Ik ook van Jou" more or less at random, but we were interested to see the state of current Dutch filmmaking.

The film is based on a book by Ronald Giphart, and I must confess straight away that he is not exactly one of my favorites. The film features actors that are best known in the netherlands for their appearances in soap-operas and/or afternoon talk shows. At least one of them (Kamerling) has done some fairly decent stuff after leaving the soap world. So we decided to give this movie the benefit of the doubt.

And what a mistake that was. This movie fails on all fronts. Bad acting (the best performance is actually by a guinea pig, which very convincingly pretends to be dead). Flat, uninteresting story with unexplained and uninteresting sidelines (Why france? Why tell the story to a girl from Uganda?) Mistakes (black people dont have to use sunscreen, as far as I know, and heating systems in the Netherlands do not produce clouds of steam like in New York, even if this looks great on film, people do not wear T-shirts outside on new years eve in northern Europe). There's one funny moment which involves two little dogs, and that's it.

So that's what I think, but more importantly, it seemed that none of the people leaving the movie theater afterwards had enjoyed it. I overheard one of them saying that he was extremely disappointed, because he liked the book so much. I did not read the book, but my advice would have to be: read the book, don't see the film.


One of the movies i just DIDN'T want to see. I got it in the sneak-preview, but damn, the acting was very bad! At the end of the movie (i still am surprised i watched the whole movie..) i wondered why i watched the movie.

Also here in the netherlands, the writer of this movie (it's filmed from a book of Giphart) thought it was very bad, and was disappointed that his movie came out like this. Next time he wants a role in choosing people for the cast.


This is one of the worst movies I've seen in a while. The acting was just soooo bad. Anthonie Kamerling is usually a fairly good actor, but in this film, he sounded like he was reading his text from a piece of paper. Especially his voice over was extremely wooden. Beau van Erven Dorens was completely over the top as frat boy Fraser, although this probably had more to do with the crappy dialogue. 'Ik ook van jou' is an adaptation of a book, and it seem like the makers of the film forgot that film dialogue follows different rules than literary dialogue. It all sounded way to bookish.

Some of the situations were very badly visualized. Example: somewhere at the beginning of the film there is a scene where a canoe goes over in a rapid. This bit is just too incredible to be true. You see an obviously rather shallow bit of river, with a lot of rocks right beneath the surface (hence the rapid). We hear some suspenseful music to warn us that there's danger ahead. A canoe with to girls goes over in that rather shallow rapid. Our hero then dives several meters below the surface to rescue one of the girl. Girl swoons in his arms and utters the words 'You saved me...' Vomit!

It actually was so bad, that it became funny. This is sad, because it really wasn't intended. At the intermission I overheard some guy behind me say 'O god, there's another part!' My feelings exactly. What scares me is that the end credits of 'Ik ook van jou' were in English. Does this mean that it will be released abroad? Just when the Netherlands were starting to get a good reputation after films like 'Antonia' (Antonia's line) and 'Karakter' (Character)...


As a fan of author Gipharts lightheaded and humorous books (of which Ik Ook van Jou is not the best one), I was looking forward to see this film. I didn't catch it in cinema though, and after seeing it on to tv I'm terribly happy I resisted buying it on video. Out of a good book, they managed to make one of the worst movies in Dutch film history. All the good parts have been left out, the story is changed, not to its benefits. All humour has been cut out. What's left is a bad-acted, over dramatic, non-consistent film that I do not want to watch again ever.

I condolate Giphart with this result, and am happy that Robbert Jan Westdijk did a hell of a better job on Giphart's topper Phileine zegt Sorry. Go see that one!


If this was the best dutch cinema had to offer these years, my worst fears have come true. I have NEVER, even in dutch movies, seen worse acting. I couldn't get myself to watch it for more than 40 minutes, so if that's the cause of me missing the genius, so be it.


Actually I'm still in doubt if there's anything about this movie I like. As for the story: unrealistic and very exaggerated. The acting was too bad in my opinion. Not very likely that Antonie Kamerling will get a Rutger Hauer status. Some folks will expect it anyway. First let him work on his English pronunciation. If you watch the 'trip' to Paris of these actors (DVD-extra) you will most likely want to trow up. Advice to Beau Dorens: stop your acting career, you'll never get there... To the 2 main 'actors': grow up, please. Being generous, I'd give it 4 out of 10.


They said it would be a film greater than Turks Fruit. How dare

they? It's not even 10% of this classic. Bad acting. The only character i felt sympathy for was the one

played by Angela Schijf. Her acting was the best in the whole film. The story could've been interesting, but it wasn't. Some scenes were very beautiful filmed (lights and camera), (the

opening scene for example), but the bad acting made the magic

disappear.

I really don't understand why so many people voted this film so

good.


If you read Errol Flynn's autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, you will see that this film is full of poetic licence. Not that that makes much of a difference, because Errol Flynn was pretty generous with poetic licence in the autobiography anyway. No need to worry about spoilers, since there is nothing there to spoil.

To me it would seem more sensible to use the story about a fictitious Hollywood actor; then you could go out and find a better actor than Duncan Regehr to play him, and you wouldn't have to worry about the audience saying things like: "But he didn't have a moustaches in Captain Blood." Another failing of this film is that it shows Flynn as a two-dimensional character. Flynn was an intelligent man, well educated, well read. This film only concentrates on his funster image.

Regehr is a disaster. The rest of the cast struggle with their scripts. Hal Linden is OK as Warner, and Barbara Hershey makes a believable Damita, although Lili Damita herself did not think so.

The best thing to do with this film is to forget about it and let it gently slip away to oblivion. So what I am writing this for, I can't imagine.


After watching this film, I thought to myself, they really glossed up Errol Flynn's life! The movie is really nice eye candy. They really got the 1930s and 1940s atmosphere of Hollywood just right. The costumes were great. All the women looked glamorous and all the men looked handsome and debonair.

Is this a serious film about Errol Flynn's life? Nah! It's a fun movie based on all the scandalous stuff he did in his life.

Why am I critiquing this film? This is a film that had a lot of promise but failed to deliver. Duncan Reagher was really good as Errol Flynn. He was not as good looking as the original, but he made you believe that Flynn was not just a handsome playboy who did not take himself seriously, but as a man who, although gifted with great talent, was kind of disturbed and unhappy inside. Flynn's love life was a disaster considering he had so many failed marriages. He also lost a lot of good friends during his life. He also suffered from unrequited love for the elegant Olivia DeHavilland. The last scene of the film showed Errol kind of begging for Olivia to stay with him and instead she walks away. He is shown in his tux, looking really empty and slowly walking around the pool as he pours his drink into the pool. It was a sad way to end the film but kind of fitting because everyone knows by now how he eventually fell apart from his alcoholism and his dissipated lifestyle.

This film could've had much more depth, could've been better well-written. Sure they showed all the scandals but they never showed Errol Flynn's human center. Surprisingly, Duncan Reagher was able to put some emotional depth into the character of Errol Flynn even though the film writing didn't put any depth there.

I'll probably never see this film again but I can still remember after viewing this film, "Gosh, this could've been so much more.....!" I give this film a D+.


