What did Golden Harvest Studios get when they spliced fifteen minutes of Bruce Lee demo footage onto a clumsy, poorly-written mess full of Mafia heavies, motorcycle-riding thugs, and faded Hollywood stars like Gig Young and Dean Jagger? Well, it's not a Bruce Lee movie, but it *is* called "Game of Death"(the title Lee had intended to use for a totally different film before he died). And it's a disaster. Not only are there two unconvincing doubles(Kim Tai-chung and Chen Yao-po) who stand in for Lee, but there's even an equally unconvincing Kareem Abdul Jabbar double! That's right, Lee's student and friend wisely chose to have nothing to do with this humiliating bastard of a project, and--like Lee--appears only in the climactic fight footage. Speaking of that footage(in which Lee also takes on student/instructor/nunchaku expert Dan Inosanto and hapkido master Ji Han Jae), it was shot immediately before work on "Enter the Dragon" began and obviously was not intended to be used in the final "Game of Death" project. It's interesting to watch, but it is ONLY demonstration footage; the choreography has a lot of rough edges. (Watch John Little's "Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey" to see the footage placed in its proper perspective.) The rest of the fights in the film are not up to the standard of Lee's demos, of course. The locker room showdown between Kim Tai-chung and Bob Wall is okay, but if director Robert Clouse wanted to fool the audience into believing that the protagonist in this fight was Bruce Lee(and he obviously did, judging from all the split-second reaction clips of Lee from other films that were spliced into "Game of Death", both during the Bob Wall fight and elsewhere), he failed miserably. This is a rotten piece of work, people. And I repeat, it is NOT a Bruce Lee movie! In his definitive article on the Bruceploitation phenomenon in "Martial Arts Movies" magazine back in the eighties, Daniel Lee included "Game of Death" in his filmography of Bruce Lee exploitation flicks, and he was right--that's exactly where it belongs. This movie is an insult to Lee's memory and, thankfully, most fans now seem to recognize it as such. Single worst moment: about five minutes into the film, when a picture of Lee's face is pasted to a mirror, and the neck and shoulders of one of the doubles are placed immediately beneath the photo. "Hey, look!", the viewer is supposed to say(apparently). "There's Bruce Lee!" Groooaaannnnn...how cheap can you get? And no, Chuck Norris is not in "Game of Death", so why does his name appear in the credits?! EVERYTHING about this movie is terrible, and not in a so-bad-it's-good way. AVOID!


Let me explain the above comment. In the horrible movie PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, writer/director Ed Wood, Jr. incorporated some footage he'd shot of Bela Lugosi just before Bela's death. While the footage had nothing to do with the script for PLAN 9, Wood decided to "cleverly" use this film and hash out Lugosi's role by having a much taller guy (a dentist by the way) hold a cape over his face in all the Lugosi scenes not available in the original reel of footage! The result, not surprisingly, is horrid. Now all of the reason for PLAN 9 being named the worst movie ever made wasn't all due to the Lugosi footage, but it was one of the main factors contributing to the pure crappiness of the film.

In the case of GAME OF DEATH, some initial footage had been shot back in 1972 but was temporarily shelved in order to finish another Lee film. But, Lee's untimely death left about 30 or 40 minutes of unusable footage. So, the studio big-shots decided to "pull an Ed Wood" and use the old footage and write an entire movie around it--using extras and irrelevant footage to make a "coherent" film. Well, the result wasn't great but at least it was a good bit better than PLAN 9! As far as integrating a dead guy into a movie, the results were often pretty pathetic. Now I am NOT saying they shouldn't have made the movie. Instead, they should have just admitted that they were using a double and not even bothered trying to fool the audience--it just wasn't possible! Having an extra wearing sunglasses inside and out just looked stupid and playing the part straight, without stupid tricks, would have been better. A couple other stupid "tricks" they tried to make a coherent film included cutting closeup shots of Lee into scenes where he obviously wasn't acting! His clothes and the backgrounds just didn't match the double! The worst case was near the beginning when Lee was supposedly almost killed by a falling light. The close up was of the Real Lee--standing outside against a brick wall. But, the scene was filmed INSIDE and there was no brick wall! This was true Ed Wood editing!!! Even worse was one scene where they literally pasted Lee's face over another person's face for a very brief scene! Clutch Cargo episodes were constructed better than this! Probably the creepiest aspect of all this was that Bruce's son, Brandon, also died prematurely while filming THE CROW and the studio did pretty much the same trick (though with modern computer techniques it did look better). In addition, to add another creepier element, Brandon was killed in an on-set accident where he was killed by a prop gun---something that is in the plot of GAME OF DEATH--when a bad guy pretends to be using a prop gun but really shoots Bruce in the face!!!! This is just so surreal and sick. Also surreal and sick is seeing Gig Young in his final film--just months before he killed himself and his partner! This truly seemed like a cursed production! While I am trashing the film, I may as well point out a few other things before I actually go on to praise the film. First, while I greatly enjoyed watching Chuck Norris BRIEFLY at the beginning of the film, somebody should have told him to shave his back hair!!! Chuck just looked like some sort of missing link with all that hair--a major turn off and something I am surprised made it into both this film and another Lee picture, RETURN OF THE DRAGON. Second, the female co-star Colleen Camp very ably sang the final song in the film but when they show her singing earlier in the movie, she's obviously out of sync with the music.

Now apart from the MANY serious flaws with the film, let's talk about the good. While a tad cheesy, the overall production values were pretty good (apart from the way they dealt with Lee)--especially for a kung-fu movie. Seeing the American supporting actors (especially a foul-mouthed elderly Dean Jagger) was pretty interesting and the music for the film was exceptional. The opening titles were highly reminiscent of a James Bond film and the recurring strains throughout the film were very clearly inspired by the music from ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE. Plus, the effects and fight scenes were pretty good throughout.

Despite occasionally seeing tiny glimpses of Lee in the first 2/3 of the film, he is the clear star of the final portion of the film--the only portion of the movie that should have included Lee in my opinion. Here, he does perhaps his best stunt-work ever and the battles are well worth seeing for fans of the genre. In particular, seeing Lee fight Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was majorly cool. It really is a shame that such great material was never used the way it was originally intended. For fans of Lee, this is STILL a must-see film, but for most others it's a mixed bag--a lot of good and a lot of really, really, REALLY bad editing.

FYI--In the wonderful kung fu comedy, SHAOLIN SOCCER, the goalie is clearly meant to look and act just like Bruce Lee. In fact, his yellow outfit is a copy of Lee's in the finale of GAME OF DEATH. This was a cute little homage to Lee.


Like many I thought this was a waste of some very good talent. I hope that this doesn't mean that these people are on their way down the proverbial ladder and will have to sink into the gutter with more trash like this. I expected so much more and am very disappointed. Hindsight now tells me I should have waited for the Video a few years from now and saved a few bucks. But then maybe in a few years you won't even be able to find it on the shelves

IMHO I rate it 3/10


This "comedy" is awful. It is boring. Good actors making fools of themselves appearing in this awful movie. There was nothing funny in this movie. Jokes are awful and the plot is junk also... Avoid this movie at all costs. I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone. Depressing...


I rented The Crew (2000) with my family and could not even finish watching the whole thing, and it was only 88 minutes long! Director Michael Dinner needs to stick to TV. Voice overs worked great in The Wonder Years (tv show) but I don't need a voice over for the first 45 minutes of any movie. This movie was a brainless and pathetic attempt at humor. This movie was not funny, nor thought provoking, and really is a complete waste of time. Its not that it was just not funny, it was actually annoying, aggravating, and painful to watch. I give this movie a two, which is 100% mark-up for what it really deserves just because of the cinematography, set design, and editing. Enough said. This movie was AWFUL!!


Let me see...old retirees/former gangsters decide to reform the crew. Sounds great to me. What doesn't sound great is the way they handled this potentially hilarious premise. I can't say I hated this movie, because I did get quite a few chuckles, but no real laughs. And when you see a cast including Burt Reynolds and Richard Dreyfuss you can't help but feel cheated when it doesn't live up to the hype. First of all, the trailers are misleading. And the poster of the whole crew--Dreyfuss, Reynolds, Seymour Cassel and Dan Hedaya--in gangster suits and hats is as well. Because we hardly ever get to see them get into action, mob-wise. In the first act, we're bombarded with senior citizen stereotypes: getting to a restaurant in time for free soup, ogling young women, having weak bladders, playing Bingo, etc. In other words, it goes for pretty cheap pay-offs. The four leads look more like caricatures of senior citizens than actual senior citizens. Everything in this movie is mediocre, except the acting. Some critics felt the movie was trying too hard; I felt it was trying too little. The plot, however, is overwrought. We're stuck with one preposterous situation after another, and they all somehow interlock. In a funnier movie, I would've excused that--but in this one...the plot was a distraction. Just like how we're stuck with old people stereotypes, we're stuck with Cuban stereotypes, with a bunch of "Scarface" wannabes. That didn't work out too well either. Despite the great cast, I would not suggest renting this movie. Though it's not bad, there's so much unocovered potential that you just want to yell out your ideas to the director. The cast deserves better and we deserve better.


Ugh. What a disappointment. A great line-up: Dannie Hedaya, Big Burt Reynolds, Seymour Cassel, Richard Dreyfuss and even Lainie Kazan; an excellent premise for hilarity: a bunch of retired wise-guys...and no story. It just falls apart like one of those cartoon characters that's been hit in the head with a falling anvil: first, the head, then an arm, then..., well, you know. Dang! it's too stinking bad as I wanted, really wanted to see some funny business out of this array of talent-- but, even the best acting "Crew" can't pull it off with no story. The first reviewer here remarked on the retiree stereotypes and the gags wear thin, thin after the first run through. The plot (?) doesn't hold and it goes down, down. Bummer. I don't like to dis a film, especially with a "Crew" of guys that I've enjoyed in other films, but this one is a stinker and we will just have to let it go. Bummer again. I was up for some good comedy.


