Yes, what a great adaptation. It really captured the essence of the book; long winded tedium. Well, at least it didn't have the kid wearing flair-pants jeans like you would expect from such drivel that finds it's macramé sensibilities from that inane decade; the seventies. If it wasn't for the appearance of Jan Decleir -Who is like the only classically trained Actor the Benelux has- I actually would have risen from my seat during the screening, and cried: What am I doin' here! (I viewed the movie-screening with some friends who asked me along) This book stole precious hours of my life, and now I murder time, that I could have spent in the pub. Oh, yes. Alsemus is a wimp by the way, I mean who gets himself killed by a bunch of kids. And if my kid would deliberately loose a soccer match, I would give him high praise.

Now I'm going to watch "Lionheart" which is a far superior film about a young man confronted with the harsh realities of the crusades.

Yes,of course it is a better film, it's not dutch.


I've read the book when I was a little boy, read it again when I became an adult and read it a few times more during my adulthood. After I read it again a few weeks ago, I stumbled on the DVD. Nicely packed, comes with a DVD containing extra's and a PC game. But after watching the movie I really felt like tossing it out again as quick as I can. It starts out totally different from what's written years ago. The main characters are quite far off the ones they are in the book also, which does change the whole story significantly. I couldn't find any sensible traces of how Dolf(coming from the future) actually used his nowadays knowledge to constructively help out the children's crusade on their long path to certain doom. There are hardly any signs of Dolf struggling with the authority of the Priest Anselmus (yet another crucial thing in the original story). This filmmaker would make Thea Beckman (the original writer) turn in her grave if she would be able to watch the movie in her afterlife. Dolf is not the kind of heroic boy in the movie at all, strange new characters pop up, filling in roles which aren't supposed to be there at all and mainly twist the original into an ugly looking toilet paper story. This is by far the most awful translation from book to movie I've ever seen. Simply horrible. I just wish I'd never seen it........... For all of those who really love the book (and know it from childhood like I do) steer clear from this production even though the package might catch your attention.


Has this movie been directed? Short answer: no.

Obviously the director tried, but failed miserably. This is a movie made by consensus and the result is the product of lack of leadership.

Worse. The result is an absurd piece of non-art. This movie is so full of mistakes that it's almost (I said almost) a joy to watch. It lacks coherence, probability, it lacks a proper cast, decent movie score, there's horrible editing, plot holes, visual mistakes and everything (I mean everything) seems out of place.

One of the most blatant mistakes is the casting. The main actor has the charisma of a shoe. He's supposed to portray a 15 year old but looks ten years older and there's no character development.

The story is about a crusade of 8000 children. One question: where are they? All I see is a handful of extra's. I assure you: that's pure ridicule.

In one scene there's ships on the sea, the next they're gone. The fighting scenes have the absurdity of monty python. There's daylight scenes with night scenes edit inbetween. I could go on and on.

A fifteen year old knows how to make dynamite? Out of bird poop? 13th century children sing Queen's "We Are The Champions"? A mobile phone battery lasting weeks? Three months worth of medicine in a tube the size of a pencil? One boy baking 10,000 breads? In one night? Is there any logic?

And I haven't mentioned the biggest problem yet: the marketing. First of all what market? Dutch? German? English speaking European countries? Secondly, who was this intended for? Children (don't think so because of the 9yo age limit). Teens? Doubt it, my grandma tells cooler stories. Bored housewives and -fathers? It's so obvious the producers had no clue what they were making, so they probably aimed it at all of the above.

Poor souls.

I'm sure they tried. They had meetings. Lots of meetings. They must have discussed everything, leaving the artists empty handed, or worse, "managed".

Tell you what, they didn't manage.

They failed. Totally.


Well, my vote says it all...

I read the book as a child, well, I listened and my parents read it to me... And it was a great, moving and touching story.

But the Dutch movie-industry did the same to it as what they have done with Floris the TV series , they made an awful movie out of it.

I hate it because: -The plot was changed -important characters were cut out -every excitement was banned -they even put a 15th century armour on the one of the villains...

I loved the artwork at the end of the movie.

Please, Please, Please never F****ck up a good story again, Dutch filmmakers.....

Now they are working on making a movie of "Brief aan de Koning" (Letter to the King) - another great book about a boy who got a mission, just on the evening before he would be knighted....

I hope Pieter Verhoef will make a decent movie for a change.


Director Andy Tennant should have asked for a full rewrite on "Fools Rush In." Whoever is responsible for the story and screenplay--the producers Anna Maria Davis and Doug Draizin (whose own romance was seminal to this picture) or writers Joan Taylor and Katherine Reback--should have started at that idyll of Salma Hayek's in the Mexican backwater, because they give her character Isabel Fuentes more color and history than anything else in the movie. She is rooted in her regard for her fierce Hispanic great-grandmother and her quasi-Catholic loyalties, and it's her family that the movie should first introduce to us.

Instead they start with workaholic WASP executive Alex Whitman in New York celebrating a recent success. They should be telling us what it is about the Big Apple that he likes so much that he'd have a hard time parting with it and moving to Las Vegas to please his determined wife, but it doesn't. They make Alex do it, because he believes it's the right thing, but that leaves very little for him to do but follow Isabel's lead.

Matthew Perry seems whipped throughout, and the comedy here is on a Grade-B sitcom level. The comedy should have been dropped for a treatment that pointed to the tension between the two cultures caused by them trying to peacefully co-exist. Rather than hauling baseball bats and brandishing firearms for laughs, seeing the two families squirming to get along might have given this picture more depth, something only Anne Betancourt as Isabel's mother manages to provide.

There are times when Isabel's choices call into question her judgment, one of them being why she'd pick Alex over her ex-boyfriend Chuy, when he is being played by dark, confident Carlos Gomez. Isabel is not submissive like her mother, so it's logical that she'd pick a man whose fire doesn't conflict with hers. But can she really have much respect for Alex, when she's leading him around like a puppy dog? I think not. And by the time they reunite in the pouring rain over Hoover Dam and marry on some bluff overlooking a pale Grand Canyon, you wonder if this New Age version of happily ever-after is just another divorce waiting to happen.

A young John Bennett Perry could have filled the part of Alex amply, but at his present age, he is relegated to playing Alex's dad, and his wife is Jill Clayburgh who in the few minutes that she's on looks like she's wondering what possessed her to say yes to this movie.


Yawn. This movie is a real snoozefest. As someone who is in an interracial marriage, I was curious to see how this movie handled this issue. Had it not been for this personal reason, there is no way I could have sat through this incredibly boring movie. The only parts of the movie that really made me laugh were the few scenes with Alex Whitman (Matthew Perry's) parents. These couple of pages had some real energy to them. Too bad the rest of the movie did not.


1st watched 2/3/2002 - 3 out of 10 (Dir-Andy Tennant): Attempt at light-hearted romantic comedy which just doesn't seem to click. Perry & Hayek are ok and cute at times, but the direction and script is really flat. There are times where I can see a joke working better in my own head than the way it is played out in this film. The presence of these two mini-stars are not enough to make the film work. The filmmakers seem to have been satisfied with just letting them be there and getting it over with. I saw this coming early in the movie. What's really bad is that the best parts happen in the last 15 minutes of the movie. There is a very funny scene with Perry trying to be the husband helping Hayek thru labor during a rain storm on a bridge. When this happened what came in my mind was -- what about the first hour and a half?? Likeable stars, not very likeable movie(better luck next time??).


Dear my fellow movie lovers

I have been asked to comment on the highly over rated comedy 'Fools Rush In' the fact of the matter is that with a better script this film would be good. What i liked about this film was the fact that the ideas were original and not cliched. If any one want a good script written contact me

Jawad


I have been extremely surprised at the good reviews this movie has received at this site, given the high level of criticism that I have observed of other movies at this same site. I guess many people wouldn't even bother to say anything about this bland, unemotional,anticlimactic and pseudo sentimentalist film which would only please secretaries, school teachers, nurses, construction workers, college students studying business degrees and the so called nice people of this planet. Lack of substance, and predictable mannerisms make this film an event only greater than a fly landing on my popcorn. I will give this film 0.2 to counterbalance the other comments.


First, there are things I enjoyed about this movie. First of all, Salma Hayek. Need I say more? Then, there's the quite honest and accurate depiction of Mexican Americans and their culture.

Also, there were some very nice shots of the tourist favorite areas of the American southwest, mainly around the Grand Canyon and Taos, New Mexico. I would have liked to have seen more of the real beauty of the Southwest.

Otherwise, this has the depth of a Harlequin romance. The acting around Ms. Hayek is okay, but pretty standard TV level acting. Both main characters seem overly arbitrary in their relations with each other. The complications that separate the two seems a bit overly long making one impatient since we all know everything will end up all right. Salma's lying about her pregnancy struck me as especially lame. And the concluding scene on the Arizona/Nevada border seemed especially silly.

I'm sure there are those who will like this and get more out of it than I did.

But as for me, I just didn't think it a good movie. Sorry about that.