The recent documentary "The Adventures of Errol Flynn" is an in-depth look at the Ultimate Hollywood Hero. Bogart,Cagney, Wayne and the like were basically blue collar types in their screen images but Flynn was an aristocrat in his style and manner, the younger son out to carve out his own fiefdom for a sword,thunder and romance analogy that ironically he found himself trapped in. If he hadn't been under contract to Warner Bros. he would've of been perfect in the Cary Grant role in Suspicion: the good looking charmer whose 1000 watt smile blinds one to the fact that he's a predator. And he could've starred with his best leading ladies sister Joan Fontaine. That was Flynn's trouble he was the Ultimate Screen Hero until his own habits and bad timing caught up with him. Grant and Flynn in a way are similar but Flynn was the more macho of the two;it is possible to see Grant as Captain Blood but Flynn in The Philadelphia Story Mr. Blanding Builds his Dream House,or Monkey Business,or Operation Petticoat would've turned those roles on their collective ears because he's too damn sure on his feet and the sexual tension he would've brought naturally would've made the story lines wobbly. But this wobbly biography is just a plasticized view of Flynn and his era. There are times when I half expected a laugh track or an audience to go "Ahhh" at some point. It doesn't go deeply into Flynn's life just the screen magazine view. It also doesn't delve into his struggle to be considered more than a derring-doer. Like the cleaned up biographies of Lon Chaney( the father,not the Wolfman,or Lenny"Of Mice and Men) and Buster Keaton done in the '50's this is just a time killing piece of fluff


This movie was disturbing, not because of the subject matter but because of the way it was handled. The extremely overweight mother (Angela) did not even make it on the cover of the video case when most of the rest of the cast did. This is not fair but is a statement in itself. I also notice her picture is missing from IMDb (maybe her own choice) and it looks like this is her only film ever? The language in this movie was crude beyond necessity. Watched with my 10yr old son because it was rated PG in Canada and the language coming out of their mouths was shameful & disgusting. Never did appreciate Shirley Maclain like so many others seem to.

LOVE Kathy Bates and always will. Sinese's part was annoying.

The little boy Alex is a great little actor. I'll have to see what else he's been up to lately..


This odd little film starts out with the story of Bruno (Alex Linz) in a catholic school who has no friends and gets beat up everyday. He likes to wear dresses and his obese mother Angela who is a dressmaker doesn't think their is anything wrong with what her son likes. Angela complains to Mother Superior (Kathy Bates) but gets ignored and as the two of them walk back to they're car they are harassed by the other kids and are pelted with eggs. Bruno's father Dino (Gary Sinise) is divorced from Angela and is totally disgusted by his son being a sissy and practically disowns him. Bruno meets a new student at school named Shawniqua (Kiami Davael) who is a free spirit and dresses like Annie Oakley with cap pistols. Angela has a heart attack and Bruno's grandmother steps in to take care of him when Dino refuses.

The film starts out with a very hard and unsympathetic look at all the characters involved. Angela has a great deal to do with Bruno wearing dresses as she practically encourages him. Dino was told when he was a young boy by his mother that he was a sissy because he liked opera and now he refuses to help Bruno when he needs it. The catholic school that Bruno attends is very unruly and all the kids run rampant and even call Shawniqua the "N" word. Once Shirley MacLaine steps in the film shifts and becomes more family oriented (So to speak). ****SPOILER ALERT**** The ending after the spelling bee is incredibly contrived and "feel good". Hugs and cheers for Bruno as reporters follow him and take his picture for their papers. All the while Shirley MacLaine is acting like the "tough old broad" who snaps at everyone. There is one thing about MacLaine's character in the film that no one has mention in these comments and it has to do with the masculine nature of her. I think the character of Helen might be a lesbian! She's very tough and strong and at one point in the film she shares a shot of whiskey with Bruno and smokes a cigar at the same time. I don't remember anyone in the film mentioning who her husband was or if she was ever married at all! This is why I think her character might be gay. Lots of other good actors appear in the film as well. Joey Lauren Adams, Jennifer Tilly, Brett Butler, Gwen Verdon and Lainie Kazan all should have taken a better look at the script before they signed on. I guess when they heard that MacLaine was directing that it would be an honor to be part of it. Very difficult to feel any remorse or understanding towards any of the characters and the subject matter is probably impossible for most to relate to. The actors are not bad but what exactly was MacLaine aiming for? Tolerance towards a young boy who wants to wear dresses and freedom of expression? We get that in the first 10 minutes, the rest of the time I was trying not to cringe.


What was I thinking when I rented this one? What did the distributor think when he copied the tape and shipped it all the way to Holland? That anyone really wanted to see this s***?!?

It's about some astronauts getting into trouble outer space (Apollo 13 flashback, but never even in the shadow of this fine film) and they want to return to home. If you act in such a film, you should be glad that you're gonna drift away from earth as far as possible!

This one wants to surf on the small wave of space movies in 1998 (Deep Impact and Armageddon), and this one fails everywhere. Deep Impact and Armageddon weren't perfect either (far from it), but they were at least worth watching once (and maybe one more time when we're all old). They gave some fun. Max Q doesn't. It gives irritation. Okay, okay. It's a TV movie, but does that mean you're allowed to come up with such a mess?

If you haven't choked in your own vomit by the end (by all the cheap drama and worthless dialogue) you've must have bored yourself to death with this waste of time.

It gets at its worst at the end when the space shuttle lands on... No, I can't 'spoil' this one (IMDb guidelines forbid it). So you have to see for yourself. NO! DON'T SEE IT (sorry), but rent a movie which is worth renting (like Battlefield Earth... just kidding!)

Probably the worst one I have ever seen.


Stay away from this movie! It is terrible in every way. Bad acting, a thin recycled plot and the worst ending in film history. Seldom do I watch a movie that makes my adrenaline pump from irritation, in fact the only other movie that immediately springs to mind is another "people in an aircraft in trouble" movie (Airspeed). Please, please don't watch this one as it is utterly and totally pathetic from beginning to end. Helge Iversen


An old high school teacher of mine used to brag that he'd seen every movie EVER made, so one day a friend of mine and I decided to make up a movie called "Pacific Inferno". Later, we got into an argument whether the lead role was played by Carl Weathers or Billy Dee Williams. Our teacher found the argument interesting, so he came up to us and informed us that the lead role in "Pacific Inferno" was played by Jim Brown. We thought he was trapped in a lie, that was until we went to the library and discovered that "Pacific Inferno" was in fact a real movie. This incident forced me to rent the movie... it's horrible. Our made up movie had a better plot than this piece. Weathers and Billy Dee would have been much better in the picture.


Jim Brown stars and produces a tale set in the Philippines just after the Japanese invasion. The story has the Japanese taking several navy men prisoner including some divers, who they use to retrieve the gold that MacArthur had dumped into the Manila bay.

It's a messy movie aiming to make a statement about war and racism (The film uses Edwin McCain's War in a not so subtle montage). The performances are just adequate at best. Jim Brown is okay, but he doesn't really show any sort of range in a performance that just has him standing there looking annoyed. The sets are serviceable but seem rather cheap. The film suffers from the outset due to a great deal of stock footage including many of the best known shots from the Japanese attack in Tora! Tora! Tora!. The use of such big budget sequence effectively makes the rest of the film look positively anemic; it also reminds one that there are better films out there one could be watching. For me the film seems to have half a real plot, the retrieval of the silver, and half a plot that is there just to fill time. None of it is particularly exciting even with the explosive finale.

Given the choice I'd take a pass.


The best thing about this flick is that it seems like they used a lot of stuff left over from the Pearl Harbor attack in Tora Tora Tora. My favorite was the shot of the P-40 crashing into the row of parked P-40s but filmed from the top of a hangar or crane. Unfortunately it just gets worse from there.

There's two black guys and two white guys as American POWs, as well as some Filipinos POWs and Japanese guards. The ranking POW of the Americans is a white naval Lieutenant, which is of course an O-3 in the navy. At any rate, he's in need of a haircut, badly, distractingly badly. Hockey hair does not belong in a WWII movie. Oh, and he's a racist. He doesn't want to share quarters with the 'negros'. Of course in real life, he wouldn't want to share quarters with the white enlisted guy either. I think the Geneva Convention has a clause about officers quarters and enlisted but that wasn't the point here. Oh well, I think plot is secondary to other issues in this flick. He gets put in his place and pretty much spends the rest of the movie as a look out and running the air pump for the divers.