Italian-American ethnic humor, and similar mafia-based spoofs are pretty passe by now, wouldn't you think? Even so, a clever, interesting, and especially a FUNNY movie is always watchable, even if not a hit. This could have been an "OK" flick. This movie, however, is a dreadful, horrible, depressing pile of junk. It is mean spirited, ugly, and worse than a waste of film-- it is a bummer and a downer. The only surprise here is how a group of talented and likeable movie stars such as Burt Reynolds, Dan Hedaya, and Richard Dreyfus, to name the ones I remember, got themselves hooked into doing this. Did they owe someone in Hollywood a lot of money, and this was the pay-back? Did they lose a bet? What? I had to walk out of the theater after half an hour it was so bad.

Avoid this movie at all costs. I gave this a 1 out of 10. If we could give negative numbers, this trash would have gotten a minus three.


Why did I headline this review with that comment? Because it gives you an idea on how this movie is, it should have been called "The Crud" because that is all I got out of this piece of junk. It looks like a version of "Grumpy Old Goodfellas" except GRUMPY OLD MEN was funny and GOODFELLAS was excellent drama, THE CREW comes nowhere near those film for quality. Back in the 1960's four men were making the big bucks back in New Jersey (all the gangsters come from either New York or New Jersey, it's in the mobster film rule book). Then come the year 2000, the four men have aged and are now living in Miami Beach with a good view of the ocean. There's the leader Bobby Bartellemeo (Richard Dreyfuss), the short temper Joey "Bats" Pistella (Burt Reynolds), Mike the Brick (Dan Hedaya), and Tony "the Mouth" Donato (Seymor Cassel). The retirement complex that these men live in is losing the old and bringing in the young (because they love the ocean view). So these four men decide to fake a murder so every youning would move out. The problem is the already dead body is the father of a short temper drug lord (Miguel Sandoval). And when Tony's girlfriend, Ferris, (a voluptuous Jennifer Tilly) who is a stripper ask the men to "wack" her step-mother (Lainie Kazan), all chaos breaks loose. And there is also a sub-plot with two police detectives (Carrie Anne Moss and Jeremy Piven) who are investigating the murder. This movie will have the senior citizens laugh so hard that their dentures will keep falling out. But for those under the age of 50, will find this film boring, tedious, and slow. The only way this is some what watchable for men is looking at the beautiful body of Jennifer Tilly, which has improved since her BULLETS OVER BROADWAY days. As for the women, I can't think of anything that will appeal to them, so they'll probably fall asleep. The acting in this is bad bad bad, Richard Dreyfuss who can be a great actor (look at MR. HOLLAND'S OPUS) is doing his routine comic role, similar to KRIPPENDORF'S TRIBE. Burt Reynolds who is also good (look at BOOGIE NIGHTS) is a comic prop used in this film getting wacked on the head and having his head dunked in the toilet. Dan Hedaya keeps commenting on his "art work" on his deceased bodies he fixes up at the morgue that he works at. But it's Seymor Cassel who I found to be the most enjoyable of the four. One: he barely talks at all, so he doesn't have anything stupid to say, unlike Dreyfuss, Reynolds, and Hedaya. Two: when he does have something to say, it's always more enjoyable than anyone else in the film. Carrie Anne Moss who was full of energy in THE MATRIX is sleep-walking in this film. Jeremy Piven who can be enjoyable is more annoying. And Lainie Kazan gets the award for the most annoying character in the film as the Jewish step-mother of Jennifer Tilly's character. Besides Cassel, Miguel Sandoval has a few bits of good lines also (especially on his description on Seymor Cassel's appearance). But does that save the film, hell no! It's so silly and brainless that you wonder how a bad director like Dinner got a talented cast like this. My guess is that Dinner made a bet that SAVING PRIVATE RYAN wouldn't win the Best Picture Oscar. And what is the talented Barry Sonnenfield doing producing this bomb. He's always bringing out good products, GET SHORTY, MEN IN BLACK, and even WILD WILD WEST! From my guess, the only way that THE CREW is going to make any money this weekend is: 1.) People will get it confused with THE CELL, since they have the same count of letters. Or 2.)

People will get it confused with another film with four old men getting back into action, SPACE COWBOYS. SPACE COWBOYS had wit, charm, and even excitement, THE CREW doesn't have any of that. If you want to see a great film with four old timers getting back into action, go see SPACE COWBOYS. And if you already seen SPACE COWBOYS, go see it again. Save yourself from this witless and pointless travesty which calls itself a comedy. *1/2 (out of five)


What a waste of time. I got in for free, went in with very minimal expectations (I expected a mobbed-up version of Space Cowboys), and still left the theater aghast at the pointlessness of this movie.

What I got was a comedy with NO laughs (okay, one very small one), a plot seemingly written on a napkin (by a drunk whose seen Goodfellas too many times), and probably the worst performances in the careers of every person in this movie.

I expected a lot more from the writer of my favorite comedy movie (Kingpin) and sitcom (Rich Jeni's Platypus Man), but I guess Barry Fanaro ran out of ideas a long time ago. Aside from The Whole Nine Yards, not coincidentally another supposed "mob comedy", this is the worst movie I've seen in the last 10 years.

Please, I beg of you, don't see this movie, you will thank me.


I saw this movie on a flight to Florida...and I turned it off. There was nothing else to do...but I turned it off. It was awful! It really is a shame b/c the idea had great potential...the script was poorly written, poorly executed and just plain boring! It was like the Talented Mr Ripley...I kept waiting and waiting for it to get better...until the wait became excruciating!! LOL Take a pass on this one


The Crew. What a waste of talent. Has every movie maker in Hollywood forgot how to write a screen play? The plot makes no sense from start to finish. The audience I was with laughed at the inconsistent plot that had so many holes it seemed like they randomly spliced parts from five different movies together.

How dare they take $7 dollars from me for this trash. I now vow never, never, never to spend my $7 on a movie without a rating of 7 or above from this site.


THE CREW / (2000) * (out of four)

Michael Dinner's new mob parody, "The Crew," just isn't funny. It is as plain and simple as that. The movie is so engrossed in its concepts that it forgets the concepts are not what make people laugh, but the execution of those concepts. Various humors contained within the film provide one-liners and visual sight gags evolving from age, death, sex, and testosterone, not many that are effective. While I enjoyed Michael Dinner's direction style and some of the nifty camera angles, he fails miserably on bringing inspiration to the production. "The Crew" is one of the worst comedies of the year.

The film takes place in South Beach, Miami, where four old men are about to be evicted from their apartment due to rising rent costs. Little does the landlord know, however, the senior citizens used to be slick, wiseguy criminals Bobby Bartellemro (Richard Dreyfuss), Joey "Bats" Pistella (Burt Reynolds), Mike "The Brick" Donatelli (Dan Hedaya) and Tony "The Mouth" Donato. These guys are beginning to realize life is passing them by and plan to concoct a scheme to place them in their past shoes.

The movie has little development of anything. The characters, who are potentially interesting, are introduced with short, specific scenes featuring each in a disjointed incidence in which they react to; their various behaviors are what portray their personalities. Because of the lack of decent prefaces, the character's intentions are unclear throughout the story. Thus the story struggles to pull itself through a brief running time that feels much longer than it is. The producers seemingly inject sight gags along the way for commercial appearance, and the ones that are funny already have been milked to death in TV ads and theatrical trailers.

	Bobby, Joey, Mike, and Tony come up with an idea to save their home. They steal a body from the local morgue, blow its head off with a shotgun, and leave it in the lobby of their hotel, thus the seemingly murderous event will lower the popularity of the hotel and keep the rent in check.

	Several other key characters come into play. There is a South American drug lord named Raul Ventanna (Miguel Sandoval), who thinks someone's trying to send him a threatening message, ex-lovers and detectives Olivia Neal (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Steve Menteer (Jeremy Piven) who are investigating the homicide and believe the old men to be potential suspects, and a local prostitute/stripper, Ferris (Jennifer Tilly), who blackmails the four guys into murdering her stepmother, Pepper (Lainie Kazan).

	The plot is not interesting or engaging mainly because I never cared about any of the unexplained characters. This is the kind of movie in which the ideas are potentially amusing, but the implementation of those ideas are accomplished quite poorly. The plot is frustrating, injecting stale contrivances like an estranged relationship between a father and daughter that feels trite and boring. This movie is like a lacking "Mafia" with a third of the energy.

	In a movie as deprived as "The Crew" an inquisitive audience member anxiously awaits the conclusion, not only because they are overcome with pleasure that the pitiful waste of time is finally over, but also because the ending usually brings a sense of accomplishment to a production, regardless of how horrible. However, that sense of accomplishment is also absent from "The Crew." This film's ending resolves itself in a fashion that is entirely unconvincing and abstract. If you are looking for a funny movie about old men doing things out of their league, go see the funny and poignant "Space Cowboys": a movie that shows just how horrible this one is.


The only really good thing I can say about this movie is that it inspired me to re-read the book. The book had some scenes that would have made wonderful cinema such as the interogation of a murder suspect who gleefully confesses to the committing the crime but claims to have used a rifle instead of a knife, the surprise reception for Chee at his first session as a healer, the discovery of the true identity of the shotgun artist, Leaphorn's rescue of Chee that unintentionally delivers him into the hands of the real murderer, and the ironic circumstances that rescue Chee for the second time. What was the reason for discarding these potentialy terrific moments and replacing them with a script that was almost on the same level as the type of Hollywood TV detective series that gets justifiably canceled in its first season?

Some other elements from the book that were missing or barely noticeable in the movie include the thrill of Chee being able to prove himself to the legendary Leaphorn, the intricate convergence of both detectives towards the same suspect from different evidence, Leaphorn's map, the evidence of how some Navajo endure the hassle of nearly impassable roads in order to live in locations of isolation and visual splendor, and of course the original method used by the murderer to commit his crimes.

Perhaps someday America will produce a mystery series on par with the best that England has to offer. Tony Hillerman's novel are certainly the proper raw material for such an endeavour, but to me this movie is a major irritant as I can not help seeing how it squanders the opportunity to have created something truly excellent.