"Fools Rush In" is not funny, not romantic, not cute, it has a slight heart, but that's about it. Not one joke in the film worked, and even if it was a mediocre one (which is the best they had), it still was terrible because of Matthew Perry's awful timing and the overall bad acting.

Alex Whitman (Matthew Perry) is a semi-successful business man, and Isabel (Salma Hayek) is fresh out of Mexico in Las Vegas trying to make a name for herself as an artist. These two have a one night stand, and *surprise, surprise* Isabel becomes pregnant. The plot, which consists of dozens of bad jokes and clichés, has Alex and Isabel becoming a couple and how their different cultures collide. This was a comedy, but I did not laugh once. The only person to have joke lines was Matthew Perry, and he was not funny in the least. Any time the movie was trying to be romantic, it become extremely corny. The climax of the movie ended in the rain (despite that it didn't show any signs of rain the rest of the film). One bad cliché after another corny joke, with bad acting thrown in cannot make a good movie.

My rating: * out of ****. 113 mins. PG-13 for language and sexuality.


Boy {Matthew Perry} meets Girl {Salma Hayek} in a queue for the toilet in a club. Cue both people from different ethnicities ending up in bed together doing something that neither of them have done before. Cue three months later and Girl tuns up in Boys life announcing she's pregnant. Cue emotions pulled apart, a hasty marriage, family strife and many stumbling blocks getting in the way of potential true love.

Sound familiar,? not surprisingly this retread of a formula that is as old as the hills has very little originality. The script is desperately dull, the ending is exactly what the world expects and the leads have zero chemistry. That only Perry and Hayek are "names" in the film speaks volumes one feels. You get the sense that what budget there was went on getting the sexy Hayek and Perry {riding on the crest of his Friends wave} to appear. Little flashes of comedy do from time to time surface, and, yes, those who like a cheery cup of the love froth with their rom-coms will feel fuzzy come the end. But really it's a poorly constructed and executed picture, the type that unfortunately seems to come out on a yearly basis. You have been warned, stick with a Cary Grant movie instead. 3/10


Oh this was almost a great flick. Firmly placed in the sexploitation Eurotrash genre, it just needed to push the envelope a little bit more. Sadly it is therefore only a 4/10 job.

So blood and guts were only quite good, when they had every ability to be better. Naschy is on form as the villain, but is just a bit wooden. The women are beautiful, but do not take enough of their clothes off to make the film truly sensual etc. We really need a touch of Jean Rollin on this one.

The DVD transfer I saw on Sinema Diable is a woeful effort direct from video. No extras. A bargain basement job that gives the film no chance to redeem itself. In summary, an also ran....


This is a very low budget Spanish version of Dracula that is chock full of breasts--sort of like a nudie version of a horror film. Plus, while I didn't think it looked very realistic, there was tons of fake blood as well. This surprised me, as it was marketed as a horror film presented by Elvira--and usually these are more family-friendly films. So beware when you get this--this is a soft-core horror film with more groaning and moaning than I thought was possible! Oh, and speaking of Elvira, I should point out that if you do get this version, you also get Elvira interrupting the film periodically to make comments. Fortunately, on the DVD you can chose not to see these--this is strongly recommended as they interrupt the flow of the film and really add nothing to the experience.

As for the quality of the film overall, this isn't a particularly bad film for the first half and it does have an interesting plot twist (Dracula finding love). However, oddly, after he and his lady love profess their love, the film continues for some time and seems to drag. However, to make things worse, the original style of the narrative vanishes. No longer do people talk or act, but there is an annoying voice-over during the last half of the film--as if they ran out of money for translating the dialog! Plus, instead of story, the film is full of rather disjointed sadism and blood-letting. In hindsight, it probably would have been best to end the film shortly after he finds love, as up until then it was a rather decent (if "boobified") film.

My final verdict is that this film is too hard-core for most people and the story itself is too convoluted and poor to merit it as a "must see" for people wanting a porno horror film--as a result, it probably won't appeal to many out there.


I take a vested interest in what we feed our children's minds. They deserve to be challenged to think. They need abstraction. Levels of thought. Something to exercise their brains and help cultivate their own senses of creativity. That said, Dreamworks should be ashamed of marketing this dreck to children.

The whole world knows by now that if one has the 80 million dollars worth of backing, he can produce any half-presentable CGI animated feature, aim it at children and produce a profit of at least 5 times the investment, apparently even if the film is laced with primarily adult content, as displayed in this film. (How many 8-year-olds had a clue what the 'American Beauty' sequence was all about?)

The Dreamworks formula is a simple, 2-faceted approach. First (and foremost), adults first. More energy is spent in attempt to entertain the 30-something demographic than any other. That way, parents are more willing to accompany the kids into the theater, doubling ticket sales. After all, the ultimate choice whether anyone will see the film lies with the parents. That's why these things are packed with campy disco hits and references to old films and TV shows, none of which the kids have a clue about.

Second, inject just enough vacuous slapstick and physical comedy to appease the kids. It only takes a few laughs to make a child expect the DVD upon release.

Oh, and if you have time, slap in any old excuse for a moral, in this case the thin statement about not giving up on friends.

That's all there is to this, folks. Another Shrek, just a lazier version. Downright insulting to a child.

Look no further than this observation: There is a scene in which the film's main characters gaze at the heavens, aghast of the universe's limitless possibilities. Oddly, this very film seems oblivious to that notion.

Dreamworks can't escape from their zoo.


We had bought the DVD for this disaster of a film for our son on Christmas and we finally got around to watching it. We planned a whole family fun night around this movie thinking it would be the perfect ending to a nice dinner out. Holy cow, were we wrong!!! This has got to be the WORST animated movie to come out in the past 10 years. There was an absolutely horrible script driving the lousy computer generated animation (by the way, computer animated films are becoming very very bad lately) along with the horrible voice over work by these talentless actors. It's funny how whenever there is an animated movie in the works, the studios always seem to find one or two actors who are hot at the time: Ben Stiller and Chris Rock, and one or two actors who are basically begging for work: David Schwimmer and Jada Pinkett. Dreamworks needs to stop delving into the animated world for a while and give the movie going public something to look forward to that is actually worth their time.


Well, it certainly is not the best CGI film I have ever seen. In fact, it is not even in the top 10, and that is just getting started. I am not trying to be mean, but this was not a good film. And no, its not just because they paired Chris Rock with Ben Stiller.

Seriously, Stiller and Rock? Well I guess I can see how they would be locked away in a prison cell and have to fight with each other over pieces of bacon and raw fish, but not on an animated movie. Even though the thought of Ben Stiller trying to eat Chris Rock in real life brings me some small chuckles.

Anyway, the CGI isn't well done. Not only that, but the characters aren't well developed. I still don't know how this pair landed in the zoo. Then again...

Overall, not a good CGI film. "D+"


Boy, did I get suckered into watching this disappointing DVD. I should have remembered that when you see a ton of complimentary comments by critics all over the DVD cover, you can be almost guaranteed the film is a stinker. "A feast for senses" - New York Daily News, was the one that got me. Being someone who is in love with cinematography and has a decent surround system to enjoy good audio, this documentary intrigued me. "Filled with gorgeous music." - The Chicago Tribune.

People - do not pay attention to these morons. Yes, there is some nice visuals in here but none of the music is beautiful unless you a huge fan of percussion (drums, mainly.) Yet, rarely do you think of someone beating on a snare drum as "gorgeous music."

This is a story of a Scottish woman, Evelyn Glennie, who is almost deaf but has a tremendous appreciation for sounds, almost any kind of sound. She also is an outstanding percussionist. Since she has a major hearing problem, she has learned to "hear" through vibrations and hears more, as they would say, than we unimpaired people. Evelyn is definitely talented and unique. I wasn't impressed with the DVD but I was with her, and who wouldn't be?? She's an extraordinary human being. She loves to converse on the subject. Sometimes she's interesting, other times she goes on too long on a subject.

The same applies to most of the "chapters" on this DVD. Some are good but most get tedious after the first half dozen. It's simply too repetitive and boring. If you doubt this, ask yourself: would I watch someone pounding a stick on some object for several minutes? That's what you have in many, many scenes here. Oh, the instruments and the sounds are all different, but it is anything but a "thrilling audio and visual experience." To sit through this for 100 minutes - now THAT is a challenge!


Couldn't really tell what this was about for most of the movie. Was it a B horror flick or a closeted young girl's sexual awakening?

I guess it tried to be a bit of both.

Firstly, the acting all around was pretty awful, maybe with the exception of the mother. For someone who's never seen the outside world or (presumably) been to school, Rauchine was pretty well spoken. This comes down to either bad casting or bad acting. And the young British actor playing the male lead, well I have a theory that producers think Americans can't detect really bad acting if the actor has an English accent. Too bad it sticks out like a sore thumb to the rest of the world. The scrawny weakling trying to play tough was pretty funny, and then the cry-baby "please I don't deserve thiiiss" sequences had me in stitches. And it was pretty obvious to everyone that this "harmless" and "nice" Englishman was only out to get into the young girls pants from the start.