But once you get going, it's not a bad story line. The japs want the divers to raise the silver thrown out by the Americans before Corrigador fell. The Filipino resistance wants them to take their time. And the POWs do their best to help. A potentially good story and not that badly done I guess. A bit unbelievable when the POWs use camp made re-breathers to swim between the POW camp and the Filipino village, every night. Maybe I'm not that picky when I know going in that this is not a blockbuster film. I guess that's why it comes on a 20-pack DVD war movie collection for five bucks.

The 70s music did not belong in this movie or any WWII movie. It's quite distracting to say the least. The acting was not that bad. Probably better than I could do.

Not being a fan of football, at least I found out that Jim Brown is a real person and not somebody Richard Pryor made up. That in itself was worth the 25¢ I paid for this movie.

Worth watching on TCM or paying a quarter for.

One star for being a war movie, another for being WWII and one more because I'm feeling generous.


If you are in to bad movies for the entertainment of witnessing bad movies, bad acting, bad production etc..aka Mystery Science Theater 3000 quality....you will love Pacific Inferno. Jim Brown will be forever remembered as one of the greatest football players to ever play the game...as an actor he will forever be remembered as one of the greatest football players to ever play the game... I am not sure who Rolf Bayer was...but I am hoping he was 15 or 16 years old when he directed this, perhaps he may have been the next Spielberg in the making...because if he was a grown man directing this...a 15 or 16 year old could have done better.... The basis or plot for the movie probably had some historical merit and maybe even truthfully accurate...but the actual film may be one of worst movies made in American film history...I kept waiting for Lee Marvin, William Holden or Charles Bronson to pop in to somehow save whatever "face" was left of this film. I would have loved to have been at the red carpet, black tie gala for the Hollywood opening when this movie previewed...as this movie had to have many a viewer laughing and cringing under their breath... it is on the dime DVD racks now....look for it for entertainment value...this movie is so bad it is too good to pass up...


Why are there no good reviews? Because this film is hysterically bad.

Set in a Japanese prison camp in World War II, we have Jim Brown as the hero who puts up with a hysterically unbelievable racist officer, and just as hysterical is the way the Japanese officers brown nose Jim Brown's character.

This is probably the worst film any of these actors ever did. Stereotypes not only abound, but they dominate this film. The sixties-seventies music may be the best thing about the film, maybe because it has nothing to do with the film.

This is even difficult to sit back and enjoy as mindless fun. This film is even more racist than the message of racism it tries to deliver. And believe me, I was alive in the seventies, and we thought crap like this was just as stupid then. It was never popular.


Our story: Two U.S. Navy deep sea divers search for silver coins hidden beneath the ocean off the Filipino coast. Our proof: Extremely dull entertainment at its best, with no plot in sight. Jim Brown is completely wasted, provided his help in producing this 70s war turkey. Richard Jaeckel is in his usual form. Don Cornelius and Richard Pryor are among those who gave special thanks in their contributions! BOMBS AWAY!!!


A man in blackface lands in a spaceship and meets a girl who lives in some sort of shack with a monkey. He hooks her up with a telephone, and she teaches him how to Charleston. Then they fly off in the spaceship, leaving the monkey behind. Cringe-inducing blackface aside, this short film makes no sense. I think that's the plot, but I'm not sure by a long shot. You can't tell that this is Renoir at work, despite his characteristic humanism. Good use of slow-motion, though. Can be found on the NY Film Annex's series of Experimental Film videos, No. 18, I believe.


Made with film stock left over from the production of Nana, 1927's Sur un Air de Charleston is described as a holiday film for all concerned, and that's the best way to view it. Jean Renoir seems never to have thought enough of it to even edit the footage together. The plot is a simple reversion of racial stereotypes  in 2028 a black explorer travels to a post-holocaust Paris where a white native girl teaches him the Charleston (naturally he assumes she's a savage whose dancing is a prelude to her eating him before giving in to the seductive beat of 'White Aborigine' music). There are plenty of surreal touches, be it the pet gorilla eating the flowers in Catherine Hessling's hair, the angels the girl telephones (Renoir and producer Pierre Braunberger among them) or the fact that black performer Johnny Huggins plays his part in minstrel blackface while Hessling's dancing ability is almost completely nonexistent, and there are some interesting occasional experiments with slow motion, but there's not really enough to sustain it for two reels. An additional air of surrealism is provided by the fact that this silent musical has absolutely no score at all on Lions Gate's new DVD


I enjoy science-fiction just as much as the next man but what the hell was that? Apparently shot over just three days using excess film stock left over from his previous film, 'Nana (1926),' this Jean Renoir short is a bewildering futuristic satire, produced on a budget that couldn't have been much more than zero. In the year 2028, following a great war, Africa has become the most civilised region on Earth, and what was formerly Europe has been designated "Terres Inconnues (Unknown Land)." An African explorer  played by Johnny Huggins, a Black man dressed up as a White man dressed up as a Black man, if you follow me  travels to the ruins of Paris in his spherical aircraft, and lands outside the lair of a Parisian savage (Catherine Hessling, then the director's wife) and her primate companion, perhaps the creepiest ape-man costume I've ever seen. The savage, as part of some bizarre sexual initiation ritual, starts showing the explorer the Charleston dance, which he is delighted to learn himself.

It doesn't help the film that Hessling, who was wonderful the following year in Renoir's 'The Little Match Girl (1928),' isn't much of a dancer, though the extensive use of slow-motion adds a touch of surrealism to the ceremony. Furthermore, I'm quite shocked that Renoir would exploit his own wife as such a blatant sexual object  it doesn't come as a surprise to learn of their divorce just three years later! On the plus side, I did like the general sci-fi concept behind the film, and the slyly satiric touch of the reversing the racial roles usually typical in such stories as this. However, why Renoir decided to dress up his Black actor as a minstrel will remain a mystery for all of time. Silly, crude and quite pointless, 'Charleston Parade (1927)' is a cinematic oddity from one of cinema's most respected directors, and is perhaps an effort that he would have liked to forget. The DVD version came without a musical soundtrack, but I compromised with a selection of pieces from Dmitri Shostakovich.


This movie didn't do it for me, an avid SNL fan for the past 14 years. Jamie Gertz' portrayal was OK, but there was something so off-putting about the movie itself. The facts presented in the movie are totally skewed. But Merv Griffin produced it, so that would explain a lot. He was never on SNL, nor had anything to do with it. The points in her life when she was on SNL are backwards. When we first see her on SNL, walking through the studio with Lorne Michaels, the logo on the wall is circa 1988-1989, not 1975. And let's talk about the cast -- who are these people?? I have never heard of a one of them. Truly dissatisfying. This movie shows why TV movies are just that, TV movies.


1st watched 7/29/2001 - 4 out of 10 (Dir-Mark Dindal): Fast-paced, frantic animation effort by Ted Turner's feature animation group plays a lot like tv cartoons and leaves a lot to be desired in the area of likeable characters, but definetly has extremely unlikeable villains. I'm not even sure why the kids would like this movie because there are so many references to old movie stars that kids know very little or nothing about. Mediocre effort at best despite raves on the box comparing it to Disney efforts like Aladdin and Lion King. Don't let this fool you -- there is no comparison in story or quality.


Two years after leaving the small town of Grover's Bend due to encountering the Krites, Brad Brown returns to spend time with his grandmother in time for Easter. Meanwhile the Krite eggs begin to hatch. As they cause trouble in the town, Brown & the townsfolk, as well as the alien bounty hunters who have returned to finish the creatures must fight the bloodthirsty furballs before they wipe out the town.

The original Critters was a minor attempt to rip-off the family-horror flick "Gremlins". It became a cult favourite on the video shelves & was successful enough to warrant a sequel. This sequel plays down the horror & makes its entire focus comedy instead. Unfortunately the comedy part is extremely clumsy, as well as childish. The acting is on par with the rest of the film. It is just that the film suffers from a weak script. The visual effects are fairly well done.

Grade: D+ Review by M. K. Geist.