Robert Redfords PBS "Mystery" adaptations of Tony Hillerman's Navajo police novels completely ruins the two main characters, Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn. Chee in the books was a regular guy who also happened to be deeply involved in his people's culture, to the point of learning to be a "singer" or healer. In the films he is already an expert on all things spiritual, the mystical Indian stereotype who has no real personality, no faults to speak of, no doubts about anything, no insecurities. In Hillerman's books, Joe Leaphorn was a "legendary detective" who was also a highly educated scholar, at least as if not much more knowledgeable about Navajo and Native American culture and religion than Chee. But though Leaphorn knew about it all, he didn't live it in the mystical sense, not being particularly religious himself. Leaphorn's god was logic and a belief that everything that happens, happens for a reason. In these crappy movies, poor Wes Studi's version of Leaphorn has been made into a man who knows virtually nothing about his own culture, doomed to be forever "educated" by the know it all mystic man Chee. This makes Chee ever superior, which is very ironic, because in the books, Chee always feels vastly inferior to Leaphorn because of his much greater police knowledge, education, and experience. And it was this part of the relationship that made their two characters so interesting when thrown together.

Producer Robert Redford took two fairly complex characters (by paperback mystery novel standards) and mooshed 'em down into nothing but two more Indian stereotypes.

Redford's first effort to adapt Hillerman (which his company now tries to pretend never existed) was Errol Morris's "The Dark Wind." While that flick was no masterpiece, it was head and feet above these slow, dumbed down TV movies.


I grew up on the Navajo Nation, and right away in the first 30 minutes I see that the movie was filmed over 200 miles away from the Navajo Nation where the story takes place.

The movie has been filmed in the Phoenix area and the buildings that were shown were not anywhere near where they should have been.

The first movie based on a Tony Hillerman movie had actually been filmed on the Navajo Nation. Too bad Redford decided to stray from the book.

The casting is very dissapointing to see only people who succeed in butchering the beautiful language that we speak.

The Navajo Police cars and uniforms are correct, but Joe Leaphorn is a Navajo character that does not know the lanuguage and customs. This is not correct... Leaphorn in all the Hillerman novels knows the customs and traditions.

In the Dark Wind, Leaphorn was played by a Non-Indian who was able to speak Navajo. Lou Diamond PHillips did a much better job in attempting to speak Navajo. It appears that Adam Beach who butchered Navajo in Wind Talkers is doing a great job of butchering Navajo again here.

it's now 44 minutes into the movie and i'm very dissapointed that i missed Malcom in the Middle.


In 1941 Hal Roach had an idea to make short films - he called them "streamliners" - between 40 and 50 minutes, to be shown with lenghty main attractions. Quite a few were made, mostly comedies, but also two musicals - the Technicolored "Fiesta" with fiery Armida and this film that boasted of Frances Langford, one of the top popular singers of the day. Supporting her were Johnny Downs, who had been singing and dancing in programmers for years and had started out as one of the "Our Gang". Harry Langdon supplied the laughs as Hap Holden - it was hard to believe he once rivalled Charlie Chaplin in popularity.

The film starts off with an amazing "drag" act by the boys of Quinceton College - "I'm a Chap With a Chip on His Shoulder". Meanwhile Mar Brynn School for Girls is having enrollment problems - they can't even get boys to go to their proms, the girls are so dowdy!!! The principal's (Esther Dale) niece, Virginia (Frances Langford) has an idea - if they could entice twelve unusual (beautiful) girls to their college, the college would not have to close. Bob (Johnny Downs) decides to try his drag act at Mar Brynn ( I'm not sure why???) He is one of the twelve chosen and the film develops into a "Some Like It Hot" storyline, with Bob looking and acting like Jack Lemmon. The girls even sing "Up At the Crack of Dawn" on the train.

After a few bedtime shenanigans, Frances Langford sings "Out of the Silence" in her beautiful melodious voice. When one of the girls gets the measles, the school is quarantined and the musical revue (staged to show off the talents of the 12 girls) must be staged in the greenhouse. Frances sings "The Farmer's Daughter" and Bob, out of his disguise now, saves the show and gets the girl.

It is not as good as "Fiesta" but anything with Frances Langford is worth a look.


This 52-minute low-budget college musical can be wincingly second rate, but it has its moments. Bear in mind that the height of its wit is the name of the two colleges: The all-girl Mar Brynn and the all-boy Quinceton.

When Mar Brynn president Matilda Collinge becomes worried over declining enrollment, the dean of Mar Brynn, Hap Holden (Harry Langdon), cooks up a scheme to rejuvenate the place. Mar Brynn will offer twelve scholarships in a contest for the loveliest of the lovely, with plenty of publicity. To make sure, there'll be a big notice that the men of Quinceton's Zeta fraternity cannot apply. Huh? Seems the Zetas are famous for their all-male reviews, with the guys dressed to the nines as girls, singing, dancing and fooling around. You can guess what happens. The Zeta's send their president and star lovely, Bob Sheppard (Johnny Downs), to apply for a scholarship as the ravishing Bobbie DeWolfe...and he makes it! For the rest of the movie Downs spends most of his time in drag. He doesn't look bad in a blond wig...a little like Jack Lemmon's Daphne.

Wouldn't you know it: Not only does Bob fall for co-ed Virginia Collinge (Frances Langford), Matilda's niece, but there is a big show to put on that will spotlight all the lovelies, including Bob as Bobbie. Yes, there will be mix-ups, confusion, endless drag jokes, songs and smirks. It's all innocent and bland, and some of the movie, in fact, is sort of nostalgic.

There's Harry Langdon, for instance, one of the greatest of the silent era comedians. Langdon didn't transfer well to sound. His ego didn't help, either. At 57, he still has that slim body and innocent baby face that, here, doesn't camouflage Hap Holden's more than academic interest in the girls. Langdon still is amusing in his mannerisms. Just as with Buster Keaton, you can look at his face and instantly remember his great years and his sad decline. Frances Langford doesn't bring much to the movie but her voice. For some, that might be enough. She was one of the great singers of the Forties with a creamy sound uniquely hers. She might look like a young co-ed but she doesn't sound like one. In 1946 she and Don Ameche teamed up on radio as John and Blanche Bickerson, a battling couple as stinging as they were funny. Says Blanche, "You used to be so considerate. Since you got married to me you haven't got any sympathy at all." "I have, too," says John, "I've got everybody's sympathy." Says Blanche, "Believe me, there's better fish in the ocean than the one I caught." Says John, "There's better bait, too." She and Ameche are just superb. There's lots of the Bickersons at Amazon, including The Bickersons Volume One.

Not so good are the four songs. Three are aggressively, generically, cheerful, although one of them, "Up at the Crack of Dawn," gets a first-rate, swinging treatment from a trio called The Tanner Sisters. The big production number involves lots of skimpy fruit and vegetable costumes. Langford is stuck with the only ballad, a thing sung among the carefully posed co- eds on Mar Brynn's campus lawn. The music's not bad, with a kind of tango-ish quality, but those words...

"Out of the silence come and cling to me / Out of the silence come and bring to me

That feeling of contentment when you're near / And that feeling of resentment will disappear

When out of the silence comes the sound of your voice / My heart goes leaping; I can't help but rejoice

I'm up in heaven from the bottom of the sea / When out of the silence you come to me"

By the end of the movie Bob stops wearing his dress and puts aside his blond wig. He and Virginia embrace.


Over the last few months, Turner Classic Movies has featured many Hal Roach films that were in the post Laurel and Hardy era. Around the same time this team left Roach Studios, Roach began specializing in short feature-length films (about an hour in length). Some were pretty good (such as TANKS A MILLION and TOPPER) but many suffered from exceptionally poor scripts and unappealing actors--and the films definitely did not age well. This is one of those forgotten films and after seeing it, I really think TCM should have let it remain forgotten! The film is a cross-dressing comedy with a lot of music. The male students at Quinceton University are angry at being disrespected by the females at Mar Brynn University, so they decide to have one of the guys matriculate as a girl in order to make the girls school look foolish(?). Unlike TOOTSIE, this film had neither a decent script or an actor capable of playing the part. It just wasn't believable nor was it particularly funny. Much of the problem was that the jokes were generally very corny (such as the names of the schools) and the songs pretty poor as well (such as their bizarre tribute to vegetables). In addition, having Kent Rogers along for support didn't help. While Rogers imitations were funny and helped in his brief appearance in STALAG 17 a decade later, here he just seemed like someone's obnoxious child mugging at the camera and doing some terrible impersonations. Aside from a good version of Charlie McCarthy, his Cary Grant and the rest of his attempts were just awful and sounded nothing like the originals. In fact, he should have been embarrassed to see himself on film--it was that bad.

Overall, this is a sad and limp comedy that shows none of the genius or spark that once made Roach Studios the gem of Hollywood. Not worth your time, as there are so many better comedies about cross-dressing.


As someone who loved The Sixth Sense and Signs, and who liked Unbreakable, I've got to say it's disappointing where Shyamalan seems to be taking his movies.

Lady in the Water has none of those attributes. For one thing, it's boring, something none of his other movies were. Here we have a sloppily unstructured mess of a film filled to the brim with incoherent bedtime story "mythology" that changes from one minute to the next, so even if you try and follow the world of the story your efforts will only be met with frustration. The film's flaws are many, and as others have and will point them out with much more dexterity than me, I'll simply list the films greatest foibles.

1) Shyamalan casts HIMSELF as a John the Baptist character who will inspire "a great leader who will change everything" from a hastily constructed presumable political treatise entitled, of all things, The Cookbook. Give me a break! As someone who styles himself as a modern day Hitchcock, M. Night should take a page from that man's book and continue to play cameo roles, not central ones.

2) His supporting characters are a mish-mash of ethnic and cultural stereotypes. The "Asian" student who attends university but cannot string together a coherent English sentence. Of course the otherworldly "mythology" is the remnant of some vaguely Eastern legend based on truth. The old Jewish woman is tackily dressed and her husband is always in the bathroom. Please.

3) The film/movie critic is one of the ONLY interesting and rounded characters, and Shyamalan kills him off as he rattles off trite contrivances. This character's appearance seems like a defensive self-conscious way to preempt the critical panning of this film. When a writer forces one of his characters to go on the defensive in dialogue, you know something has got to be wrong with a movie.

4) Shyamalan continues his now hackneyed convention of having a protagonist who's suffered tremendous loss in the form of familial death. Enough Already. Paul G is a great actor, the unnecessary back story about a dead family and a lost medical practice trite and out of place.