Now we come to the plot. I give the film some credit in that it managed to explain things somewhat towards the end, but it was pretty confusing leading up to that. The grandmother was supposed to be a ghost, and since the mother was the only one who could see her that seemed semi-obvious, except that she was opening doors, closets and chests and constantly grabbing the mother. Ghosts can't, er, do that stuff. And one scene which was hilarious was the young man trying to explain how he's a counseller to stop people doing things that are bad for them, and what addiction was, all while ostentatiously smoking a cigarette. He didn't smoke one in the entire rest of the film.

Pure class.

We got some nice gore at the end but it wasn't really very thrilling or satisfying after the boring, mostly pointless lead in. And putting a graphic throat slashing during a sex scene is a pretty good way to gross people out. Also of note were the sweeping helicopter shots of the forest stuck in randomly at the end, making us think there was some kind of ghost or presence after them. There wasn't, so they made no sense and seem to have been put in there as an afterthought in the hopes they'd make the film look more "artsy".

Nice try.

Cheap, tacky and pointless movie - but I suppose they have their place. It seems this killed Margaret Langrick's career as it was the last film she made.

4/10


How do I love this movie? Let me count the ways. OK. I'm done counting. I can count the ways I love this movie on fewer than the fingers of one hand. In fact, I wouldn't even need one finger. Not unless I was using my middle finger.

This is the type of movie where you root for the young lover-wannabes to NOT get together at the end. This is the type of movie where you root for the entire cast of characters to die in the end. And speaking of root, this is the type of movie that gives undergoing a root canal a good name. That's what I wish I'd been doing instead of watching this movie---undergoing a root canal.

One really has to wonder how this film got by the Canadian Board of Tourism. Not to mention the Province of Nova Scotia's Chamber of Commerce. That's where it takes place. ("Come visit beautiful Nova Scotia. You, too, can act like an idiot!") The plot? Why bother? When every character in a movie can't get a clue, ESPECIALLY the two young lovers, then any alleged plot becomes meaningless. The best ending for this movie would have been for all of its characters, in one mass group-in, to have thrown themselves into the Atlantic Ocean from atop the rocky Nova Scotian cliffs. And to have taken the director (Curtis Radclyffe) with them! That, finally, would have been the first thing about this movie to make any sense.

"Sweet Angel Mine." Never judge a movie by its title. I did. And because I did, I wasted nearly two hours of my lifetime. That's two lost hours that can never be reclaimed. A root canal, at least, when it's all over, turns out to have been worthwhile time well spent.


After boring 90 minutes, I felt my times was completely wasted. If you like Kieslowsy, look somewhere else. To some people, it is artistic to portrait poor lives. It is sometimes true (Monster, Rossetta) and most time false. Edi is perfect example of how silly "art house" movies can be. A basic requirement for a basic movie is internal logic. It was obvious that the princess was protecting someone and having Edi as the easy cover up and the brothers did not suspect that. It was so ridiculous to have someone cut his balls off without fighting back even this is the kind of character the movie makers are trying to give to Edi. Don't even mention the Christmas crap, what a cheap cliché. I agree with Godard, a bad Hollywood action movie is much tolerable than a bad European art movie.


The story of Terry fox has to be one of few Canadian stories worthy of cinema. In this second attempt at capturing not only one of Canada's greatest stories, but one of the world's greatest stories on film, CTV rushed out a made for TV abomination. Fresh on the heels of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's "Greatest Canadian" program which reminded Canadians of Terry's remarkable story, "Terry" offers nothing more than an amateur re-staging of documented events. Although lacking the necessary maturity, Ashmore's detailed and strong performance is not enough to save a script that offers nothing more to the televised events every Canadian knows. What was he like as a physically-abled youth? What was it like for him to discover he had cancer? What was that like for his family? What was it like to experience amputation? What drove him past potential depression through to being the most inspirational Canadian...ever? I don't know. I wish I did. Instead I learned that computers have the ability to make an actor with two legs look like he only has one. Good for you computers. Good for you.


A real artifact of the earliest talkies and musicals, which includes the first two-strip Technicolor (the last half of the movie). The romance between a New Orleans cabaret singer (Bebe Daniels) and the scion of a plantation (Everett Marshall) is your basic boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl-due-to-misunderstanding-her-selfless-action, boy-gets-girl-back story......all this interspersed with singing, dancing, vaudeville routines (Wheeler & Woolsey), circus acts, chorus girls, contortionists, evil machinations of an oily villain, a near duel, and superb tap-dancing (Bill Robinson)!

The dialog and acting are painfully weak and the storyline lurches roughly from scene to scene - often with little sense or continuity. The 75-year-old film is sharply dated by several instances of slaves in the background singin' and workin' happily for their beloved master and being called "boy" instead of by name. The impending Civil War is totally ignored.

Still, I recommend "Dixiana" as valuable viewing for its historical Technicolor sequence as well as its illustration of the then-prevailing movie fiction of happy slaves working for benign masters in the sweet and gentle South.


While I am NOT a bleeding heart, I do find it very odd that very few of the reviews even bother to mention the racist elements in the film. While I would NOT say that you shouldn't watch it (I am a huge believer in Free Speech...period), I think the problematic view of slavery at least deserves a mention!! After all, as the film begins, you see a plantation owner and his son talking about how happy their slaves are--as the human chattel do their "fun" chores and sing. While this might ruffle a few feathers, this is akin to showing a song and dance number at a Soviet gulag! This just reinforced the horrible stereotype of the 1930s that slavery "wasn't THAT bad"! Seemingly child-like slaves who are happy and carefree is just a gross stereotype.

The plot involves a circus performer, Dixiana, who has fallen for rich Carl Van Horn--the family who owns the plantation at the beginning of the film. Carl's father is a nice but hen-pecked guy. His mother is a society-conscious old battle-ax--and when she learns of the marriage between her well-connected son and a common circus performer, she blows a gasket and demands the wedding be stopped. Carl is apparently a wiener and caves to his battle-ax mother's whim. All this comes out as Wheeler & Woolsey (who look after Dixiana) have been invited to stay with the Van Horns. As for the duo's behavior during this time at the Van Horns, they mostly kick people in the butt (I am not exaggerating in the least).

As for the film, it's a mixed bag. For a 1930 film, the sound is excellent. Many early sound films suffer from varying sound or sound that is simply too soft, as they had still to work out all the ins and outs of the new medium. Unfortunately, the problem is that because of this you can actually hear what's going on!! That's because the two leads warble operatic style songs that make Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy seem like pop singers! In 1930, the public liked this sort of old fashion drivel--now it is a definite chore to get past these god-awful songs. In addition to these two leads, Bert Wheeler and Dorothy Lee also sing a bit--as does Robert Woolsey near the end of the film. The Wheeler/Lee songs are more cute and enjoyable than the rest, though it should also be noted that Ms. Lee sings almost exactly like Betty Boop!! Be ready to hit the fast-forward button when any song occurs! Be forewarned, there are a lot of songs and they are hard on the ears!

Newly teamed comics, Wheeler & Woolsey are on hand for comic relief. Like Abbott and Costello, the studio first used them in this role and only later gave them their own starring films. Their sort of humor is what you might expect--Burlesque style skits and not particularly inspired ones. The team is okay here, but have been better and are not enough to salvage the film. I never thought I'd find myself saying that I wanted MORE Wheeler & Woolsey! The overall film is wretched--far worse than any other Wheeler & Woolsey film I have seen (I've seen about 12-15). While many of their early films have singing, none feature as much or at annoying music. This combined with the whole slavery issue make this a tough film to enjoy.


I am amazed that there are people in the film community who show any respect for this dated, awkward, racist film by giving it a "7" as a majority of the IMDb viewers have. The bonus that attracted me was the color version of Bill Robinson ("Bojangles") tap dancing in a carnaval scene. After suffering through the histrionic throes of unrequited love by the heroine, the wooden performance of the lead (a Metropolitan Opera reject), and the dull and obvious comic chatter of the comic duo, finally comes the big scene. Three minutes. Some steps, some synchronization and... what happened? This film is best relegated to the "classics" trash heap for occasional viewing by students of cinema history thankfully long dead.


This film plays like community theatre on over-lit digital video. Don't you hate it when a worthy topic is wasted on a bad film? Overacting, a trite script, distracting voice-over, two dimensional characters and editing out of Film 101. It was a struggle to watch through to the end.

If you still want to rent this you can watch the documentary on the DVD where you will meet the director Rosa van Praunheim who will tell you how famous, wise, and intellectually and sexually experienced he is. And he's serious.

That said it is an important true story of the first sexologist who fought for the rights of what is now called the queer community.


This is the worst movie I've seen this year so far. The story is about doctor Hirschfeld that struggled at the end of the 19th century for homo-sexuality and trans-sexuality. So far so good. The theme is allright, and the brave man deserves a good biography. Nevertheless, the way this biopic was made, was like the copywriter litterally copied some lines from the encyclopedia. The acting was done by a bunch of amateur playwright actors: you could see them thinking: there is an audience watching at me. And to top things, there was not a single scene that was either witty or exciting. Oh, well, just don't waste your time on this kitsch movie, especially if you are interested in the life in Hirschfeld.