What a terrible sequel. The reason I give this film two stars instead of zero because it's a movie that has violence and gore and critters, yet it is planned out poorly. And this god-awful sequel was done by none other than BUM-BUM-BUM-BUM!!!!!!!!! Mick Garris! The bonehead that brought you the remake of The Shining which nearly got Kubrick to nearly roll in his grave when he discovered it was actually made. Garris is also the man that brought you the sad sequel of THE FLY, THE FLY, which was a wonderful movie, but Garris's movie nearly ruined John Getz career. Anyway, if you really want to see the crappy critters trilogy in order, don't. That's the mistake I made, rent the first one or the third one or better yet DON'T STOOP TO THAT LEVEL AT ALL! This movie sucked so bad that I can't believe it, please avoid this crap. Shame on you, Mick!


Some changes for the better (the special effects are more elaborate), some for the worse (Scott Grimes, a likable kid in the original, has turned into an awkward teenager), but generally this sequel is about on a par with the original - which doesn't say much. The PG-13 rating is questionable; although the film is not scary at all, there is some brief but quite explicit gore, and some out-of-place nudity. (*1/2)


OH MY GOD! After having such a promising start, Critters 2 reiterated the Karmic rule of what goes around comes around. Clearly, very few things were thought out when this movie was made, and what was up with Scott Grimes wearing an earing! This should have been the last expedition into the Critters saga, but more garbage was on its way. This was the big reason why I didn't watch Critters 3, and why is every bad film series has to have an episode in space? (Critters, Friday the 13th, Leprechaun in Space, Hellraiser, etc.)


Mickey Rourke is enjoying a renaissance at the moment... and fair play to him. I always liked his image and his acting ability in such fare as Angel Heart and Johnny Handsome. You know what you are going to get with Rourke - mean, moody, dirty. But this film gives you much more - and you don't want most of it.

First and foremost - this whole thing just doesn't make sense. Rourke is a hardened IRA killer who after killing a bus-load of schoolchildren flees Ireland for London. He is on the run from the cops and from his own Army comrades. He has also vowed to never kill again. It looks like the bus full of kids finally did it for him.

However, when he gets to London he is tracked down by a local mobster (Bates - looking like his eyebrows and hair came straight off a Burton's dummy) to kill his main competitor in turn for £50,000 and a boat trip to the US. Rourke reluctantly agrees to do it but is seen by a priest (Hoskins) and confesses the crime to him in the confessional in order to keep the priest's mouth shut. He figures it is better than killing him.

A wealth of things arise here which just don't add up :

1. Why pick Rourke to off your competition? As is illustrated by a scene whereby an employee is pinned to a wall by a couple of heavies with what look like awls - these London guys are tough enough anyway to do their own killing.

2. Not only that but the Mobster gets a guy to follow Rourke and witness the killing with his own eyes. Why didn't that guy simply kill the competitor and save all the hassle of dealing with Rourke?

3.Hoskins sees the murder take place and the police let him go off - without protection, I may add - to take confession? No way.

4. Rourke hangs around the church (right next to where he carried out the murder ) immediately after the crime takes place to go to confession. Why aren't the cops checking the place out?

5. Rourke hangs around the church and Hoskin's blind niece in particular, for days afterward without anybody bothering him. What? He's on the run and he stays put by the very place where he committed another murder? Stupid.

6. The cops actually meet Rourke in the church "fixing" the organ and have no idea who he is. Do they not know he is on the run for the school bus bombing? They don't even check up on him?

7. Why get Rourke to kill for you, and then tell him to wait around for a few days to get on the boat? You'd think you'd want to get rid of him immediately. Or kill him. One or the other?

8. Why does Bates' brother suddenly decide to rape the blind niece in the midst of all the waiting? Could he not restrain himself for a few days? At least until Rourke has been safely offed to the States? Ridiculous.

9. Rourke suddenly has inner turmoil after all his years of killing and wins over the blind niece immediately - even after she knows he is a killer, she still loves him? Again - utterly ludicrous. And besides - she falls in "love" with him in record time - a few days !!!!

10. The whole bomb thing at the end is just plain silly from Bates' point of view.

11. Things happen in parts of this film that just do not make sense or are simply in there to help the storyline (and I say that in jest) along. Bates' houses Rourke in a whorehouse until the boat is ready to sail and Rourke suddenly displays a moral high ground to respect the whore in the house - but yet will bed a blind girl.

12. Rourke asks a henchman on the boat where Bates is - and the henchman practically spurts out the entire movements of his boss in less than 10 seconds. It was embarrassing - the guy was telling Rourke far more than he even asked.

13. Hoskin's priest is an ex-army guy and we see him beat up three henchmen behind a pub. Totally uncalled-for and yet another cringe-worthy scene.

I'm gonna stop there at unlucky 13 without mentioning Rourke's hair (so falsely red it is laughable), his accent (which to be fair is not too bad sometimes but deteriorates to a barely heard mumble at other times), his clothes, walk, looks to the heavens etc. Nor will I mention the music and the choppy editing style.

Oooppps - I have just mentioned them.

Overall - a disaster of a film with some obvious religious imagery thrown in (Rourke on the cross, preaching from a pulpit) which would embarrass a first year film student never mind a top star and director.

4/10.


Let's get things straight. I was raised Catholic, and in a very religious family, and spent as much time at church and talking to priests as at home. That was useful for two things: to make a convinced Atheist out of me, and to give me deep, insightful knowledge about the Church and its dogmas. And I say: if a Catholic priest witnesses a murder, and clearly sees the face of the killer, he CAN report it to the police, even if the murderer has confessed to him afterwards. He can not reveal what he's told in confession, but he CAN talk about anything he sees outside that, and confession is useless to keep his mouth shut. So, here we have a movie entirely sustained on a lie. And another lie is there's no absolution for murder. According to the Catholic Church, there's absolution for any sin as long as there's sincere repentance. So far, the biggest plot holes in this weak thriller.

As people frequently say, this movie would have improved if Bob Hoskins and Alan Bates had switched roles. Hoskins is naturally suitable to play gangsters (I will never lament enough that he lost Al Capone in favor of one of De Niro's weakest performances in "The Untouchables") and Bates' features would have been perfect as the priest with a gray past. But above that, I think the film would have been much better had real-life Ulster native Liam Neeson (back then mostly unknown to big audiences) played Mickey Rourke's part. Not only his face is perfect to play tormented characters, but he'd make us believe the character as real, something Rourke just can't. Back in the 80s, Rourke was not a bad actor (afterwards he seemed to lose his talent along with his looks), but he was one of those performers, like Brad Dourif, who's as good as the director he works with. And as a former IRA terrorist, Rourke's acting comes across more like a pimp. Sad to think that, had this movie been made just some three to six years later (when Neeson achieved moderate celebrity status in 1990 with Sam Raimi's enjoyable "Darkman", and superstardom in 1993 with "Schindler's List", while Rourke became pretty much of a forgotten has-been), Liam and Mickey could have switched parts to greater benefit (Rourke would have been effective in the supporting role of Docherty, but just can't carry this movie along as the lead). Yet another missed opportunity, and yet another film with the potential of being a classic, that became instantly forgettable fare.

Ironically enough, the often criticized score (by underrated composer Bill Conti) worked for me. I didn't find it overly-melodramatic, but suitably gritty and beautiful. It reminded me of Howard Shore's score for "The Silence of the Lambs". Here's to Mike Hodges' talent, who made "Get Carter", yes, but don't forget he's the mastermind behind "Flash Gordon" as well...

It seems the film was massacred in the cutting room (it shows, as some parts are really choppy and confusing, and others just don't glue) and a Director's Cut is waiting to see the light. OK, but I seriously doubt that will make it a great movie, as we'll still have the bad casting and the false premise there. 4/10.