The list goes on and on, but suffice it to say this movie is a waste of celluloid, or hard drive space if you'd prefer. Avoid like plague.


It's hard being M. Night Shyamalan. Year after year, his works of uncompromised genius are poorly received by theatergoers and film critics alike. Even Disney didn't want to make his latest film, Lady in the Water, fearing that it was poorly written, featured too large a role for the writer/director, and contained an embarrassingly self-indulgent attack at his detractors, the crrritics. And as much as I hate to agree with Disney, they were absolutely right.

The story, as convoluted as you've come to expect from the man, is not the main problem here. Sure, it's chock-full of narfs, tarturic, and poorly drawn stereotypes, but the larger issue for me was the cringe-inducing self-indulgence that runs rampant throughout the film. For instance, Shyamalan plays the role of an author, misunderstood in his time, who will one day influence a boy destined to become the president of the United States. Self-fulfilling prophecies, anyone? His acting is embarrassing and unintentionally hilarious in turns, and his reactions to pivotal plot points had me longing for the brief, campy cameos of years past.

While I can understand M. Night's desire to respond to the unenlightened critics that failed to see the staggering brilliance of his previous works, one has to question the response itself. Shyamalan is multitasking here, attempting to transport his audience through the magical realism of his self-proclaimed "bedtime story" while simultaneously denouncing his critics for trashing the gospel of M. Night. In the end, we're left with a fairy tale too aware of itself to fully envelop us and a pseudo-manifesto too delusional and self-important to inspire us in any way. In the end, Shyamalan made a film that can really only be enjoyed by himself. It's just a shame that the likes of Paul Giamatti, Bob Balaban, and Freddy Rodriguez have to go down with the Good Ship Shyamalan.


he should be put in director jail and the key thrown away for many reasons, not the least of which is how much screen time he gave himself. directors giving themselves bit parts is a fun game, great for trivia and whatnot, but please, don't go The Way of Quentin.

i'm of Korean heritage, and the supposed myth upon which this plot is based comes entirely from the memories of a Korean-American woman, and translated by her Americanized daughter with a bad, bad accent. i suppose m. knight thought giving her wild hairstyles would be enough to counter the "good Asian girl" stereotype. i wondered where the decision to use the Korean culture came from. maybe he just figured he needed some mysticism, and dipped into whatever culture was handy at the moment. hey, m. knight -- words like "scrunt" and "narf" don't translate phonetically into English; they'd each have three syllables. being a minority yourself, i thought you'd be more sensitive to details like this.

bad stereotypes aside, the premise of a ghostly, Oppie-like Waterworld reject living in the community pool trying to save mankind is retarded. and hey, if she can see the future, what the hell is she crying about? what's weirder than that though, is how readily the building tenants accept all this nonsense, and how much they try to help instead of calling the Loony Police on Giamatti and Howard's characters. having characters that don't question reality alienates the audience, those of us that pay egregious sums of money for good entertainment. that's why Toni Collette's character was awesome in The Sixth Sense: she was freaked out that her son might be insane. so when Paul Giamatti wakes up in his bed and finds what appears to be a pre-pubescent, half-naked teen staring at him, he should freak out and say, "What the f*** are you doing here and who the f*** are you??!", not "Okay, you can stay a while and why aren't I stuttering?" unbelievable characters, boring and unlikely dialogue, highly questionable mythologies of supposedly Asian origin, and the Standard M. Knight Whirlwind of Act Three Revelations To Wrap Up This Cockamamie Plot, are all reasons why you should not see this movie.

so M., please, go directly to Director Jail and turn yourself in. say hello to Antoine Fuqua and Justin Lin for me. maybe if you don't shiv anyone they'll let you do another Amex spot.


Hey, I just saw the movie titled in the subject, here is my review.

The SIxth Sense marked the debut of M. Night's fame and popularity. The atmosphere and vibe that he created, along with a clever plot and a twist ending made movie-goers everywhere realize the importance of Shyamalan. He, to some extent, created a cult following.

Now, four movies later, many of his fans are wondering when he will reveal a movie as amazing as The Sixth Sense. With the OK-at-best movie Unbreakable, people were wondering if he was just a one-hit-wonder director. Then, with Signs, there was some hope that he would make a comeback.

But, then he released The Village. After he lost thousands of fans due to that horrendous movie, he attempts at making another good movie. He most certainly fails.

The movie places a stuttering man who lost his entire family in an Apartment complex. He, as the super, notices someone swimming late at night. This is the Lady from the title.

You see, M. Night created an entire "Bed Time Story" about how land people used to coexist with the people of the "Blue World" (the ocean). These people speak English. But Land people got greedy and started fighting. But the Blue World people stayed pure, like water, as the Super points out.

To help out the greedy people, huge birds that no land person has ever seen flies them to the land, and they must confront a "Chosen One" (no really, that is how the put it) and show them the way. The way the chosen one is directed will end up helping the land people as a whole.

The Chosen One is, of course, M. Night himself. He can write, direct, produce and now act. He must be the chosen one.

Anyways, there are wolves that aren't wolves, but are Scants or something. Their fur is grass and they are green. So that is why no person has seen them. These Scants attack people from the Blue World, but not the land. But there are rules.

The night that the Snarf (lady of the blue world, The main Lady) returns to the blue world, the cannot attack them. If they do, these monkeys that aren't monkeys will kill them. There are three. And they are also made out of grass.

But normal Scants wont attack Snarfs unless they are Rogue Scants. And those usually wont do it either, unless the Snarf is a Madame Snarf. And she is.

So now the protagonist, Cleveland must find people to help him.

You see, there are some normal people that help the Snarfs. Among the people are the Healer, the Guardian, the Guild and the Interpreter. These people are the only people who can see the Snarf leave. No one else can... or else it wont work or something.

And the moral is that no one knows who they are. I'm serious.

Anyways, the main bulk of the movie is Cleveland looking for people who can help, and being wrong a lot. And then he keeps stuttering. And it is annoying.

This is definitely M. Night's worst directed movie. Many of the shots are out of focus and hurt your eyes. And then there were the random shots, like when it showed the sign of The Cove while people were dying. And there were a lot of unnecessary close ups.

The writing is by far the worst in any movie. The Interpreter figures out what to do by looking at cereal boxes. I am not kidding. It hurt me inside when it happened.

The acting was decent by many, but some of the people should not be actors. M. Night was pretty good, but his lines were kept at a minimum.

Despite the absurdity of the Bed Time Story, every single person Cleveland told it to believed it immediately. And that is about 15 people. Just imagine someone telling you that a human that looks like everyone else... that doesn't even have gills, lives in the water. Nope, not happening.

The only good thing I could find was the music... and only the last song. A few of the other songs were out of place and unnecessary. But the song during the climax was very well composed.

M. Night should, in my opinion, stop directing and maybe pick up a different hobby. Like not directing. Or writing.

Overview: This movie is in my top 5 worst movies I have ever seen. I laughed at how absurd the story was, but never laughed at the so-called 'funny parts.' Do not see this movie unless you like pain.

Final grade: 3/1000


I am a huge fan of Signs and The Sixth Sense. I think M. Night Shyamalan did amazing work with the horror genre in both films. He breathed new life into a dying breed of movie, giving them something new among all of the cliché-ridden movies that share the genre.

So, I really wanted to like this movie. I, along with pretty much everyone else, was very disappointed by The Village and I very much wanted the director to redeem himself. He failed. Miserabley. Now, I could see his intentions throughout the entire movie. I knew what he was going for and really, it could have worked very well if it had been done correctly. The biggest problem I saw was that he tried to make it be too many different things at once. It was part fairy tale, part horror, part comedy, part fantasy...it goes on. If he had chosen just one and focused his efforts on it, I think the movie would have been very good. Instead, it ended up being a long-winded, pretentious, illogical mess.

The movie is self-aware in some ways, often mocking itself and its own ridiculous story and explanations. This works in other movies, like Scream, for example. In this one, though, the subject is so outlandish that even the prodding the movie gives itself can't make it forgivable. You have to buy into a lot of insane stuff before you can even begin to get sucked into the story. In some movies, such a leap of faith is easy to make and the movie is thoroughly entertaining. Not many people question the rationality of Star Wars because the movies make their universe believable. Lady In The Water's universe is so confusing and muddled that it's distracting and the viewer spends more time calling it out than getting involved.

There are times when I found myself laughing and I wasn't sure if I was supposed to or not. The scenes play out as completely serious, but it's hard to believe that anyone could have written such scenes and intended them to be taken seriously. It's impossible not to laugh at dialog that includes creatures such as narfs and scrunts.

Ultimately, I would call the movie confusing. It doesn't know what it's supposed to be, so the audience is left even more clueless.


Wow! I have never been so annoyed by a movie in my life. If it weren't for the fact that I had driven a friend to the theater and had met others there for the sneak preview also, I would have left in the middle of it. And I never leave in the middle of a movie.

Within the first half hour, the characters were already getting on my last nerve. The basic premise somewhat interested me, but the stupid characters coupled with an obvious attempt to solicit laughs based on a few ridiculously exaggerated situations and the main character's stutter throughout the movie really clinched it for me. And no, I'm neither a critic nor a fan of Shyamalan. I judge each movie on its own merit and don't give a damn about whose name is on it. I loved Sixth Sense. Unbreakable wasn't exactly my type of movie, but I found it entertaining and wouldn't take issue with it because of the genre. I really didn't care for Signs at all, but I didn't completely detest it. But I really hated this movie. I kept hoping that some bizarre twist would at least give the movie some redeeming quality in my eyes, but almost every turn they took was completely predictable. And the few things that were a bit of a surprise didn't help because they just seemed to me like an obvious attempt at being "cutesy".

Oh well, I know there will be people out there who like the movie. I did hear a few people laughing at the stupid attempts at humor. Although, by the end of the movie, I was fairly convinced that people just wanted to laugh in order to avoid the awkward situation of silence when laughter is almost expected. It reminded me of when a lousy comedian takes the stage and you get a few people laughing at things that are completely not funny just because it seems to be the thing to do.