I have and will be a fan of bad movies. A bad movie can have a kitchness, grace, and humour all its own. Producers, and actors do things in bad movies they wouldn't do elsewhere. Plots go places normal movies fear to tread. It all makes for a good time.

This is not one of those bad movies.

This is a real honest to goodness, Pol Pot kind of bad movie. I say this primarily because this is not a movie that tried to do well on a tight budget or to some odd notion of what constituted entertainment. It is simply a sloppy piece of makework. Every single area of expertise in film-making is neglected.

The script takes derivative segments from a host of good movies and inexplicably fails to deliver anything that made them good in the first place. Nor are these derivations satirical or funny. The acting is so bad that even the killer robot is unconvincing - something I found suprising since the other actors were so robotically wooden. The props department spent their entire budget on a single handgun and a paper-mache foetus in a jar, something evident through the film by the gun's inexplicably reappearance. The sound fades in and out, which probably the fault of the amateur sound team who let the overhead boom into shot twice.

All in all, the primary emotion I felt while watching the supposedly gripping trials and tribulations of the heroic duo was a restless queasiness, and the urge to bolt from my chair and run shrieking into the night. On only two occasions did humour struggle into the film, the first as a consequence of the robot's infrared vision which is perfectly normal vision where certain objects have been painted bright red. The second is when the prop gun spends an entire scene floating in water next to the actors.

Without a shadow of a doubt this is the worst movie I have ever seen. Do not trust anyone who tells you to watch this movie, they are attempting to do you a psychic injury.


I would consider it a crime not to warn potential viewers that this is the worst of an extensive range of sci fi movies that I have ever seen.

Bad, doesn't even come close.

I do not think there is a single aspect of film-making that is not violated by this movie. Poor plot, corny lines, appalling music, and acting are backed up by technical handling that leaves home movies looking good. Of particular note are the special effects. Marvel at the simulations of infra-red and the dazzling array of weaponry that has been designed for the film.

I think that lastly, the cyborg deserves a special mention, for making me appreciate Schwarznegger's performance in Terminator 1. You would have thought bad acting was pretty close to a robot, but in this case it is more like the Village People.


Indeed, this is probably the worst movie I have ever seen- which is exactly why it kept my attention. I first saw it on a tour bus while studying in Ghana, West Africa. The driver showed it because, I think, he thought we all knew and loved it. It's intriguing, which pieces of our culture are picked up abroad. This movie, in particular, is over the top awful. It hits just about every cheesy gimmick that a low budget sci-fi-action-thriller can, and then more.

Every time you think it can't get any worse, it does so- emphatically. With gusto and over-dramatic affectation, this movie has won its way into my heart as the most entertainingly worthless bit of film imaginable. I would recommend it for the sheer entertainment value. It's probably even better drunk. Seriously- watch this movie.


Well, this movie may not be just another piece of crap like most of this type are, but I do not see any point to praise about it either. Same old premise -- destructed wasteland, no sign of sane life, deadly cyborgs reigning, some unlucky human beings... it works on a very cheap & boring formula. It reminds me of Van Damme's Cyborg, but somehow I feel this one better. Just because it has a better story. But please do not expect a breathtaking, mind dazzling sci-fi plot. I was just comparing.

The leadman, Joe Lara, is lucky that he turned out to be a cyborg in the end. Otherwise he himself should question his acting capability. Nicole Hansen added some human touch in this robot-robot game. At least she is the only human among the lead cast. And I'm still in dark why the director chose an old-man figure as the killing cyborg. 3/10.


Well well well, if it isn't the movie with the most laughable name ever? The name "American Cyborg Steel Warrior" makes you think of an non-serious hardcore action science fiction comedy, with cliché after cliché after cliché after another cliché. It isn't. The baddest thing about this movie is that it tries to be serious. HA! A movie cant be serious if it have that name this one has.

This movie is full of clichés from movies like Mad Max, Terminator, Cyborg and Universal Soldier. And that, if anything, makes this movie laughable. If it have clichés from b-movies starring Jean Claude Van Damme... I mean, those movies ARE clichés, and if you then have clichés from them clichés... well, you understand.

If the budget would've been bigger (or at least better used), the clichés fewer and the name another, then this movie could've been OK. Since that's not the case, it isn't.


Awful Terminator/Blade Runner rip-off. In fact, with a little bit of irony, the flick is highly enjoyable : the wooden acting, the hole-crippled screenplay and, yes, some nice and totally gratuitous boob shots.

In a post-apocalyptic future,a man and a woman struggle for survival against a not-so-efficient cyborg with an obvious hip malfunction and some nice mutants.

A nice trend to watch : the hero never thinks of a good weapon to fight the cyborg (makes you wait for the teapot or the shoelace), however, the villain can strike from good distance using a hub cap like a deadly Frisbee. Alas, I'm not making this up.

Once again, a moronic and boring movie, but could become with some wicked humor a moronic and funny movie.


This may very well be the worst movie I've ever seen. Watching this was comparable to running my male generative organs through a meat grinder. Low budget early 90s grungy sci-fi with a limp plot and horrible acting. The only reason I sat through the whole thing is because I was hypnotized by how much it sucked. This movie may in fact give "Plan 9 from Outer Space" a run for the title of "worst movie EVER!"


I can't believe I actually bought this movie! Someone said B-movies are good if you watch them with an open mind, but I'd have to axe mine to go through another ordeal like this one. Aaargh! Too bad IMDb doesn't believe in giving zero stars... Well, there's this lady in a futuristic time, who can save mankind as we know it, and there's this man who is constantly trying to save her from the robots that want to kill... kill... kill. But everybody remotely associated with this movie seemed to be acting robotic - the villain, the hero, the cameraman, the director (hell, I could even see the guy in a couple of frames!) That's it. I have lost it for B-movies because of American Cyborg Steel Whateva!


This film is unmitigated excrement! If you like watching a 94 minute brawl through a scrapyard then watch it. Otherwise avoid. I have to write at least ten lines to get this comment on the board. I don't think I can come up with that many ways to say total rubbish, but here goes. 1. Why is it that after the nuclear holocaust, every city in America turns into a car breaker's yard! I've seen so many films where this has happened. Come on, Post Nuclear Americans, have you no civic pride? 2. The guardian of humanity's future, a woman who holds the only viable fetus on Earth in a little glass bottle, is called Mary. Now that's subtlety for you. 3. The sleazy, wheeler-dealer trader in the basement is an Arab. Now there's a surprise! Actually, the more I think about this film, the poorer I realize it was. I'd better stop now.


I have to tell you, I was prejudiced against this movie from the very beginning. The thought of Joe Lara playing a character who was not Tarzan was kind of disturbing at first. But eventually, I realized that this was not just an ordinary movie. This is a movie where people walk (sometimes run). People walk (see above paranthetical reference about running) and OTHER people chase them as they walk. Without revealing TOO much of the plot, there is a fetus that Joe Lara has to protect for some reason. And protect he does. Meanwhile Joe Lara and the girl who plays Mary (in a VERY subtle reference) walk around a nightmarish vision of the future. It was...KIND OF ugly. Anyways, I voted with my conscience and gave this movie a 1 out of 10.


The plot twist in this movie is almost as well executed as the one in the Crying Game. The characters are gradually developed through intricate dialogue, leading up to the moment of truth for our protagonist. I especially like the way the director juxtaposes the innate goodness of the main character with the cold and inherently evil society in which he lives. This is given new meaning at the critical plot point which I described above. The Gibson-esque qualities of the setting are absolutely chilling. Anyone who claims to be a sci-fi fan must see this movie.


I watched this movie on VCD in the home of a local couple on a very remote island in Indonesia. No idea how they got a hold of it, but it's pretty typical of the type and quality of movies popular in Indonesia. We watched an original English version with Chinese subtitles. This couple spoke about twenty words of English between them, and I'm certain they don't read Chinese, so the dialog must have been lost on them, but maybe it's better that way. They laughed all the way through it, and so did I! I remember the exact title being "Steel American Cyborg Warrior." I do like the sound of it much better in Spanish though, as seen in the graphic. Guerrero de Acero has such a ring to it.


Man this movie is a pearl... of trash! Already the sub-title says it all: "The Terminator meets the last Mohican"... YEAH!!! Awful dialogues, awful settings, awful actors. This movie picks up all the bad sides from "Terminator" and from Carpenter's "1997", and the hero's Last-Mohican face fits like a punch in your stomach. I liked especially the cyborg looking like a man in his fifties, with mustaches and "evil" look in his eyes... this movie is a MUST for all trash lovers!