Jack Higgins' straightforward thriller about a guilt-ridden IRA bomber forced into "one last job" (where have I heard that plot before?) gets a snarky treatment from cult director Mike Hodges. Mickey Rourke, with alarming red hair, confesses all to the priest (Bob Hoskins, of all people) who accidentally witnessed the shooting. The rules of the church keep Father Bob from talking, but then Rourke goes and falls in love with the priest's blind niece. They bond at the church organ. What? Really, that's the plot. Alan Bates is around as the top dog mobster who's calling the shots (literally) and he seems to be the only actor who's on to the jokey tone Hodges is aiming at. Bates is all set to do a sort of U.K. PRIZZI'S HONOR, but no one else, including an effortlessly charismatic Liam Neeson in a supporting role, has been informed.


Mickey Rourke is enjoying a renaissance at the moment... and fair play to him. I always liked his image and his acting ability in such fare as Angel Heart and Johnny Handsome. You know what you are going to get with Rourke - mean, moody, dirty. But this film gives you much more - and you don't want most of it.

First and foremost - this whole thing just doesn't make sense. Rourke is a hardened IRA killer who after killing a bus-load of schoolchildren flees Ireland for London. He is on the run from the cops and from his own Army comrades. He has also vowed to never kill again. It looks like the bus full of kids finally did it for him.

However, when he gets to London he is tracked down by a local mobster (Bates - looking like his eyebrows and hair came straight off a Burton's dummy) to kill his main competitor in turn for £50,000 and a boat trip to the US. Rourke reluctantly agrees to do it but is seen by a priest (Hoskins) and confesses the crime to him in the confessional in order to keep the priest's mouth shut. He figures it is better than killing him.

A wealth of things arise here which just don't add up : 1. Why pick Rourke to off your competition? As is illustrated by a scene whereby an employee is pinned to a wall by a couple of heavies with what look like awls - these London guys are tough enough anyway to do their own killing. 2. Not only that but the Mobster gets a guy to follow Rourke and witness the killing with his own eyes. Why didn't that guy simply kill the competitor and save all the hassle of dealing with Rourke? 3. Hoskins sees the murder take place and the police let him go off - without protection, I may add - to take confession? No way. 4. Rourke hangs around the church (right next to where he carried out the murder ) immediately after the crime takes place to go to confession. Why aren't the cops checking the place out? 5. Rourke hangs around the church and Hoskin's blind niece in particular, for days afterwards without anybody bothering him. What? He's on the run and he stays put by the very place where he committed another murder? Stupid. 6. The cops actually meet Rourke in the church "fixing" the organ and have no idea who he is. Do they not know he is on the run for the school bus bombing? They don't even check up on him? 7. Why get Rourke to kill for you, and then tell him to wait around for a few days to get on the boat? You'd think you'd want to get rid of him immediately. Or kill him. One or the other? 8. Why does Bates' brother suddenly decide to rape the blind niece in the midst of all the waiting? Could he not restrain himself for a few days? At least until Rourke has been safely offed to the States? Ridiculous. 9. Rourke suddenly has inner turmoil after all his years of killing and wins over the blind niece immediately - even after she knows he is a killer, she still loves him? Again - utterly ludicrous. And besides - she falls in "love" with him in record time - a few days !!!! 10. The whole bomb thing at the end is just plain silly from Bates point of view. 11. Things happen in parts of this film that just do not make sense or are simply in there to help the storyline (and I say that in jest) along. Bates' houses Rourke in a whorehouse until the boat is ready to sail and Rourke suddenly displays a moral high ground to respect the whore in the house - but yet will bed a blind girl. 12. Rourke asks a henchman on the boat where Bates is - and the henchman practically spurts out the entire movements of his boss in less than 10 seconds. It was embarrassing - the guy was telling Rourke far more than he even asked. 13. Hoskin's priest is an ex-army guy and we see him beat up three henchmen behind a pub. Totally uncalled-for and yet another cringe-worthy scene.

I'm gonna stop there at unlucky 13 without mentioning Rourke's hair (so falsely red it is laughable), his accent (which to be fair is not too bad sometimes but deteriorates to a barely heard mumble at other times), his clothes, walk, looks to the heavens etc. Nor will I mention the music and the choppy editing style.

Oooppps - I have just mentioned them.

Overall - a disaster of a film with some obvious religious imagery thrown in (Rourke on the cross, preaching from a pulpit) which would embarrass a first year film student never mind a top star and director.

4/10.


Mickey Rourke ( who was once a famous movie star ) plays Martin Fallon an IRA terrorist who accidentally blows up a school bus full of children who is so disgusted by his actions decides to leave the IRA and goes on the run in London

!!!! MILD SPOILERS !!!!

The movie's opening is rather disturbing as the lives of little children are ended in a fireball . Things like this happened throughout the 1970s and 1980s and into the 1990s in Northern Ireland which gives A PRAYER FOR THE DYING a stark realism . However as soon as Fallon decides he's going to give up violence ( What ? He's a terrorist and he's never blown up innocent passerbys before ? ) realism disappears and clichés and ridiculous plot twists take place . Martin is employed by the London underworld ( Don't they have their own hit men ? )to commit a hit while he wears an IRA " uniform " ( Never knew the provos wore uniforms ) at a cemetery in broad daylight ( Wouldn't an IRA man use a bomb placed under a car ? ) where he's spotted by a priest who recognises him while he was in the SAS . Hands up who thinks I'm lying ? I'm not and we're half way through the running time and there's still several clichés to come

This all sounds very silly and it is but what do you expect from a novel by Jack Higgins ? Everything is clichéd , contrived and stereotypical and the bits that aren't are just plain bizarre . The critics slaughtered this movie when it came out , most notably they stated that it might have some potential if the movie had Bob Hoskins playing gangster Jack Meehan and Alan Bates playing the SAS soldier turned priest and for once the critics would have been right . They should also noted the film might have been less dire if Fallon was played by someone who was capable of doing an Irish accent . Rourke might be hunky and macho ( Oh gawd another movie with an IRA uberhunk ) but accents aren't his strong point any more than character acting is . To give you an idea how disappointing PRAYER FOR THE DYING IS the director ended up disowning it which is always a bad sign

As a footnote the original release of PRAYER FOR THE DYING in Britain was delayed for several months because of " The Enniskillen bombing " . In November 1987 the Provisional IRA exploded a bomb in the centre of Enniskillen where a Remembrance Day parade which commemorates Britain's war dead was being held . Eleven ( 11 ) people were killed and scores more injured . It wasn't an accident and no one left the IRA because of it


When I was a little girl, I absolutely adored The Swan Princess, it was reliving the same fairy tales of Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella, the princess and her prince who saves the day is always a timeless story that will never die, well, hopefully. But I figured that I would check out the sequels for The Swan Princess to see what they were like and unfortunately, this is the typical cartoon sequel that just disappoints more than entertains. The only character I found still very amusing was the Queen, she was very funny in this movie and had the best part. But with the voice changes, they were noticeable and also bothered me quite a bit, I don't mean to be picky, just it was too weird for me. The story also was just more or less borrowed from the first Swan Princess, just the villain in this movie is following Rothbart's footsteps.

Odette and Derek are about to celebrate their one year anniversary, but Derek has been too preoccupied with fighting for his kingdom to keep it safe. With his mother's birthday also coming up, he forgets about that since there is a new villain in town, Clavious, who is hoping to go above and beyond where Rothbart's powers went and kidnaps the Queen on her birthday. But Odette must change back into her swan self in order to help Derek fight him and save his mother.

The Swan Princess 2 is of course more than alright for the kids, that I never mind, it's good clean fun for them. The reason why these sequels are disappointing though is because it is usually just for the kids, that is the audience they aim for, but it's more enjoyable when the jokes and story can be enjoyed by everyone. Now there are a few laughs and giggles here and there, but this wasn't as clever in my opinion to the first Swan Princess. I would recommend it for the little one's, but if you're looking for a fun cartoon movie, I'd recommend staying with the first Swan Princess.