At any rate, those are my thoughts on the movie. I have never written a review at this site before because nothing has ever moved me to do so like this dud. In fact, I hadn't even registered at the site even though I have visited it regularly for years. I've been kind of curious to read some threads, but was too lazy to take the few minutes to register in order to do so. No more ... the one and only good thing I can see about this movie is that it spurred me into action and now I'm a member here and can take a peek at the discussion threads whenever I want to.


What a delightful moment when you fully understand that you do not belong to the masses of mysticism loving, astrology loving, lame brained losers out there. This film proved beyond a doubt that the fairies have left mankind forever. I can see it becoming a great cult film because there are so many people who desperately need to be re woken into life. Of course the real sadness is that his awful film will not grant them that wish either. In fact it is exactly for this reason that it will become a cult film - because it does not deliver on any level. I would suggest that the makers of this film take a long vacation, a long way away from their usual haunts and let time heal their unfortunate souls if that is indeed possible. I feel sorry for the great fairy tales of history and the great writers like George McDonald who must surely be agonizing in his grave. In conclusion I would like to state that the society in which a movie of this nature receives such a large percentage of approval is in some very serious need of mental health medication. A large tablet needs to collectively swallowed by those who find this stuff in the slightest interesting. As I said, perfect fodder for the Democrats who are so removed from reality that they should use this as a campaign opener. Lieberman loses the democrat nomination - need I say more. Poor world if the Democrats regain any form of power in the USA.


Being a huge fan of M Night's previous films such as Sixth Sense, Signs and the Village, (unbreakable was god awful), i was very excited for my viewing of this film. I hate saying it, but this movie was really terrible. It was written terribly, the characters were extremely unreal, it was shot very poorly and the acting was terrible. There was no plot progression, and Bryce Dallas Howard plays EXACTLY the same person she did in the village, except being blind she was wet and nymph-y. The screenplay was just pathetic at times ("This is the scene were the character gets killed off by the monster...etc.) awful. I wish the toilet paper in the restrooms had ads on it for this film, because metaphorically and literally, this movie deserves to be kissing my ass.


Wow. Just wow.

I don't think I have ever been touched more by a Narf. This movie is perhaps the greatest portrayal of grass ape monkeys in trees that I have ever seen. That alone deserves some respect. The people in charge of the introduction were pretty good too; I am sure many will be touched by their crayola skills.

Let the eagle soar, soar as high as she has never soared before. Or so we thought. With a wingspan larger than Jesus on the cross, the Eagle of the Narf is a beautiful creature, zipping through the skies of the Fruity Pebble Interpreter's vision led by the Guild of Seven with the healer of the Narf. Que Pasa? Que bueno. This movie also had the best portrayal of an overbearing Asian mom with a daughter "who like tell bed time story to you". Only after drinking milk and pissing your pants, though.


I could write a long review about how Lady in the Water was an unfathomably contrived piece of cinematic shite, but I'm sure plenty of that will be going around so I'll just give a list of the three main reasons I never want to see this movie again.

1) The role M.Night gave to himself is the most pompous thing I have ever seen in a movie. Yes, people may want to kill him, but it's definitely not because he's written something that will change the world. (it doesn't help that he's not much of an actor, either) 2) Narf? Are you kidding me? People are supposed to hear that without laughing? 3) I watch movies because I want to be entertained or moved or see something intriguing, not because I want to walk away from it dumber than I was before.

I hope Shamalayn's ready to soak up ever bad review because by jove, he's earned it.


I could NOT WAIT till this movie was released!! Now, I wish I could take back my 3 hours wasted at the sneak preview last night! HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT! I was ready for a suspenseful thriller & received nothing but a huge joke. :-(

Want a suspense thriller? Than I suggest you watch the Previews for this movie, since I do believe they used them all in there. The rest of the movie was filled with a JOKE. You could not resist laughing at how stupid it was.

I am glad this was a Free Sneak Preview, otherwise I would have demanded a ticket refund for this Falsely Advertised movie.


The lighting was bad, the dialog was stiff, unnatural and awkward, the camera work was jumpy and distracting, the sound was in and out, and the acting was terrible.

There was nothing redeeming about this movie. Given the cheesy blue screen work (a montage P-Town scenes behind an actor as he marches/struts in place instead of actual film of the actor walking down a street), I should not have expected much, but this disappointed even my limited hope.

Low budget films have been done in the past - and done well (Clerks), but this one feels and looks schlocky. After watching it, you feel that your 8 year old niece or nephew could have done better with the family camcorder. What amazes me is that Miramax picked it up and released it.


LIE DOWN WITH DOGS was reasonably popular with gay audiences for about fifteen minutes in 1995, but God only knows why. A more abrasive set of overworked stereotypes can scarcely be imagined.

Tommy (Wally White) arrives in Provincetown with no money, no job, no place to stay, and grandiose ideas of the good times to be had at a gay-popular summer destination. Needless to say, one misadventure follows another: lecherous would-be employers, pot-smoking landlords, a snaky Latin lover more interested in Tommy's cigarettes than in Tommy himself. But the film is a great deal less interesting than it sounds.

In theory, LIE DOWN WITH DOGS satirizes the youthful gay party scene. In practice, however, it plays out in the manner of a particularly charmless Saturday morning cartoon. Written and directed by Wally White himself, the film seems to exist chiefly in order to showcase just how relentlessly unfunny and aggressively obnoxious White can be.

Now and then an occasional supporting player, a script idea, or a line of dialogue sparks the film to life--but such moments are too few and too far between to jolt this dog to life. Give it a miss.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer


The lowest that I can go on this rating scale is one?

Needless to say, December 31, 2006 will go down in history for me. Me, my friends and I were in prep to celebrate what was a successful year - only to be horribly distracted by this heinous excuse for a film.

(In fair disclosure, I haven't finished this movie. I am, in fact, writing this review as the movie plays and sends otherwise happy guests running for the door to their "next party.")

To make a long story short, despite the films creative use of popular dance-club tracks as Danny Tenaglia's Bottom Heavy and Smooth Touch's In My House (oh... and Generate Power... OK, and The Pressure... one more, the Witchdoctor (whilst neon penis' flickered) in the opening credits), I've never seen such a plot less farce. Do not, under any circumstances, watch this movie.

If you see a copy for sale, purchase it - send me the movie and a copy of the receipt. I will reimburse you for it and make sure that it has been destroyed. Bad acting; bad cinematography; somewhat fierce soundtrack. Don't, don't, don't, don't.


A real obnoxious guy (Wally White) decides to leave his job in NY and spend the summer in Provincetown MA and find Mr. Right.

OK--this is LOUSY. For starters--every gay stereotype is trotted out to go through its motions. Second, there's no plot. Third, ALL the characters are obnoxious. Fourth, I've been to PTown--this was obviously shot off season and it REALLY shows. Fifth, almost no one can act. Sixth, did I mention the main character is really obnoxious? Seven, all the "comedy" is lousy. A particularly bad sequence is White picking out dancers from square states (don't ask).

The ONLY bright spot here is Randy Becker. He turns in the sole good performance and is VERY hot (to put it mildly)! But he also plays a real jerk.

Basically one of the worst gay films ever--maybe THE worst! I wish I could give it a 0--it's not good enough for a 1!


I read a lot of bad reviews of this movie and I saw it 2 times in almost 4 years, but it remains not funny. Well, I have to admit, some things are really original, but that doesn't mean it's well performed. The actor's couldn't act and the director is the star is the producer is the screenplay writer! This picture was doomed to fail, because only Welles and Tarantino can do this. If you're planning to direct a movie you've written and payed for, and acted in, fine, go ahead, but don't show it to people outside your family.

But I don't want to write too many bad things about this (cult?!) movie. This picture is good because it's bad and that's the reason you should see this film: to watch and learn how you shouldn't make movies. And if you watch it when you're happy, you can see that the clichés were showed for a reason.


I purchased this film for the soul purpose of adding to my JESSICA ALBA library. She was in it for a whole 15 seconds. I will never get the other 90 minutes of my life back I spent watching this film. I felt there never was a clear plot to this film. At times the acting seemed a little sluggish also. The film also uses Morgan Fairchild as a star of this film...not! She only appears a couple of times. I feel this is kind of just milking someone in to rent or purchase this film. The ending comes to a close really fast and leaves nothing to the imagination.

A pyramid that dispenses pills to make you feel however you want; how clever.


What on earth was anyone associated with this project thinking when they made this trash. It has to be the worst film I have ever seen. Their visions of the future are ridiculous and the story line is beyond redemption. The virtual reality date line, despite being a bad idea to start with, is used in the worst possible way in this film. And the first half hour is the most grueling 30 minutes anyone has the displeasure to sit through. Utter rubbish.


My wife is a HUGE Rick Springfield fan, so we watched this on Lifetime recently. I love B flicks as much as the next person, and this low budget romantic-thriller is as cheaply made as they come. Despite the Parisian setting, it's apparent that this was not made in France. All of the scenes featuring Paris landmarks are pretty much stock footage, but that's only a minor glitch in this predictable movie. The plot is fairly improbable: A scholar switches places with her fashion model twin and heads to Paris, then gets involved in mystery/romance/blackmail. I've never read a Harlequin novel, but am assuming that this is pretty much the standard formula. Surprisingly, the movie didn't even have any Rick Springfield music! Perhaps his songs were too expensive to use on the soundtrack. Who knows? It's bad stuff but perhaps Rick fans might enjoy.


Watch this movie only if you have absolutely nothing else to do and need a laugh. It's a typical harlequin movie,the plot is thin, the story's utterly romantic and ridiculous, and the actors don't have much to do but look beautiful, handsome and glamorous. Andrea Roth is playing twin sisters Kim and Dominique. Dominique is an immensely successful model but has taken to the bottle. Her sister, Kim, is an arts professor and aiming for her Ph.D in the same field. They change places when Kim decides to put Dominique into rehab and take her place as a model for a couple of weeks. There, she meets her dream man, helps Dominique overcome an embarrassing secret and ultimately all ends well. Typical movie...not too bad for people with nothing to do.


I'm sure that during his career in his later years Bing Crosby was offered the chance to repeat playing Father O'Malley as an older priest and at one point that would have been a natural fit for him. Unfortunately after this film, Bing was done with the clergy.