This could be interesting, historical film if made properly, but it definitely isn't. Oldest polish legend is base of original novel. But you see not much of it in this movie and it's not so easy to understand even for polish who know original. Sadly weakest side is actors' play. This is typical curse of every high-budget (as for polish movies - 10-15 mln.$). Best actors don't try to be professional but they think that this is just prize for being best-known people in polish entertainment, so no need to put any effort if you paid part of cast already. Overall - weak, boring and acted poorly. It looks like C-class US production. 2/10. If you want some interesting polish production look for lower budget, but much better made movies.


Hollywood at its worst. No story, no script, wooden (Glenn Ford, Inger Stevens, and George Hamilton) or over- (Max Baer as Jethro on angel-dust) acting, even the "comic" relief is embarrassing. This leaves you with only violence and photography. Zion National Park looks good. Flick looks bad.


My wife and I couldn't even finish the film. Truly, it was rather painful.

First, the historical accuracy is compromised not so much by the events themselves as the ridiculous one-dimensionality of the characters. For instance, Augustus takes the "burden" of power only with great reluctance. Indeed, he is portrayed as if he's some sort of great humanist and believer in democracy.

Second, the camp! My lord, the dialog is horrifically bad. I recall the soap opera my mother watched when I was a child having better dialog than this. The constant exposition and pontificating grates upon the ears like fingernails on chalkboard. Ugh. (Okay, I exaggerate a bit, but the dialog truly is bad.) The HBO series Rome is superior for no other reason than that its characters were at least believable, regardless of their historicity.

Rome was also wise enough to know they couldn't stage epic battle scenes. The creators of this film did not. When Caesar attacks Munda, the battle scene is practically farcical.

I will grant that the costumes are perfectly good. The sets are fine, though their CGI backdrops can be a bit jarring at times. The sound is bad, thoughboth in terms of the music, the foley work, and the dubbing of so many of the side characters.

Anyway, it's completely not worth renting. As a history major, I was hoping for an alternative approach to Augustus than HBO's Rome, which, I feel, failed to capture his overall "feel" quite as well as they did Caesar or Antony. Instead, I should have just stuck to my reading.


This is a voice of a person, who just finished watching the second season of Rome, almost at one go, and grabbed the opportunity to see "what happened next" - this film conveniently takes off where Rome ends. If you find Rome an abomination, a foul mouthed screw-fest of little historical accuracy, then you might enjoy Imperium: Augustus. But, if you feel Rome is a good thing, if you enjoy the complicated intrigue, the ambiance of decadence and the work of the actors, then Imperium will obviously appear to you as an overly timid, superfluous and tedious soap opera with not many redeeming factors.

There are some actors who for my taste look somewhat better than these in Rome. I especially disliked Rome's image of Cleopatra as a drug-soaked sex addict. There must have been a great deal of strength and dignity in that woman, and the actress in Imperium suits the part much better. O'Toole and Rampling are good, and so are some others. But then... If you have come to know - and love - Atia as the super cool bitch, you'll find the depiction of her in Imperium - as a tear-jerking mother goose in an apron - absolutely ridiculous. There are supposed to be some bitchy characters in Imperium, but these actresses rely heavily upon staring at the men and nothing much more. You'll find no interesting female characters in this epic. There's also the painfully comic Maecenas, whom we see as a screeching drag queen, even though there is little historical evidence that he was such (he's once referred to as "being effeminate in his pleasures" in the annals).

The interiors are rather meager and rely on clichés upon clichés. Cleopatra's big hall looks like something out of a computer game or a children's play room in an Egyptian theme park. There's a looooooooot of really poor 3D graphics, not up to 2003 standards.

The action is presented as a series of flashbacks the aged Augustus is reliving. So we get a quick look at some historical events, some of which are presented well, whereas some are not. An disproportional amount of time is wasted to show Livia as the "eternal flame" of Augustus. This affair doesn't sizzle for even a moment, the dialog is superlame and everything is seasoned with tacky tear-inducing musical score. Whatever amount of reality the show aims to capture, every last shred of it is destroyed by the dry synchronized dubbing (most of the actors are non English speakers).

Everything is lukewarm in this epic. True, there are more historical accuracies than in Rome, but dramatically speaking, it's plain boring. The characters lack depth and the dialog sharpness. Camera-work is often reduced to static shots, and lighting offers nothing to please your eye.

There's really no-one to love and no-one to hate in Imperium. Regardless of whether you liked or disliked Rome, there are much better films and miniseries around. Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire would be one thing I recommend.


In terms of historical accuracy, this is the absolute worst Roman film I have ever seen. The list not only of errors but of plot ideas that are flat impossible would run longer than the three-hour film, but just to give you an idea...

Julius Caesar and Augustus are presented as liberal Democrats, taking the side of "the people" against "the nobles." This is patently absurd. The Caesars were as noble as you could get. Their interest was in consolidating power and stabilizing a country that had been wrecked by 150 years of civil war. There had been reformers, notably the Gracchi brothers, who lived about 100 years earlier, and to some extent advocated for the rights of ordinary citizens.

There are several scenes that are utterly ridiculous, if you know anything about the period. "Cleopatra", with Richard Burton, will give you a much better idea of how events unfolded, fanciful though it is.

Historical accuracy is one thing. Acting and dialogue are something else, and here this film veers perilously close to being a bad junior high school production. I burst out laughing several times, especially when Julia, the daughter of Augustus, meets a lover. They clutch passionately, as she breathes: "My father..." "Ah, your father, your father.... your father would disapprove." Peter O'Toole is at his worst, forced to gnaw his way through some very pompous and silly lines. The actor who plays Augustus as a young man is such a nebbish --- and the character is written as such --- it's impossible to envision him as the cunning, crafty, Machiavellian politician who created the Roman Empire. Here, he's just a whiner who has to be told what to do most of the time.

Charlotte Rampling does manage to emerge from an underwritten role as Livia, Augustus's wife, with dignity. Had she been given a fuller role to play, she might have rescued this production from absurdity.

There is some nice photography and battle footage, helped by plenty of standard issue CGI. Oddly, this was made for British TV (and appears to be a British-Italian co-production) but is labeled with an "R" rating.

The DVD picture is excellent and the Dolby Digital soundtrack is very nice, although you only notice it during the few action sequences, as the movie is mostly talk.

Almost any Roman movie, even "Cleopatra" or "The Fall of the Roman Empire", has more historicity --- to say nothing of compelling drama --- than this bizarre Classics Illustrated, Jr. adaptation. This one gives new meaning to the much-abused phrase, "Based on a true story." In this case they could have said, "Suggested by real events."


For several reasons, this movie is simply awful. Other posters have listed some of this movie's historical errors. Well, I have a layman's knowledge of Roman history and even I found the inaccuracies flagrant. I usually forgive errors in historical movies because I understand that the purpose is to entertain not educate. And shrinking a long saga down to a two hour feature requires some, let's say, historical license. But this movie goes well beyond mere rounding.

There's worse. To tell a story from a distant period, the movie uses flashbacks which just make the story more confusing. Unless viewers have some prior knowledge of the period, they will quickly be lost. In addition, the movie was obviously filmed simultaneously in Italian and English with various actors being dubbed later. At times, the actors seem as if they were in completely different movies which were then edited together. In fact, this is not far wrong. The actors were obviously pasted onto a cheesy computer generated ancient Rome.

The only reason I give this boring mess any stars is because I always find Peter O'Toole entertaining. But that is no reason to rent it. If you are curious about Roman history, there are much better movies available.


What a stupid waste of money! 30,000 square feet of rebuilt ancient Rome, 2 millions cubic meters of 50 feet tall buildings, 10,000 costumes, 2 years of works, an International Ancient History Committee (sic!), some first class actors and actresses . The final result? An empty TV-movie for a single-digit IQ attendance.


What can I say about this? Such a big Prestige-Production - but in the End? Wasted Time, wasted Money.

This work a disaster is historically seen. Only some examples:

* Augustus often is named 'Gaius' - his First name (Pronomen). But the old Romans don't used this Name. Correct would be the Surname (Nomen Gentile and Cognomen) or the 'Octavian', 'Caesar', 'Augustus'.

* Livia was shown as tyrannic Wife. But this historically wrong.

* Iulia was shown as nice young woman - but she wasn't one. Adultery and (maybe?) Prostitution and arrogant behavior was the cause of her banishing.

* She wasn't at the dying bed of her Father. She never was allowed to leave her banishing. And she was at this time around 50 years old! Not as young as she was shown. In the same Year Augustus died she committed suicide, because Tiberius stopped giving her a Pension.

* Augustus was much more scruplesless then in this Movie shown. But Author and Director seems to believe Augustus' own 'Res Gestae'.

What remains? Historically extremely doubtful, bad acting, bad built and equipment - 2 Points out of 10 - one for Peter O'Toole.


I recently had the immense pleasure of meeting Ernest Borgnine at New Jersey's Chiller Con, and he looked and sounded great at 91 years young. This inspired my friend and I to watch some Borgnine films, and he suggested this rather obscure yet terrible piece of garbage (though he meant well, and I certainly didn't mind giving it a shot). It's an unfunny "comedy" where Bette Davis shacks up in a trailer with former crook Borgnine and they decide to dress up as hippies in order to rob banks. And I don't mean just once, but several times, in the same idiotic costumes. And these banks never seem to grow wise.