4/10


I was disappointed with the sequel to the Swan Princess. I can see what they were trying to do with the story, show how married life was going for Odette and Derek but the story wasn't interesting enough to hold my attention and it seemed to cover the same bases as the original.

It isn't funny. The only bit I found humorous was when Jean-Bob was turned into a prince and then back into a frog and no-one saw it happen and he was trying to convince them that it really did.

The villain is rubbish and the animation isn't as impressive as the first film.

The Queen is a very irritating character and instead of cheering with Derek to rescue his mother, you're hoping that the villain puts a spell on her voice box to stop her talking.

It is a shame because I really liked the first movie but it didn't live up to my expectations.


the worst sequel I've ever seen. really awful songs which is upsetting considering how fantastic the first films score and story is! also, which ruins the film for me is the fact there is no John Cleese so jean bob might as well not even be in it and the new villains are dreadful. it is really annoying how that old woman type thing cant string a simple sentence together properly without repeating her words over and over and over again. but to be fair Uberta not shutting up is a little bit funny. but the fact it was her 50th birthday: why do they draw her looking like an 80 year old? i was going to give this a 1 but now i think... i might give it a 2. but still the story line is no where near as good as the first film . it is similar without the humour from certain characters. Overall i disliked this film entirely because of the disappointing music, the severe lack of voice talent: having changed the voice of prince Derek and jean bob, the new villains, disappointing storyline the annoying habits of some characters, and the very simple animation.


The plot outline of this movie is similar to the original. Someone gets kidnapped, the prince is incest with saving her, Odet turns into a Swan, the turtle/frog/puffin first the "bad" magician as best they can, and in the end.... Anyways, there is not much new here. With the exception of a lack of well known voice talent. Sorry, no Palance nor Cleese and thus Jean-Bob was a disapointment.


I really enjoyed BG Seasons 1-3 and really couldn't understand those who didn't like it. But I can't defend this nonsense. Spoilers follow.

The first problem is that the characters are now doing inexplicably stupid things on a regular basis:

So if Starbuck thinks she knows where Earth is why not send her out in a Raptor? Would the Admiral accept the resignation of his third most experienced officer? Would the Quorum elect their newest member, the non-elected Adama Junior? He has about three weeks political experience under his belt, and is the son of a man they distrust. Would Adama send Gaeta AND Halo along with Starbuck leaving himself short of senior officers? Would Adama put a man into having sex with cylon prisoners in charge of the fleet?

I just don't buy any of this.

Secondly, while I accept there have been miracles and references to god up to the end of season 3, it's now all totally over the top. I started watching BG because I thought it was Sci Fi, not some biblical epic. I expected the characters to continue to behave reasonably intelligently, and wanted some satisfying explanations regarding some of the odder developments in the series.

Baltar was the best character in the show, but he now seems to be totally insane. Not illogical considering what he's been through, but very unsatisfying.

All the characters appear to be just puppets dancing to an unknown third party's behest (some godlike entity). This isn't good drama, it's annoying and a writing cop out.

OK, so what are the good points? Nice battle at the start of 4.1. Some good dramatic scenes (well acted) when viewed in isolation. A good final scene, a nice cliffhanging curve ball of a development.

But this isn't Sci Fi, it's turned into Fantasy. I can't imagine how the writers can recover this one.


There's only 2 reasons I watch this show...I invested the time already in previous episodes and Col Tigh. For all you supposed Sci-Fi fans out there who love the new BSG, give me a break! Go read some classic Sci-Fi novels by the true greats or watch some of the milestone films and TV shows from days gone by and you'll see what hacks these BSG writers are. Their only gimmick is "who is the fifth cylon". Poor writing and really, truly no sense of character development. If Adama resigns or tries to take power or cries again or discovers the inner father he should have been one more time...ahhhhh! And Roslin is as annoying a character that's ever been put aboard a starship. Out the airlock with her. I could care less if it's six more months before they conclude. These wannabe writers were out of tricks in season one. If you don't know that, you just don't know writing.


I can't believe this terrible film was made by the same people who made Lepa Sela Lepo Gore. Watch that and skip this. The plot is muddled and the characters are mostly two-dimensional stereotypes. I suspect the editor went on vacation halfway through the film because quick, choppy cuts start to appear that only confuse matters rather than elucidate them. The ending doesn't make sense either.

This is predominantly a propaganda film made so Serbs can feel sorry for themselves and vilify America for the NATO bombings of 1999. They do this by perpetuating lies about Serbs being our allies during WWII, claiming the whole world is unjustly against them, and completely ignoring everything said and done by Slobodan Milosevic, like waging war on three neighboring countries. They seem intent on making a political film but only show a few seconds of Milosevic on a TV screen with no sound. A nationalist agenda obviously superseded any consideration of art which was not the case with Lepa Sela.

Regrettably, I recommended this film to a teacher when it played last week at the Seattle International Film Festival. He also cited the bad editing and confusing plot, and I had to apologize for the bad advice. You've been warned.


Uh, oh! I just said the this "classic" film has a plot that STINKS! Well, it's true,...so get over it! This film was a vanity project for Joseph P. Kennedy in which his mistress starred and money flowed to make her an even bigger star. Today, only a fragmentary copy exists--one that was retored a few years back. However, even if the film had been in perfect shape, it STILL would have stunk for many reasons. And, without further ado, here are some of my reasons:

First, Gloria Swanson, aged 31 plays a girl in a convent school--perhaps aged 16 or 18! Come on--she looks old enough to be the mother of many of the kids.

Second, the movie all hinges on the stupid concept of "love at first sight". While some people believe it this, it is ridiculous to believe that a prince would throw away EVERYTHING on a woman he didn't even know! What a lot of hooey!

Third, the movie is histrionic and the plot is nuts! After leaving the school, Kelly goes off to East Africa and then becomes "Queen of the Whores"--and later, after the evil queen back in Europe dies (that's convenient), the prince is able to get out of prison, actually finds Kelly and marries her and she then becomes queen of a real honest-to-goodness country! Gimme a break--this is RIDICULOUS, even in the days of silent film this plot was a groaner!

So, in summary, this is a poor film with great production values (mistresses need to LOOK good) that is parading around as a classic! There are so many BETTER silent films out there--see them first and avoid this tripe.


Wow! I truly regret watching this picture... Funny, I agreed to see it just for my wife, who endured the torture of seeing it about a half an hour before retiring, while I stayed in front of the TV, but only to feed the the masochistic in me and I because I wanted to know if this movie was so bad in its entirety or if there were some redeemable aspects which might alleviate the feeling I had of being a stupid for watching this **** called Two Girls and a guy...

Everything in this picture is wrong, totally wrong... since the initial, absurd, premise of two women stupid enough to stay with their common boyfriend, until the awful, but merciful, end, not forgetting the horrible acting of the three actors... Don't believe the rumors, the junkie's acting is bad and I don't see how Graham has made herself a known name within the movie industry...

I wonder why, after the producers saved some bucks with just three actors and an only location, they didn't hire a person to write the script instead of putting a monkey to do it with his ***...

At least, I felt a little fine when I destroyed the DVD and threw it to the trash... Anyway, I liked somehow (and just a little) the brunette actress, Natasha something, but that was not enough to beat the incredibly stupid and crazy premise of Face-off (changing faces), so Two Girls and a Guy to the bottom goes...

Stay away from this ****!


The author tried to make a Kevin Smith´s style movie , but he definitely failed. The result is a boring film that cannot sustain itself using only the dialogues. Fortunately I had my remote control and could see the tape using the 2X speed.


The most self-indulgent movie I have every had the misfortune to

rent. Unwatchable. Much of the movie is obviously improvised,

and not well. It looks like Toback took the first take of

everything. The movie gets good for a couple of minutes when

Robert Downey Jr. shows up, then goes to hell again real

quickly.