He tries his best with Father Conroy and his best moments are musical ones especially with Debbie Reynolds, but the story is not convincing. Try as I might, I just can't believe that Robert Wagner turns from opportunistic heel to good guy just to win Debbie Reynolds.

In fact the main problem with the movie is Robert Wagner. A good actor he just doesn't have any talent musically. His big number in the movie was You Can't Love Them All was recorded by Dean Martin and had a modest success. Now if Dino had played his part, he might have overcome the script.

Bing's best number is The Secret of Christmas. In addition to recording it for the cast album of this film, six years later he recorded it for Frank Sinatra's Reprise label in a joint Christmas album with Old Blue Eyes and Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians. That is the superior version to the one he did in Say One For Me.


Nothing else to watch Saturday June 17, 2006; I'll try this one about a spreading virus; they are usually good. That is not a spoiler, after all, the title is "VIRUS."

The screenplay was OK as it progressed until the last reel. Then ... and I will not give any spoiler at all; it just became sort of ... 'cartoon-a-rooney!

This is the first bad review that I have given. The ending was so obvious and expected, as it rolled to the conclusion; I was telling my dog what was coming next, but I think he already had guessed.

I wish LIFETIME would make movies in Hollywood, where the talent is. Oh well.

predic


The plot of "Tempo" sounded really promising, but the end result is quite frankly horrible. The acting on the part of Hugh Dancy is acceptable, as for Cook it is not up to the standard of her other performances. In all their character's relationship seems utterly unbelievable. Watching Melanie Griffith in Tempo though was a sad experience I could have done without. I remember her from films such as "Working Girl" were she was witty, funny and sexy. In "Tempo" she acts like she is wearing a mask. Her facial expressions are almost non-existent. Another fact that annoyed me with "Tempo" was the obvious lack of detail when it came to locations. The story is supposed to take place in Paris, why is it then that throughout the film, street signs are in German?? Even Munich does not look like Munich.


"Sarah James (Melanie Griffith) lives on danger's edge every day as the courier for a ruthless French black market dealer. Her boyfriend, Jack Ganzer (Hugh Dancy), is a handsome, young American expatriate she's seduced into becoming her partner in crime. But, when Jack unexpectedly meets and falls for Jenny Travile (Rachael Leigh Cook), a sexy but seemingly naive jewelry shop clerk, he quickly finds himself trapped in a treacherous love triangle filled with suspicion, vengeance, and murder. This riveting thriller will keep you guessing until the very end," according to the DVD sleeve description.

"Tempo" opens with its exciting car chase climax, then goes into flashbacks leading up to there. Possibly, they had no other way to begin this movie. Next up, you get mild erotica with Ms. Griffith, as the still sexy older woman, wrapping her legs around Mr. Dancy, as the attractive young stud. And, that's about all there is to this downhill film. The chase winds up being the culmination of an unappealing heist storyline. Only Dancy shows skin throughout. Griffith gives her character more vulnerability than the film deserves. And, Ms. Cook is almost completely, and uncharacteristically, nondescript.

**** Tempo (6/10/03) Eric Styles ~ Melanie Griffith, Hugh Dancy, Rachel Leigh Cook, Art Malik


I used to love Melanie Griffith. She was so sexy and lovable in "Fear City", "Body Double", and "Something Wild", yes even in the rotten "Cherry 2000" I still loved her. In Tempo I lost my love, to the knife! Tempo shows the waste of money that is plastic surgery all over Melanie's face. A horrible waste of money and the ruin of a beautiful talent. Disgusting!

So is this movie. All that eurotrash money can buy is a deeply flawed script with mediocre performances by many involved. Rachel Lee Cook is as good as she could be given the circumstance of her character. She plays an American student on sabbatical in Paris who, although she does not speak French, is hired by and then immediately given the keys and codes to a jewelry store to satisfy the plot! When the store is robbed the Parisian police open fire on the thieves during a car chase inside the city. Besides the fact that they have not established the car contains thieves or criminals I doubt any modern Western police force would use guns in the situation exposed. The rest on the script is filled with many other unbelievable occurrences, all while expecting the viewer to take it seriously! Looks big budget but never opened theatrically in the US. The DVD release was announced for Summer 2003 but has now been delayed indefinitely, lucky for you! I wonder if Ms. Griffith's surgeons are bidding to keep it off the market? It certainly does not show their work in the best light.

As an alternative I would suggest a fun and light film that knows what it is- all fun! "The Guru" is now on DVD in case you missed it in the theaters!


This film, directed by Eric Styles, has the distinction that it has reversed the emphasis from a woman, to a man, for being the object of sexual desire. Otherwise, it doesn't make much sense. The best redeeming factor is some of the great views of Paris.

Sarah, as played by Melanie Griffith, is annoying. That little girl voice in a grown up woman is a turn off. This is a mature woman that has taken up with a much younger, and attractive young man who is seen naked, and or, in different stages of it, in the film. Sarah makes a grave mistake in taking the train back to Paris and holding the precious coin in her hand while she falls asleep! Hellooo! She could have hidden in some other part of her body!

Jack, the young man about town, is attracted to the newly arrived American ingenue, Jenny. They immediately fall in love and are seen having sex without any protection. Sorry, but has anyone heard of AIDS? Jenny is made to look terribly provincial with that horrible permanent and her even uglier pigtails.

The film doesn't go anywhere, as we figured what was going to be the outcome early on. The direction doesn't help matters at all. Other than a vacation in Paris, what is Malcom McDowell doing in this movie? He only appears in one scene and is seen in another! This film could have been cast with lesser known actors and probably would have been better than what one sees on the screen.

Better luck to Mr. Styles next time out.


Robert Goddard is a fantastic author, specialising in twisty and turny British historical thrillers. I was psyched when I saw that "Into the Blue' had been adapted for the small screen, being one of the finest book in a 'trilogy' of sorts. Harry Barnett is highly engaging character, and John Thaw portrays him well, warts and all. The only deterrent to the TV version is that it's far too short. It would have, in this writers opinion, worked better as a mini-series, as the movie leaves out whole scenes from the book and loses the feeling of helplessness that Harry Barnett feels to his plight. On the whole, "Into the Blue" is disappointing, not living up to a really good book. Check out the follow-ups, "Into the Sun" and "Never go Back".


When a woman he has just met disappears on the island of Rhodes, Harry's innocence is doubted. But as he begins to examine the woman's past he realizes his closest friend could be involved in murder.

Robert Goddard is a solid and reliable British writer of clever and complex mysteries. However this adaptation of his novel Into The Blue as a vehicle for John Thaw is disastrous from word go. Embarrassingly miscast, Thaw struggles with accent and intent as he blunders from one scene to another, and he is horribly betrayed by a great clunking script and ghastly supporting actors - Ba is particularly awful as Harry's reluctant sidekick.

Find Goddard's original novel and avoid this turkey at all costs.


Hit Me, Steven Shainberg's (Secretary) directorial debut has a lot going for it including a great cast and a truly striking set to utilize. Unfortunately, the story is utterly ridiculous. The first half hour is a long, drawn out affair I guess to establish Elias Koteas' character, who seems to be nothing more than a series of ticks. We find out he has a brother who is mentally retarded, and the state wants to take away, but Elias will not let them happen. On the verge of losing his job at a two star hotel, he becomes involved in an incident (which I won't reveal here) that is so muddled, so badly played out and so unbelievable that I found it hard to believe that the rest of the motivations of the characters in this movie, rested on it. If the source material (a Jim Thompson novel) was unclear,

Shainberg certainly didn't make it any clearer which leads to the main character entering into a heist for truly inane reasons. It's hard to get excited about a heist when the reasoning behind it is virtually nonexistent. Yes, there are heists for the sake of heists - and often that works fine - but this film spends a lot of time and energy trying to establish some reason for this to take place, but fails to convince.

Good film noir, relies on amoral men, sexual women and desperate desires. Hit Me which claims to be a film noir is simply desperate - for a good story and a stronger execution.


This is an utterly putrid film of Jim Thompson's terrific novel, "A Swell-Looking Babe." In adapting the book for the screen, writer Denis Johnson has stripped the novel of all its dark humor and subtext and given us a tepid and dull film.

Gone are the father and the whole McCarthyism subplot, which is crucial to what the protagonist does. And Thompson's denouement was dripping with irony.

Thompson's protagonist was a multi-layered character who had good reasons for what he did. Here, Elias Koteas is just a boring hotel employee. No offense to the actress who plays the femme fatale, but the role needs someone with a lot more substance than she brings to it.

William H. Macy might be highlighted on the DVD box, but he has just one scene. That's it. Come to think of it, he might have been better in the lead role.

Do yourself a favor. Instead of renting this piece of crap, read the novel. Your time and money would be better spent.


Hit me wastes the film rights to Jim Thompson's excellent novel A SWELL-LOOKING BABE. The story is discarded in favor of a pointless exercise in Scenery-chewing by the usually superb Elias Koteas. We witness pointless double-crosses and mindless plot twists while perverting the novel."Hit Me" is a show of mediocre style instead of things that most people like in movies: good characters, exciting plot, witty dialogue, things like that.

Jim Thompson fans, the only people who would want to see this movie anyways, should be prepared for disappointment.


Terrible movie. We can definitely tell is the director's debut. The only thing worth was Koteas' performance. Otherwise it seems like a film made by high school kids. It has hints of a black comedy, but in the end it's not. It has a few plot twists but they are completely predictable. I will be taking the DVD to resell it at Blockbuster. I wouldn't want anyone to take a look at my DVD collection and see this thing in there. That would be embarrassing. I have to give it a couple of points because at least at the beginning it tries to give you a background on the reasons why Koteas did what he did, but the way the movie develops is poorly executed.


This movie is mostly annoying.

Many scenes are unnecessarily prolonged. I started to skip ahead through the last half, and it became slightly more tolerable.

The dialog is stream of conscience, and mostly failed to contribute to the story. Maybe if I was thirteen it would be more entertaining.

Music plays throughout the entire movie, which comes off as a failed attempt at creativity. I love new filming techniques and what not, but this just didn't work for me. The music makes the entire movie feel like an intro or intermission scene. Maybe it is an attempt to disguise the bad acting.