It's boring and uneven, and the ever-vain Jack Cassidy is a pain as a stuffy lieutenant trying to crack the case. I don't claim to have seen all of Bette Davis' greatest film at this point, but I've seen enough of her finest work to be comfortable in declaring that BUNNY O'HARE has got to be in the running as her worst film.


That, of course, is a reference to the first of two films which they did, where Bette spoke with an accent that Meryl Streep would never envy. This second film together, made 15 years after the more well remembered drama, is an obscure action comedy which didn't get enough attention to even rank a nice ad in the New York Times. (Investigating this film, I was stunned to find an ad the size of my thumb nail in microfilmed copies at my local library). Based upon the fact that the two of them were both Oscar Winners and that co-star Jack Cassidy was a popular Broadway performer, this obviously was way even below "B" grade to warrant such lack of publicity. Reviews, of course, were no better. Bette is seen as the opening credits closed pleading with the bank not to forclose on her home. Of course, she can't get a word in edgewise when she contacts her daughter (Reva Rose, who had just come off of playing Lucy in Off-Broadway's "Your a Good Man Charlie Brown") since the phone man disconnects her. When she calls back a second time, the cat is eating her son-in-law's breakfast with the guy sitting right there paying no attention, and the daughter has to rush off. Then, as she is finally getting around to telling her daughter what is going on, a tractor plows the house down. Ernest Borgnine, as the plummer taking out the toilet, offers her a ride to wherever she needs to go, and before he knows it, she has basically become his guest. He tries to get rid of her, but every time he makes an attempt, she some how manages to get back in his trailer. Thanks to a bumpy ride in the back of the trailer, she learns of his past as a bank robber wanted for escaping from prison, and subtly blackmails him into training her on the art of robbing banks. In a rather funny sequence, we see Bette going through all sorts of indignities (running in unglamorous sweats; climbing on monkey bars; and not at all looking like the actress who played all those feisty Warner Brothers heroines in the 30's and 40's.) Even Margo Channing would have never allowed herself to be profiled this way! Noticing a group of hippies protesting the Bank of New Mexico, Davis and Borgnine use their looks to disguise themselves. Nobody seems to notice the lines around Davis's mouth which make it appear she is older, so the local police are on the look-out for young hippies. A funny note about Reva Rose's looks as Bette's daughter; She was a strange choice considering that Ms. Rose is obviously Jewish, and Ms. Davis was obviously not. It's one of those howlingly funny details not considered that make "Bunny O'Hare" comically bad. While John Astin as her son is much more believable (Gomez Addams as Bette's son---how appropriate!), his one-dimentional portrayal seems taken from Dick Shawn's portrayal of Ethel Merman's stupid son in "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World". A string of scantilly clad women are on and off as the latest woman in his life, making Astin a cad the writers obviously used to make the point of how children use and depend on their parents too much, no matter what they are going through themselves. Then, there is Jack Cassidy's oh-so-stupid police commisioner. His opening scene giving a speech to his underlings is oh-so-badly written; Cassidy obviously was by this time becoming a caricturature of his off-screen persona, much like John Barrymore many years before. And when he openly sexually harasses the seemingly willing Joan Delaney (as the younger new female cop assigned to help him capture Davis and Borgnine), he just takes the character into dimensions that would have today's film audiences up in arms. Delaney is supposed to be smarter than Cassidy, but her willingness to be used in this way is destructive to her character. And the finale where all four come together is made unbelievable by what occurs. The cops are presented as buffoons, and Davis, using the money she steals to help her worthless children, isn't too bright, either. The very last scene does have a payoff in that aspect, one of the only good developements which happens towards the end.

In the early 1970's, veteran stars (Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Kate Hepburn, Olivia DeHavilland, Joan Bennett, and Bette) were all working; Hepburn and Stanwyck pretty much remained unscathed, while Bennett's "Dark Shadows" was still a hit no matter what the critics thought. DeHavilland sensibly took on smaller parts, but Crawford and Davis simply took any leading script they could get their hands on. If there were awards for "Most embarrasing role for a veteran star", Joan Crawford would have won for 1970's "Trog", and Bette would have won for 1971's "Bunny O'Hare". Watch for a chance to laugh at the buffonery which takes 91 minutes to unravel. It's evidence that the old system of Hollywood wasn't too bad, and what was to follow this era of film trash could only get better.


Perhaps the worst Bette Davis movie ever. So cheaply shot it looks like a college production. Davis acts with the high-pitched little girl voice that she patented in the final reels of "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" and, boy, is it annoying. Worse, Jack Cassidy is woefully unfunny as a conservative cop who sexually harasses and finally seduces his beautiful young assistant. Davis keeps those famed eyes covered with dark glasses for about 90 percent of the time. Skip this one: no entertainment or camp value.


As a lifelong Bette Davis fan, I have been curious to see this for a long time. In the book 'Mother Goddam', the author states that in response to Borgnine's question 'What about your family'?, Bette says 'f--k them'! So hearing her say THAT word was another reason to want to see this movie.

Well Showtime aired it yesterday morning and I was glad to have my chance to see this, but boy is it lame. There is nothing to enjoy really, not a single thing. Davis is extremely subdued and SHE DOESN'T EVEN SMOKE or scream or use any of her famous mannerisms, and this movie could've used a little something to make it less painful. Borgnine tries hard but the odds were against him from the start.

And to top it, the line I was waiting to hear was dubbed (badly, I might add)! She says 'screw them' instead..somehow fitting, but boy was I disappointed.


This film, though technically good (lots of pretty and well choreographed scenes, beautiful women, and pretty good acting)is disturbing, and some people should probably avoid it. People who are overly sensitive to the horrors of Nazi brutality will probably find the film very offensive. That the main character is a savant oblivious to the dark side of the Third Reich does little to redeem the comedic value of the story. Also, nearly all of the women in the film are either prostitutes, Nazis or both. That was a problem for me. That said, the film makes some interesting and humorous comments about wealth and the value of money.


This was the first Chan film with Roland Winters in the title role. It is a remake of Monogram's "Mr. Wong in Chinatown". This is okay as Monogram Chans go. The supporting cast is pretty good for this studio with Philip Ahn standing out. An interesting search for a mysterious "Captain K" makes it fun.


A mysterious princess arrives at the Chan home, where she is shot. Collapsing, she manages to write, "Captain K," on the desk pad. "Are you sure she's dead, Pop?" Tommy asks. "Death, my son, is the reckoning of heaven. In this case, most complicated reckoning," states philosophical Charlie, lifting a line from Biggers' Behind That Curtain.

This one, Number 42 in the series and the first with Roland Winters in the title role, does not augur well for the remainder of the Monogram efforts in this inept re-make of Mr Wong in Chinatown. Mr Winters is a poor substitute for Sidney Toler (not to mention Boris Karloff). He moves stiffly, and his accent is poor stuff indeed. A less inspired actor to play the part of Chan could not possibly be imagined, although I should mention that Winters was to improve considerably in his later Chan characterizations.

Scott Darling has done very little to update his Wong script and changing the dwarf to a small boy is just about the last straw. Also, Beaudine's direction does not compare well with Nigh's. Admittedly, this entry has obviously been made on an extremely tight budget.


Princess Mei Ling visits Charlie Chan's house with need of the great detective's help. Before she can meet with him she is killed by an air gun, but is able to scrawl "Capt K" on a sheet of paper in hoping to give Chan a clue to her killer. Chan, teaming up with police sergeant, Bill Davidson, finds the apartment where the princess is residing and finds that her trip to America was to purchase a fleet of airplanes to aid in China's defense from invaders. Captain Kong, who was captain of the ship that the princess traveled on, and Captain Kelso, who was the supplier of the planes for the princess, are both determined to see that Chan and Davidson make no further progress on the murder case, which has also added the princess' maid and a mute Chinese boy who may have seen the killer. Obviously by the time the Monogram Chan films were at this stage they were pretty routine and boring and this film is no exception, despite being Roland Winters debut as Chan. The film really lacks a mystery aura as seen in any other Chan film with a storyline that does little in the way of entertain. Victor Sen-Yung last the least to do of any son in any Chan film and Moreland lacks much of the humor he usually does, but does seem more involved with solving the case. Rating, 3.


A misfit/underdog joins the med school.

Believes in healing by humour, making personal relation with patients, which is atypical of the docs.

Hated by professors and fellows.

Professors try to remove him from college.

His roomie, who is the topper (also hates him), helps him stay.

Now tell me how Munnabhai M.B.B.S is not a copy of Patch Adams! Merely by changing a bit of preamble and postscript of a story, one cannot call it original.

At least Robin Williams could bring in some amount of tolerance to Patch Adams, but alas in here, there is none.


I've just watched the movie this afternoon. I felt pretty much cheated into the movie, it is a alright movie. Maybe people who are trying to understand how tough life could be in singapore might find it great to watch it. However, personally i felt that the movie was overly predictable, right from the start you kinda know what ending it will give you and by having Richard winning the TOTO it's such a easy give away, not impactful enough for me at least.