After an intriguing start, this little drama quickly descends into the ranks of sheer mediocrity. The start of the movie sees two women (Heather Graham and Natasha Gregson Wagner) meet each other while waiting for their boyfriends to get home from their holidays. Natasha Gregson Wagner is a lovely looking actress, and she plays Louise; a cute girl whose beloved boyfriend is an all round entertainer; music, movies you name it, he does it. While she's telling the other girl, Carla (Heather Graham) all about her wonderful boyfriend, it soon becomes apparent that the similarities between their two male friends are too much.... and it's obvious that the two girls are dating the same guy. Oh Dear. Enter Robert Downey Jnr, the sleaze-bag that has two girlfriends while some poor guy somewhere has to go without one. Downey plays the sort of guy that the ladies like, but men find repulsively annoying; he is, basically, a mummy's boy. The worst kind too; on the phone ringing mother all the time, continually showering his girlfriends with ambitious (albeit empty) promises etc. It's enough to make a normal guy sick.

The film knowingly rips off superior three-way love triangle films such as Jules et Jim. This film doesn't work though; mostly due to the fact that it's story is so unbelievable. Seriously, if two women had just found that they were dating the same guy...they wouldn't stick around to talk about it. Another reason why it falls down is that it's just so turgid. There's no end of possibilities for the outcome of the situation that this movie presents, especially with the claustrophobia of setting it all in a small apartment; but all the movie does is get lost in masses of dialogue; badly written and poorly delivered dialogue, that is. The film is also massively overacted; it just isn't believable that people would act like they do in this film after finding themselves in this situation. Robert Downey Jnr is one of the many things that is wasted in the film. With Natural Born Killers, he proved that he could give brilliantly entertaining performances, and that is something that this movie could do with. The two females aren't wasted because nobody expected anything from them anyway, but Downey could definitely have been better utilised. Overall? A waste of time. Don't bother, see Jules et Jim or Natural Born Killers instead. That's my advice.


While the prominent and over use of the play-like format is in total operation throughout the film, it is not however this that lets this picture down. Rather it is the unconvincing female performances and rather tedious script that the film so obviously relied on a little too much. With an idea that had potential, the simple plot is diminished still by Graham's failure to truly express the devastation her character so adamantly claims to experience. The use of improvised scenes by all the actors would not be such a bad idea if only the two leading ladies could take advantage of this privilege. As Downey Jr proves as usual what a gifted actor he is, he shadows the two actresses in their scenes together which is constantly noticeable. The pointless yet intense sex scene seems merely to exist in order to prevent the film from being too verbally expressive giving the actors a much deserved break from talking. With an unsatisfying conclusion, Two Girls and a Guy has very little to recommend it other than Downey Jr's formidable if not out of place performance.


The storyline seemed fine, the actors seemed fine, the movie should

have been fine. But it sure wasn't - It didn't lead us anywhere, the

scenes are weird. Maybe it was meant to create something new, to make

us think. That atleast it did: Where is the rest of this film? To me it

was waste of money, time, and talent. Someone might want to see this

for curiosity, to see if they can figure it out. Other I personally

wouldn't recommend this to anyone.


I am being in no way facetious when I say that this movie was worse than any other movie ever made. Worse than "Batman & Robin". Worse than "Manos, Hands of Fate". Seriously, it's that bad. When people tell me that a movie is terrible I use the "Two Girls" scale to figure it out. If the movie is comparable to "Two Girls" then I won't watch it. If it's twice as good, maybe I'll watch it, but only to laugh at the retards who paid somebody to make it, because a movie twice as good as this one would still be a piece of garbage.


At my local video rental store, they have a special place for Two Girls and a Guy. It's a long running joke really. The clerk lets people rent it for free. They value their customers too much to let them waste their hard earned money on it.

I was extremely surprised to see that people gave this movie a good review. Maybe someone can explain it to me. (or maybe the positive comments were jokes? Did people involved with the movie write them? Perhaps the mother of the director/writer?)

Maybe I've just seen so many good movies that this one fails in comparison.


After sitting through this god-awful 82-minute excuse of a film, and having previously wanted to gouge my eyes out after having watched another James Toback-directed mess called "When Will I Be Loved", I've come to the conclusion that he has the best agent in the world. How else can these horribly written, painfully-directed pieces of trash get made in the first place.

I like Robert Downey Jr., but perhaps being in this movie drove him to substance abuse.

Heather Graham has to be embarrassed about her zombified performance. Half the time the camera is on her she just is looking off in a daze.

Such a crappy script. Prepare yourself for Hollywood name-dropping galore (example: five minute meandering discussions on Denzel Washington's acting....etc.)

There's a great character in Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22 named Dunbar. He spends most of the time in the novel shooting skeet, which he abhors. When asked why he shoots skeet all the time if he hates it so much, he replies that it makes time CREEP by, and he'll have a longer life. Well....if you really want to feel time creep by, watch this film! I swear...the 82 minutes will feel longer than a 4 hour David Lean epic. It goes on and on and on and on...

I hope I never watch another James Toback film again. If I could give this NO STARS, I would.


This movie is about pathetic, spoiled, ego-driven winers who think they have something interesting to say, performed by pathetic, spoiled, ego-driven winers who think they are interesting. Straight from the coke-filled gutters of New York's arty farty incestuous drama scene.

How so many viewers get tricked into making them think this carries any substance remains a mystery to me. Maybe they secretly long to belong too to this overpaid and overestimated 'actor guild' or maybe they have never seen a decent movie?

Get out, put your hands in the dirty earth and get a real job. Otherwise, kill your self with a real gun.


The big problem I had with this movie was that Lombard's character is, as another user put it, "unnecessarily cruel". Lombard plays the role of Ann Krausheimer Smith, who believes she is married to David Smith, played well by the sharply dressed yet appropriately bumbling Robert Montgomery. The movie has some funny moments, especially when Montgomery's character goes to great lengths to try to get his "wife" back. Understandably, she is upset because the marriage is technically not legal, but she only finds out three years into it.

Lombard's character seems quite cold to her "husband's" sincere attempts to woo her back. While not being highly adept in that effort, Montgomery is nevertheless visibly loving, and yet Lombard is as cool as a pillar of ice. There are almost no clues suggesting any sort of reconciliation between the warring couple for much of the movie, and it is hard to see any sort of comedy- even dark comedy- in that aspect. To some extent, the movie almost suggests a sadistic undertone, with Lombard's character getting a "kick" out of her husband's feeble efforts. While one might consider this another 'Battle of the Sexes' type of movie, the reality is that it is a highly lopsided battle, if that: Montgomery's character, while certainly flawed, is not flawed enough to make it a typical exemplar of the masculine chauvinist/misogynist (an excellent example of that is Michael Douglas in 'War of the Roses'). In fact, the character is largely effeminate, as revealed by not only the sharp dress of Montgomery (which probably owes largely to the perennially sharply dressed actor himself), but also to his discomfort in attempting-but failing- to play the role of a womanizing bachelor. His only major flaw is his vanity, but that fault does not balance out with his partner's excessive cruelty. And there is no suggestion that she is trying to instill any jealousy out of subconscious love. This is what makes it so cruel, and sad. Montgomery's character simply looks weak. In reality, no wife would want a man so weak unless she "wears the pants" in the marriage. But then again, a woman who wears the pants in a marriage would never seek to be so cruel because she has already affirmed that role early on. Hence, the whole theme seems weird. This movie is neither a champion of feminism (Lombard's character does show some signs of the sort of independent-oriented woman of the 60s, but that idea is soon quashed and the character falls back into the 1940s), nor an even-sided battle of the sexes (as Montgomery's character is truly a cipher of masculinity and therefore a lost cause).

This movie is, on the surface, a slapstick, but beneath that veneer it is really much darker, with sadistic undertones. All of which makes its resolution appear, well, odd. (Maybe that oddity was the whole point?). In any case, slapstick this movie is not.