To its credit, this would be a pretty good plot for a porno film.


When Will I be Loved is a film that attempts at many things but fails miserably. The title in itself is misleading in that it gives the impression that the main character, Vera, is searching for love that's owed her. In fact, Vera appears to have everything one could possibly wish for in life, including two caring doting parents. Why she chooses to engage in self-destructive and vindicative behavior is a complete mystery. The only reasonable conclusion one could make is that she is bored with with the perfectness of the life into which she is born and wishes to disturb that somehow by becoming attached to a hustler. This movie is pretentious and ridiculous beyond reason. The characters are written in such a way that they are not even recognizable as human, but rather just qualities. Non of the characters are accessible on any level, which makes the viewer completely apathetic to the outcome of their dilemmas. I, for one, was angry that I had wasted my time with a film that was not pleasing on ANY level. In fact, as the previous reviewer mentioned, the music that we are inundated with is distracting and serves no particular purpose. A bitter revolting taste still remains in my mouth from having watched this one hour ago.


This movie got a lot of undeserved juice from Roger Ebert's four-star review, and it's just awful. I've liked some of Toback's other work, particularly "Fingers", but this thing feels like a really boring home movie on autopilot. It's purportedly about the non-adventures of this bratty little rich girl (Neve Campbell) and her no-account boyfriend (Fred Weller) and, ultimately, their scheme to seduce a rich Italian count (Dominic Chianese) out of some major money. But it takes some time to get to this plot point, and up till then, the movie just meanders in a cinema-verite sort of way that makes it seem like Toback can use it as an excuse for the picture being a dud. It's like he's saying, "Well, whatever we shot, we shot. I can't be held responsible for the randomness of events."

The movie goes from Neve Campbell meeting one person on the street to another in what I'm sure Toback would insist was "character development", but it's done in such a way that it all rings false. It's scripted without being scripted. In another words, it's contrived. When Neve's college professor (played by Toback) explains what he thinks is going on with Neve and her head games, you can almost hear the gears locking in the background. It might be the most mechanical ad-libbed sequence in history.

Toback's use of celebrity here is also peculiar. The Mike Tyson cameo is pretty funny; he actually gives the movie a momentary spark. But when Toback has Neve recognizing a bit actress like Lori Singer on the street like she's Jane Fonda, I wonder what world he's living in. This whole "expository" part feels like padding, like Toback didn't have enough legit material to go around. Then, when the action shifts to the "scheme" in the final twenty minutes, it's good - it's the best part of the film. But the effect is a little jarring. Toback goes from a lazy, dawdling atmosphere to a sequence that's scripted tighter than Abbott & Costello's Who's on First, and it just doesn't work. The two forms don't really mesh, and you get the feeling Toback only had twenty good minutes in him to begin with - the rest is like a warm-up, like running in place to get the circulation going. And I hate to sound like an old prude (which I'm far from being), but the nude shower scene is an absolute cheap shot; Neve Campbell is just being exploited here. It has nothing to do with her character or anything else; it's completely gratuitous. But I guess anything goes when you have no material. Minus credits, this thing is barely over an hour and fifteen minutes. It hardly seems worth being made.


i have never rated a movie before because i have never been so compelled to rate a movie as i have this one. this is without a doubt the worst movie that i have seen since cabin fever. but what makes it worse than cabin fever is that i rented this movie based on roger ebert's review. i will exercise more caution in the future when it comes to ebert's recommendations. the dialog is poorly written and poorly delivered. the editing is clumsy and chaotic. the music score, horrible! music should compliment the story line rather than overpower it. but then again how do you compliment such a bad story? maybe turning up the music even louder and drowning it out was what was needed to make this movie work. i will keep an eye out for future toback movies-so that i can avoid them!


I watched this movie to look at Neve Campbell.....possibly the reason the movie makers made it. She is beautiful and a fine actress. A lot of the dialog was interesting,seemed to be a lot of ad libbing. What the heck was Lori Singer doing in the movie? Neve's character meets her in the park and says "Hi Lori" and they talk a few minutes about movies. Mike Tyson also makes an appearance as himself and seems to have some acting talent. The film starts and ends with Neve Campbell in a shower. The rest is a waste of eyes and ears. I usually agree with Roger Ebert,but he was one of the very few critics that liked the film. He gave it a top rating. Maybe he loves Neve more than me.


When Will I Be Loved is either a really stupid movie or far too clever for its own good. Neve Campbell plays Vera Barrie, a poor little rich girl who, at first glance, appears to be fending off the efforts of everyone around her to use and control her. Her stereotypical wealthy parents make clear how she should arrange every aspect of her life, from what kind of mattress she sleeps on to who she sleeps with. Her boyfriend is a sleazy con artist who hopes to talk her into having sex with a billionaire Italian count for $100,000, wanting in effect, to pimp her. The Count, of course, wants to buy her affection and her body. As it turns out, none of these characters controls this girl. On the contrary, the amoral Vera manipulates almost everyone she comes into contact with for her own amusement and gain. While interviewing for an assistant's job with a college professor, she maneuvers the academic's clumsy efforts to flirt with her into a virtual admission of potential sexual harassment, all but forcing him to offer her the position. This interview takes place as the two are walking along the sidewalks of New York, and when the professor is twice distracted by passers by (one of whom is disgraced boxer Mike Tyson himself in perhaps the high point of the movie) Vera uses each break in their conversation to try to pick up attractive men who happen to be near. She engages in a lesbian tryst behind her boyfriend's back, and she apparently deliberately starts an argument between a couple on a park bench by openly flirting with the boy. In the central plot conflict, the affair with the count, she is the spider weaving every strand of the web. Her boyfriend Ford makes a pathetic attempt to conceal his motives as he introduces the subject, but she seems to expect this kind of low scheme from him and anticipates his every move. Not surprisingly, she quickly accepts and tells him to set it up. The lovestruck Count has only seen Vera briefly twice and compares his ardor for her to the poet Dante's passion for Beatrice. Vera quickly manipulates the Count into upping the ante to one million dollars cash. She gives the Count his afternoon of passion and stashes the money in a safety deposit box immediately thereafter. When Ford returns to claim his share of the loot, she lies, telling him that the Count is a fraud who refused to pay her the $100,000. This leads to a confrontation between Ford and the Italian with deeply tragic consequences for both. Although clearly the cause of this misery, Vera show little evidence of guilt and more than a little self-satisfaction.

While this plot may sound interesting, the movie robs it of the energy and intrigue it promises. First of all, Vera is a strangely passive character. She doesn't seem to actively manipulate anyone, she simply reacts to what they do in a way that elicits the behavior she wants. As a result, she is neither interesting nor sympathetic, and, worst of all, her passivity conceals just how despicable she is. When the revelation comes, it is too late and too muted to redeem the story. At best, we go from not liking Vera very much to hating her. We never understand what motivates or satisfies her (beyond her obviously active sex life).

Second, much of what happens is simply not very believable. Basically everyone in the story but Vera is a one-note stereotype. The Count is the most problematic. With no back story but the fact that he is a billionaire "communications" magnate, we are asked to believe that he would bring six grocery bags full of cash to an apartment to make a woman he'd never met happy in the hope that she might sleep with him -- if she wants to. Perhaps this could happen, but the movie doesn't earn our belief. Our incredulity is sharpened by the fact that Neve Campbell is arguably the least attractive woman in the movie. Neve's highly publicized nude shower scene does little to establish the sexual magnetism Vera is apparently supposed to have. Both naked and clothed, she's somewhat shapeless, which only mirrors the impassive smugness she wears on her pleasant but unremarkable face for most of the movie. Vera doesn't have to look like Angelina Jolie, but she should at least look interested. Finally, the soundtrack is horrible. Most of the dialog is drowned in an incessant music track. Brahms, Bach, and Beethoven accompany Vera almost every moment she's on screen. Perhaps the unending Classical ditties are meant to suggest Vera's sophistication or artistry, but like her vague character they quickly move from puzzling to annoying.


I found Toback's earlier film Black and White mildly diverting, so gave this one a whirl. The scuttlebutt was that this was Neve Campbell's best (and sexiest) performance so far. Well, that much may be true-ish, but the rest of this film is, in places, almost unwatchably bad.

Most of the characters (or should I say caricatures - take the Italian mogul: did anybody find this man even remotely believable?) are without a shred of originality, and in the case of Ford, bear virtually no resemblance to human beings of the sort you or I might actually meet. It may be that his relentless hustling is *intended* to show him as a pathetic individual - but there is a fine line between depicting characters we may not like but in whom we can invest some interest as to their fate; and, as happens in this film, showing people who are irredeemably ghastly, and about whose fate we don't give a toss.

In Black and White, Mike Tyson had a very funny cameo, in which Robert Downey Junior's character tries to seduce him. Here, it looks as if Toback has simply raided his address book and shoehorned as many celebrity cameos as he could into what passes for the plot. Ooh, look, there's Lori Singer! Wow, there's Mike Tyson (again). Ooh, that really is Damon Dash! Toback's own performance as the "hilariously" named cross-cultural enabler is pure smugness in a bottle. The only honest moment is when he confesses to wanting to get into Neve Campbell's knickers. We can only speculate as to whether that is a case of art imitating life.

And Neve Campbell? Yes, she is good in this. She gets some decent dialogue to get her teeth into and delivers it with aplomb. I still think Wild Things is a better showcase for her talent.

The incident towards the end of the film was certainly unexpected; but then again, any idiot can make unexpected things happen in a film. The trick is to work up to it in *some* way. Toback is either incapable of doing this, or simply can't be bothered. The dénouement left me shrugging: so what? Who cares about these cardboard cut-outs?


Ugh. Is there really anything else to say about this film? Neve Campbell is completely unconvincing as an object of anyone's desire. She's not talented, nor is she attractive (why hasn't her agent told her to get that overbite fixed???). The sex scenes are crap, the music is distracting, the dialogue is irritating. It seems almost as though there was a longer, better, more interesting film here, but all of the good parts were mysteriously clipped out, leaving behind this disjointed, amateur, faux-artsy heap of rubbish. The pacing in this film is completely off. Why do we need to see 45 minutes of her in that unflattering dress, walking around the city having awkward conversations with random people? Skip this film. Or, if you're really hard up, just skip to the sex scenes. Wait, no, don't, they're awful. Yes, even the lesbian scene. It's really not worth suffering through the rest of this garbage.