Things just fall into place too easily so that cause the conflict to be seen only in the surface, not deep enough to make it believable. However, i thought the character "Mei" was quite well played, i feel for the character, the struggles that she is facing and the pain she felt.


Sometimes TV movies seem to do a first-rate job of dealing with social problems. "And the Band Played On" comes to mind, along with others. But this isn't a very good example. AIDS is undeniably there, as is child abuse, while internet predators are problematic.

The movie is not badly done. Potts has a winsome hapless face, with over-sized semi-frightened eyes, like a deer caught in the headlights. She's by no means Hollywood gorgeous. I enjoyed her performance. It's the only one that stands out. I'm not sure I believed the script in its entirety. Some of the incidents read too much like submissions to Screenplays 101.

Ms. Posey is wandering through a fairground and putting herself in danger for the sake of justice, wired for sound, with cops listening all over the place as she is drawn into the shadows by an internet predator. A pedestrian bumps into her and jars the microphone loose so it falls to the ground. She then walks out of the fairground not realizing she's trailing a loose wire and is talking to herself. Maybe it happened. Maybe it ALL happened or maybe just some of it happened. It's not a badly done TV movie but it's irritating because the movie seems so determined to whip us into a rage and justify it by such cheap means.

One of the problems with using internet predators as villains in the movies -- and there have been several like this -- is that there is so little scientific evidence that they exist. No amount of evidence, or the lack of it, is likely to change the minds of people who are convinced that they are a major social problem. Too bad. The paucity of internet predators ought to ease our anxiety, but somehow we can't seem to do without them.


Essentially a worthy subject to explore, but extremely poorly executed. Annie Potts' acting is wooden and devoid of any sense of realism. The sad part is that none of the actors were any better.

A true waste of film!


Perch your ears,listen closely,you devotees of the matchstick-figures!! Can you hear it......? There is something unholy trampling the holy land of hilarious melodrama, the beast is armed with utter contempt, with spite, with the mocking force of irony. What defence could you possibly muster, I ask of you? Give me a greatly exaggerated expression, while delivering lines with the life-like qualities of a typewriter, and the speed of a machine gun?! Yes, it is true, the tidings say that a great number of humans have become prey to the horrible, plastic monster that goes under the name of Melodrama. Cardboard men and women running insanely around, the things they say,how they say things, as about convincing as the credibility of an illiterate being the best one for a job as an interpreter, their manners and movements as gracefully as if you had taken a branch or a log, and moved it with abrupt, uneven jerks in the air. Oh, such a golden age in movie-making, no wonder those Oscars kept coming. Long live the staccato!! Apparently Peter Sellers found a great source of comedic inspiration in this films "evil" genius for his Inspector Closeau. After watching this robot unfold himself ridiculously, along with all the other ridiculous characters on display here, you wonder why there ever was a need of creating a Closeau at all? Sans Closeaus awkwardness, sans his police badge, you have here Closeaus evil and staccato brother from the 40's in all his glory!!If those of you, who's still having life pumping through your veins,are going to watch this worthless pile of crap, be prepared for a couple of scenes in particular that is probably some of the greatest comedy ever put on screen; the scene with "evil" genius getting angry at woman for having a dog, the scene in which "evil" genius and woman is attending a concert together, and right after, the scene in the carriage. Embarrassingly bad, and of course extremely funny! I've been seriously thinking; since there isn't a whole great deal of brilliant comedies being released these days, why not set out for foreign lands, why not plough the uncharted territory, where weed like "Gaslight" is growing a plenty, rip it up with its roots, and scour it for any signs of laughter-gas. But of course, this would have been a project for the absolute madman, since laugher soon enough would have given way to overwhelming nausea, and the urgent need to see what food in acid looks like. Whoever has heard of a man going to the dentist for cheers and giggles?


It should have been. In the IMDb 100 Worst, that is. The plot is rather amazing, in that it is simultaneously both poorly-thought-out and amazingly predictable. FBI agent gets personally involved in a case, thinking he knows something more than everyone else around him. His brusque superior officer reprimands him, and tells him to stay out of it (no attempt at collegiality nor any immediate explanation as to why). Of course, he steals a bunch of FBI stuff, drags the beautiful (in the eye of the beholder; see below) woman and the hit-man buddy into it, gets suspended, and goes rogue. He and the girl hook up, and are betrayed by the hit-man buddy. They end up in the clutches of the evil mad scientist, and mayhem ensues. An absolute picture of cinematic realism. The mad scientist is training "perfect assassins" by lifelong deprivation (no realistic explanation as to why this might be effective). There's even a martial arts demo from the mad scientist's sensei, who subsequently never appears again. The completely expected victory sequence lets the dramatic tension (what there is of it) down far to quickly and easily, as there is really very little struggle between the good guys and the bad guys. The end is a bit of a surprise twist, but even this is unsatisfying and underexplained.

Andrew McCarthy is a clever but unlikely action hero: lots of suspension of disbelief is necessary here. Portia de Rossi tries hard, but is hobbled by the bad script (it is, for example,not well explained why she is so good with a gun, and then not well utilized when push comes to shove). In makeup, they even manage to make her fairly physically unappealing (keep her hair back, please, or her eyebrows seem to go on forever). Robert Patrick is fun, fitting and comfortable as the hit-man buddy, but even so, has trouble delivering trite lines about not selling out his friend for blood money and so forth.

The cinematography can only be described as TV-ish. Of course, it was made for TV, but it needn't look like it, right? At any rate, if you are tempted to see this film, examine your own motives, first. If you want an action flick, there is almost an infinite number of better ones to consider. If you are looking to watch a performance by one of the leads, each has better vehicles in his or her filmography from which you could choose. In fact, if like me, you stumbled across it on television, well, it's initially engaging (that's why I watched it), but you'd be better served by finding out of there's anything else on. If there isn't, go for some fresh air. Even if you're a fan of bad movies, this one isn't even amusing in that respect. In short, there's no good reason to see this movie.


Watching this disaster, I think I must've said "I can't believe that I'm still watching this" about fifty times. I'm supposed to believe that the guy from Mannequin is tough? HAH! And Robert Patrick, shame on you! In this film, Evil T-100 you ain't.

I would've rated this movie a "1," but it was comically bad. Too bad MST3K isn't in production anymore - this one's prime material.


Given the names in the cast this movie was exceptionally bad. Poor acting, poor scripts, poor directing. Miss this one on purpose. The settings are about the only things, that have any redeeming quality. The weapons are nice but have unrealistic damage to objects also. I'd rather watch Lion King for the 10millionth time with the kids, than watch this one again.


...from the train, and almost all the way through the part where Ben (Andrew McCarthy, playing the FBI agent) is telling Billy's (Aaron Lohr, playing the really bad guy) sister (Portia de Rossi, playing the sister) about his mom dying because he was put in a room with an electric doorknob. Now, this was my second time viewing the movie. The first time it was on I wasn't able to pay much attention to it, but was able to catch the premise, and I made a mental note to watch it again and pay attention. Big mistake! Sure, it starts out OK, but when Billy's sister gets in there, it becomes completely implausible. In a matter of minutes we get... 1) FBI agent enters secure room to interview really bad guy and sister just walks in. 2) FBI agent gets in a pushing match with sister, totally ignores really bad guy, who escapes. 3) FBI agent jumps into car to chase really bad guy and sister gets in the back. 4) FBI agent gets into helicopter to chase really bad guy and sister gets in it. 5) FBI agent has a choice, chase running really bad guy or help fellow agent stuck in truck on railroad tracks with train coming. Sister says screw fellow agent and chase really bad guy.


Maybe I was just not wasted enough for this film. As mentioned in an earlier review the story line sounded very promising. The cast was excellent I mean Andrew McCarthy did an excellent job as usual and Robert Patrick was good and Nick Mancuso can play the crazy as well as anyone and Portia, well she was not at her best(so much better in Arrested Develpement). I kept watching it hoping it would get better. It didn't. I mean come one when you are sneaking across a maniacal doctors compound why would you run right for the spot light? Would you not slink against walls and trees trying not to be seen? Also stated in an earlier review too bad MST300 is not on this would have perfect for it. And come on some FBI guy tells you to stay put and you keep running after him, I'm thinking, not. What happened, no really, what happened?


Oh how bad! My friend found this on video and he has a knack for finding the worst movies of all time. This may not be the worst he has found (see "Toxic Advenger" or "Night Patrol") but this one is real close. Poor Andrew McCarthy - I think he was better off lugging around dead bodies or those plastic things in department stores. Acting was bad but the storyline was worse. Enough said.


This is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Palance totally overacts; and that is the best thing I have to say. The tone of the movie is all over the map and the dramatic parts are not dramatic and the forced comedic scenes are actually the best dramatic parts of the movie. It is so bad, you can't even make fun of it (believe me- we tried). Overall, it was truly painful. The only reason to watch this movie is to see martin kove at his best, unless you like watching people chew- Palance et al. seem to have some cud in their mouths the entire movie- maybe it was aspirin to overcome the pain of making the movie!