"Mr. and Mrs. Smith" is one of the not too well known early American Hitchcock's movie. But if "Lifeboat" (wich unfortunately also belongs to this category) is an underrated masterpiece, not all the movies signed by the master of suspense in that time (the early 40's) are really worth seeing. And to tell the truth, not discovering this film isn't really a lost.

"Mr. and Mrs. Smith" is an average and conventional screwball comedy, where it's rather hard to find the Hitchcock's touch. Maybe you can catch a glimpse of his shadow (wich isn't much) in the cruelty that Carole Lombard is sometime capable of (but it's well hidden in an impersonal package), in a vertigo scene where two of the characters are trapped on top of a trade fair attraction, and maybe in the character of the mother. And that's about it ! Even for the Hitchcock fan, there is little to connect with.

And for the screwball comedies amateur, there isn't very much more: none of the situation are exaggerated enough for being really funny, and we're far from the masterpieces of Hawks for instance. And if one or two scene are quite amusing, there're not even the funniest in Hitchcock's filmography, who created comical situations in almost all his movies (even "Psycho" could be considered full of very dark humor). So, there is really little to save in this movie, that can without annoying anyone (or maybe only both hardcore fans of Hitchcock and screwball comedy, who are in love with Carole Lombard), stays one of the not too well known early American Hitchcock's movie.


I am astounded that so many people find this film even close to good. Let me make it clear that I am a HUGE Hitchcock fan and went out of my way to own as many of his films on video as I could but this one I felt was so below par not only for Hitch's films - aw heck, I'm being far too nice here. This pictured really sucked. I don't care that Hitch did a favor for the very talented Carole Lombard, but I have seen 50s sitcoms with more cleverness and style than this boring turkey. Chemistry between Lombard and Robert Montgomery? Listne I like mashed potatoes and ice cream but I wouldn't want to taste them together. I have seen better chemistry in chemical spills on th highway than here.

If you really love Hitchcock, avoid this film and see any one of his better ones. For crying out loud, the bits Hitch did on the old TV show were funnier than anything this film fails miserably to deliver.


Alfred Hitchcock made this comedy of mis-marriage in 1941 but his heart doesn't appear to be in it. Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery are the couple who discover they were never legally married and spend the movie bickering their way back to true love. It doesn't have much of a reputation and it is easy to see why. The jokes are familiar from better films but here they don't gel. And the leads are uncharismatic. Lombard's performance is clipped and starchy and it's doubly sad to think she was dead only a year later. Robert Montgomery seems to know he's in a sow's ear and tries his damnest to make a silk purse out of it without much success. The best performance comes from Gene Raymond as 'the other man', (he has a lovely drunk scene). This is one of the few really bad Hitchcock films.


Perhaps the wildest outlier in Alfred Hitchcock's career is this straight-out comedy vehicle by the director, pairing Carole Lombard with Robert Montgomery as a couple who discover a mistake has invalidated their marriage. Where do they really stand with each other?

Contrary to what others say, there IS an element of suspense here: The idea that these two miserable people might escape each other, free to inflict their awfulness on some other, undeserving mate.

It's funny reading comments here about how miserable Lombard's Ann Smith plays out in this film, because Montgomery's role is as much of a heel. He manhandles Ann, snaps at witnesses, short-shrifts clients - just the kind of lawyer who gives his profession a bad name. Ann is overbearing, too, of course, the kind of wife who holds her husband hostage from work for six days over a petty squabble, bringing up things like what he did in Paris when he was 20 and hadn't even met her yet. "I forgave you that!" she says, as if it was big of her.

For David, a revoked marriage is an opportunity to have a little illicit pleasure with his "mistress" before tying the knot for good. For Ann, it's an attempt at premarital sex that must be repelled with a bottle of champagne to the head, followed by expulsion from their apartment and her life.

The acorn doesn't seem to fall far from the tree, as Ann's mother is scandalized into apoplexy when she learns what David tried to pull: "Oh my poor baby! Thank Heaven your father is dead!"

That's a rare good line in this laughless, unlikeable comedy.

You can call this an example of the "remarriage comedy", in which the bonds of matrimony are challenged in order to be reaffirmed. You can also call this an example of what Roger Ebert calls the "idiot plot", in which the storyline depends on the main characters acting like idiots. Hitchcock seems to have a laugh at uptight American morality, but can't really do much more with it than a jokeless scene where an older couple is scandalized by the sound of loud plumbing.

Lombard died within a year of this film's release; it was the last film of hers she lived to see. What a shame it couldn't have been something better! She was overbearing in "My Man Godfrey", too, but in such a likable way you didn't just have to go with her, you wanted to. Here she plays for laughs that aren't there while sadistically breaking David's chops again and again. Montgomery rolls his eyes a lot like Groucho, a study in smugitude.

The only really decent thing in this movie that lasts more than a few seconds is Gene Raymond as David's law partner Jeff Custer, who makes a play for Ann and acts with honor and decency. Raymond underplays his many reaction shots, and even a drunk scene, all to good effect.

***SPOILER***So decent a guy is Jeff that Ann ends up rejecting him for not fighting David after she goads him into a confrontation, calling Custer "a lump of jelly". Jeff exits the scene, leaving Ann and David together for their future murder-suicide. Here's one Custer that managed to escape a massacre!***SPOILER END***


This was Hitchcock's third Hollywood feature, and it appears he was yet to settle into a pattern of consistency, turning from faithful adaptation of classic novel in Rebecca, to espionage thriller in Foreign Correspondent, and now this romantic comedy in the mould of the "screwball" pictures of the 1930s.

Hitchcock's formal method, on the other hand, had by now settled into something consistent, so much so that he was unable (or at least unwilling) to deviate from it. It was unwise then for him to step outside his usual genre, and a romantic comedy was particularly inappropriate. In Rebecca it was actually great to see Hitchcock constrained by his producer and the source text, forced to turn his technique to heavy Gothic drama, but for Mr and Mrs Smith there is a huge mismatch between form and content. In other words, Hitchcock was no Ernst Lubitsch.

First, let's look at the romantic angle. The best love scenes in Hitchcock films were wild, passionate and slightly dangerous  the "ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn't have?" situation, and he was great at depicting that. This is something that makes a much earlier film, Rich and Strange, one of the few Hitchcock non-thrillers that really works. Hitch is not so good however when it comes to a more gentle and familiar love story. A light, tender touch is required and Hitch doesn't have it.

Secondly, take the comedy. Of course, Hitchcock films could be funny  The Lady Vanishes is probably the best example  but only when the jokes were sprinkled throughout the story. The master of suspense simply isn't enough of a comedy director to create a film that has funny bones. He cuts up scenes as he would in a thriller  snappy opposing angles of people talking, inserted close-ups of hands and feet, point-of-view shots  but doesn't allow for comic timing or focus on gags. For example, the business with Carole Lombard's dress bursting at the seems is shown to us with a couple of close-ups, but these are timed more as if he were revealing some crucial plot point, and have no comedic impact. Occasionally Hitchcock's style does roughly coincide with the comedy  for example the arrangement of characters in the scene at the club, where Robert Montgomery tries to make it look as if he is with the attractive, sophisticated woman at the next table  but such moments are few and far between.

Even the cast of Mr and Mrs Smith are not up to standard. I'm not sure this was Robert Montgomery's strength lay, and he is boring here. This was of course exactly where "Queen of Screwball" Carole Lombard's strength lay, and yet while she is clearly acting well the scenes are simply not geared to capturing comedy performances. Even Jack Carson, who could be hilarious when he was really allowed to let go before the camera, fails to perk things up at all. Of course, neither of these fine comedy actors is helped by the screenplay, which isn't exactly bursting with laughs in the first place, even if the basic story is a fairly good premise.

The only full-on comedy Hitchcock made after this was the Trouble with Harry, and that sort of worked because it played upon his familiar suspensefulness. However it was only when the story could exist independently of the humour, when the basic framework was suspense  as it is in The Lady Vanishes or Family Plot  that Hitchcock was capable of doing comedy well.