Okay - I'm a fan of Neve Campbell, which is the primary reason I rented this flick. She shows considerable acting chops here - which is even more impressive when you consider the lack of opportunity for her character to develop.

Truth be told, most of the acting was pretty well done. Great soundtrack, pretty views of NYC, wonderful cinematography - this could be a great movie. Neve gets naked during the opening credits? Oh, yeah - settle in and enjoy... enjoy.... um....

Shot in 11 days, this film features the writer/director playing a Jewish Professor of Black Studies, Lori Singer playing herself with a rude boyfriend, Mike Tyson playing someone else that just looks like Mike Tyson. Fred Weller plays the sleazy hustler boyfriend (unfaithful, no less) of rich-girl Vera (Neve), Damon Dash plays nice to a guy on the sidewalk who's trying to hustle him, and about half of the cast plays characters with their own names - someone was running low on creativity at this point.

Running 81 minutes, about half of the scenes went about twice as long as they should have - which comes out okay, because the other half had nothing to do with story progression or character development. That was okay, too - because the story didn't have anywhere to go to, and after the first 15 minutes, you don't want the characters to develop - you want them to either make sense or go away. (Some make sense - but annoy deeply.) Upshot of the plot - a beautiful young woman of the leisure class bounces between being approached for sex or approaching strangers on the street, asking for phone numbers. A man touted as the most important media mogul of Italy offers a hustler $100,000 for an introduction to his girlfriend - and when she says it's not sufficient, goes out and hits banks to score a million in cash for her. She tells boyfriend that there was no cash, and Bad Things Happen - after which we see that the poor little rich girl is a Bad poor little rich girl.

The point? See Neve naked, I guess. Her acting is fine - her taste here, however, is a little shaky.


Why the film was even made is the first and lesser of the two puzzles I came away with. The second was that the Chicago Sun Times and Roger Ebert went totally overboard in praising it. I can imagine that some misguided individuals in Hollywood thought the film would "work" or at least make a profit, but how some big-time media people be so taken with so awkward an effort really surprises me. I noticed that many professional reviewers rated the film well below 50/100 but the few comments by ordinary viewers were even more telling in terms of negative reaction. This film seems to me a perfect example of how too many of the media pros quite often give far more praise to a film than do ordinary viewers. I always read all the professional reviews and find them cleverly written and well worth the reading, but I very often turn to the comments from the crowd to bring me down to earth.


This is one of those truly awful films whose true awfulness doesn't even amuse the viewer. Sometimes a perverse enjoyment can be derived from very bad movies; all that can be derived from this is a keen sense of having wasted a valuable segment of one's alloted time on this earth. The sex scenes are as most risible, boring and lacking in eroticism as one can imagine: there was more eroticism in "The Donna Reed Show" - note to those of you not old enough to remember this piece of televisual entertainment, Donna and her unfortunate husband shared a bedroom but not beds. The script, if there was one, is meaningless, wandering twaddle. The plot, such as it is, could have been successfully resolved in fifteen minutes, and the denouement is just plain preposterous. To those of you still determined to watch this because you think it might offer some sexual gratification I can only say again "THERE IS NO SEX IN THIS MOVIE This film is as entertaining as athlete's foot.


for the frustrated guys amongst us: watch the first five minutes and then turn it off, no more boobs from that point on (I know it was a real downer for me too) for all the rest: don't even bother looking at all, jeez. it started with neve under the shower, OK, nice potential, and then nothing. absolutely nothing at all. a few random conversations, poor acting... a bit like watching a porn movie, without all the explicit sex and daring (read skimpy) costumes. after one hour of dribble and complete boredom, there is a twist in the plot! huge surprise for me, because I thought there was no plot up until this point. she gets the cash, dumps the boyfriend and gets away with it. Where the cash came from, how the boyfriend fits into it all, I have no idea, and I couldn't bare to watch it again to figure it out. what a waste of money and ... (talent? Nah, money!)

in the words of Krusty the clown: "I could have pulled a better movie out of my ..Hey, Hey!"


Loved Neve too much to see this movie again, lack of sense, lack of history, lack of imagination...and maybe lack of time. what's Mike Tyson doing in this film? What about the rich parents? who the girlfriend is? what about the African teacher? or better one question what's the sense of the movie? see a looser who sell his girlfriend for one million dollars and manage to get himself in jail. what about the shower scenes does she cleans her conscience there? sis she planned everything or is to unrealistic coincident? the only nice part was hearing the count trying to put some words together about Italian literature.


I am a great fan of Neve & what a disappointment. This is total junk filled with lot of nasty & unnecessary stuff. Although the film tries to explain the concept of lonely woman in search of true love the story, dialogs, music & the director has made it unable to watch. The story line is thin, not at all gripping, the dialogs are just filler & the music is just too bad to listen. Some scenes are filled just to kill time & are not worth watching. I was really fed up watching the first half itself not to mention about the second half. I wonder why Neve has acted in this movie. Total waste of time & money. Please avoid even if you accidentally bought it.


The only good thing about having rented this film is the opportunity to b**ch about it on IMDb with fellow victims.

Where to begin? Maybe with the "femme fatale" theme, which seems to be a favorite of cheap, poorly written movies. Neve Campbell plays a heartless young woman who cares only about sex and power. Realistic? Only if you add some depth, history, and complex motivations, none of which exist in this movie.

The sex scenes, which I admit I was looking forward to, were nothing but people rubbing against each other or rubbing against couches and moaning for unclear reasons, while Beethoven and Bach blared in the background. (Wow ... this must be an Art Film.)

The gratuitous cameos by has-been minor celebrities ... the less-than-simple plot ... the lame attempts at humor ... Neve's charms and the interesting dialogue in one scene with Dominic Chianese are not enough to make up for the general turkeydom of this flick. I can only imagine that Roger Ebert raved about it because he likes Neve and wanted to give her flagging career a boost. Very sad.


Forgive me for being extremely blunt, but Neve Campbell is such a lying hypocrite. I saw her complaining on a late night talk show some time about gratuitous nudity in movies today. She said she would never show off her body or appear in such movies, unless it is tastefully done.

No, Neve, you're just a snob, and a hypocrite to boot! You're playing a call girl. Yeah, that's a big stretch from Hollywood, really!

How is this movie any different from any other soft-core porn made in Hollywood? This movie is gratuitous from beginning to end. Just because it is an independent movie, it does not make this movie any different from a Hollywood, formula-driven spanker flick.

I've seen better adult dramas made in the past. "Unfaithful" was a better made movie. "Delta of Venus" was a better made movie. "9 1/2 Weeks" is a better made movie. This movie simply stinks.

I'm glad I caught this video for free at the library. If I rented this sludge from a video store, I'd be screaming at the clerk for my money back. Please, avoid this movie like the plague.


The summary say it all.

This was the 2nd worst movie I have seen to date. #1 being I heart huckabees.

This film has no redeeming qualities. The sex scenes are flaccid at best. The score overpowers the crappy dialog but not enough that you do not hear it.

The "character development" was lame, and went on way too long.

Felt caught between wanting to see a naked Nave and the desire to scratch my eyes out.

Just like with Huckabees I kept waiting some the film to get better but alas it didn't.

I have seen softcore porn with better plots, and at least most of them get you a little turned on by their sex scenes.

Not worth the time even if the movie is for free, and someone else buys your popcorn, candy and drink.


Never before have I been so annoyed by a movie that I felt the need to bitch about it to the rest of the world; to warn potential viewers that to rent this movie is to agree to a waste of a little over an hour of their life. Quite certainly the WORST movie I have sat through, with the exception of some really bad porn, but that's okay with bad-no-plot porn because its expected. If this movie had contained at least some real sex scenes, I may have excused the stupidity of its entirety, but even the "sex scenes" sucked. Pointless: Neve's shower scenes, every character that Neve encounters (i.e. the guys on the street? Mike Tyson? what the hell was that all about?) And as others have pointed out, I too was tormented by the constant piano banging or the incessant score which was always playing louder too loud! Not that we really missed anything like "dialogue", since it was so poorly written and acted anyway. Not one character gains any likability or depth. I couldn't have cared less what happened to any of them. I was so taken back by how bad the film was, I had to watch the "bonus" interviews on the DVD. In Neve's defense, she appears to have a better grasp of the depth of her character when discussing it in the interview, but unfortunately, Mr. Toback doesn't bring any character development to the audience. Terrible. Just absolutely AWFUL, pointless, and BAD!!


That is the question you'll be asking while watching this. This monumental mess will succeed at confusing, boring, and annoying you, not in that order. The director makes you think that hey, I'm making a movie, I know that technique, see how good I am - which tells you how bad it is. In the opening minutes two scenes are spliced together - Campbell and her boyfriend on separate conversations, Campbell while walking down the street. Cinematic parallelism/contrast, anyone? The guy Campbell is walking with is her boss-to-be, who is dismissed without afterthought. What was that scene for? Dunno, who cares? Oh, something about her not wanting a mentor and sex and all that, it all ties together at the end, right? Duh.

You can close your eyes and know when they are having sex scenes - by the classical music crescendo the score rams down your throat every time. Which scenes are about as erotic as watching pubic hair grow. In one, you are watching a curtain - yes, folks, a curtain -and something behind it, supposed to evoke prurient fantasies. Instead the viewer is just wondering, why the hell am I watching this curtain? In every sex scene you'll be asking some similar question.

There are lots of conversations here, full of the following quotable quotes:

Blahblahblahblahblahblah, I got girls, blahblahblahblahblah, where is the Count, blahblahblahblahbblahblahblahblahblahblahblah blahblahblahblah. Blah.

There is only one interesting conversation here, between Campbell and the Count as he first attempts to proposition her. Too bad it's buried deep inside a labyrinth of the above-mentioned witty dialogues.

Give it a pass, unless you watch it just to have fun trashing it later. Like what I'm doing now. Keeps me from regretting a wasted part of my life.