Yet another jokey gangster film which proliferated the screens in the wake of BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967); the ragtime score, then, is clearly inspired by the recent success of THE STING (1973).

It's evidently cheaply made and pretty bad overall but, I guess, harmless enough; still, virtually the only thing of interest here is the film's comic-strip look, complete with captioned descriptions during transitions.

Jack Palance (another film I watched as a tribute to him - renting this one would certainly not have been a priority otherwise!) mercilessly chews the scenery as one of two warring gang bosses.


In this comic book style gangster flick Jack Palance gives a good but sometimes dreamy performance.He was definitely a great performer and by the end of the movie you do find his character admirable.The film suffers from the fact that the director instead of making a full scale dramatic gangster epic(The Godfather,Part-II etc.),well at least he could've tried instead whenever the plot thickens, an idiotic comedy scene or a parody of a violent scene ruins the whole feel.The supporting cast is o.k. and so is the screenplay.A special mention should be made for the art design which is pretty authentic.

The most beautiful shot comes near the climax when Palance's character get's out of his car and walks into his club.

Nearly O.K. but nothing special.


When I was a kid in Ohio, I had a good friend whose parents had a well-decorated house each Christmas season. But their neighbor, a couple of doors away, had one of those displays with hundreds of lights - on the house, trees, shrubs, along the long driveway, etc. There were figures on the roof and in the yard yard, and the owner spent hundreds - if not thousands - of dollars each year, not including massive utility bills. These were really nice homes, and the man could well-afford it.

Across the street, lived a top personality from one of the radio stations, with the most popular afternoon program, and his specialty was very funny and clever comedy. He did absolutely nothing to his home, except to post a well-painted, large sign in his yard, which said, "Please see our display across the street!"

I thought of this as I watched this flick - the second of a double-feature which our PBS station has, featuring older movies, each Saturday evening. "The Defiant Ones," a truly great film was first, and then this one followed.

In the same vein as the DJ I referenced above, I would only paraphrase by saying: "See my comment under the heading "rmt124" in this section!"


Holy Cross purports to be a true representation of the horrifying and shaming events in Belfast back in 2001 when Catholic schoolgirls were subjected, by protesting loyalists, to a tunnel of verbal and physical abuse on their way to classes. But the whole film is filled with fictional episodes and characters which seek to condition the audience into a deeper understanding of the background to the story. There is a wholly moral line of thought which suggests such attacks on children require no forgiving back story and are disgraceful in themselves, with or without the nod of history, but that doesn't seem have occurred to the makers (BBCNI, of course). In their heavy-handed attempt to rewrite the facts any understanding of why the loyalists behaved in such a shocking manner is put well beyond use.

This is one of those films where editorial and political concerns about content seek to revise the truth. And under those strictures any comment about performances or technical graces is irrelevant.

Absurdly this one part drama was split into two pieces by the BBC on the night it was shown, interrupted by the news - this only added to the fiction of the whole film.


Henry Fonda was always quite surprising pulling off a villainous role, and his mangy varmit in "Firecreek" is no exception(as an actor, he seems such an upright citizen that it takes a few scenes to accept him as a scurrilous killer, but he certainly makes it work). Murderous gang rides into dirtwater town and terrorizes the locals, including honorary sheriff James Stewart. Despite a very odd direction(with titillation asides), this is a formidable western with a sturdy cast. The mean-spiritedness of the picture is extremely tough to shake off however, and action-fans won't get much satisfaction until the bullet-ridden finale.


I love a good old western, unfortunately this movie follows a plot common to the Hollywood movies of the last thirty years, wasting its A-list cast.

Jimmy Stewart, a real life war veteran, curiously agreed to play a role as a seemingly gutless pacifist sheriff who takes action only when events turn horrific enough to make any man thirst for vengeance. Henry Fonda is quite convincing as the leader of the typical sadistic outlaw gang, who unfortunately gets too much time to practice their cruelty on the meek townspeople.

Only watch this if you enjoy evil men terrorizing innocent and defenseless townspeople for the vast majority of the film, only to be thwarted by somebody finally developing fortitude enough to dispense long overdue justice in the last ten minutes.

I've never understood how movies which main content involves seeing people stripped of their dignity serves as "entertainment".


This Western is the worst western movie ever made. It featured Jimmy Stewart as the hayseed farmer-sheriff trundling about in his 60s, carrying his Senior Citizen Discount Card to the General Store. Stewart also happens to be the father of two young boys, and his young wife is pregnant at the farm. Jimmy Stewart was WAY TOO OLD for this role. Sure, Tony Randall and lots of other men have had kids way into their 70s, but it seemed like this role was meant for a much younger man. In this film, Stewart looks like he needs a walker as he is walking around bent over during most of the film.

Jimmy Stewart was never a very gritty actor, and he always seemed to play weak men in dramatic roles and nice guys when he was in comedies. In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Stewart also played another gutless wonder who had to be saved by John Wayne. Then there is the movie where he had an imaginary rabbit friend. In short, I never liked Jimmy Stewart except for his role in that Frank Capra movie. This role is perhaps the worst movie that Stewart ever made.

In Firecreek, Jimmy Stewart basically spends the entire movie "turning the other cheek" while also trying to be the volunteer "Town Sheriff." I could only think of Mayberry RFD meets the Hells Angels as a comparison. Except that Mayor Ken Berry had more charisma and smarts than Jimmy Stewart. Even Sheriff Andy Taylor and Barney Fife would have been a lot smarter than Sheriff Jimmy Stewart! An outlaw gang rides into town led by Henry Fonda, who is only in the movie for about ten minutes and yet he steals the show from the lame cast of has-been actors. The outlaw gang spends most of its time humiliating Jimmy Stewart and the townies, and Jimmy just keeps telling them to be "good boys." Eventually someone gets raped and someone gets killed. Not even in Mayberry did the jail have an open door (sort of like a lobby). A retarded guy who happened to be the town deputy gets lynched by the bad guys thanks to James Stewart being at home with his young wife while the outlaws were burning down the town. Thanks to Sheriff Jimmy Stewart for providing incompetent leadership. As Jimmy Stewart keeps saying all during the movie, "Now let's not have any trouble."

Of course, at the end it is the gutless wimp who wins the gunfight, though we all know that Henry Fonda could have smoked James Stewart with his eyes closed.


Although I'm not a Star Wars fanatic (I certainly don't read the books or anything), I love the old Star Wars movies. In fact, when I was littler, The Empire Strikes Back was my favorite film. Now that I'm older, I respect them for what they are: incredibly creative, exciting and touching films. I have yet to see Episode 1. My friend recommended Episode 2 to me, telling me that it was better than its predecessor, but warning me "don't see it if you expect anything more than a Star Wars movie." Maybe I just have a nostalgic love for the first trilogy, but I would never think that they were anywhere near as poor, in any way, as this new garbage. I can't think of a high budget movie that I've seen that has such bad directing, bad acting, bad casting, bad special effects (or lack thereof), bad music, bad dialogue and bad plot, as ATTACK OF THE CLONES (bad title too). The reviewers on this site giving this movie positive reviews must all be brainwashed. Maybe they're all just excited that it's better than Episode One, which I can only assume must be the worst movie ever made, considering this one definitely belongs in the bottom 100.

Let's begin with the directing. WHAT THE HELL DID GEORGE LUKAS TELL HIS ACTORS? My only guess that the conversations went something like this... LUKAS: Hey Sam, sit in that chair and say your line. S.JACKSON: How do you want me to deliver it? LUKAS: Don't worry about that. It doesn't really matter. All the animated creatures don't really show any emotion anyway. In general, you should just say your line like you're reading it. Oh, but if you're supposed to be angry or upset, just screw up your face a little bit.

S.JACKSON: Okay. I guess...

I can't begin to describe how boring the non-action sequences are in this film. The actors aren't interacting at all. It's astounding.

Furthermore, talk about a classic example of bad acting, Ewan McGregor spends the entire movie doing a really bad impression of the actor who played Obi Wan in the original series...uuuugh, yuck. Whoever cast this movie needs to get their head examined. I've always learned that one of the prime objectives in film, especially a drama, like this one, is to suspend the audience's disbelief (perhaps George Lukas was striving to suspend belief with this one). How could anyone accept Samuel L. Jackson, one of the most prolific actors in Hollywood, as "Mace Windu" and Jimmy Smits, another instantly recognizable household name, as Senator "Bail Organa". My God, Lukas could have at least picked actors who haven't reached idol status yet, but no, he had to make his budget LARGER. The majority of people who liked this casting probably just liked seeing Sam Jackson meditating next to a poorly animated Yoda (SHAFT AND YODA TOGETHER IN THE SAME ROOM, MEDITATING LIKE BUDDHISTS! AWESOME!).

The digital special effects were disappointing and not convincing. I prefer people in elaborate costumes to the digitally animated, and amazingly generic looking, critters that Lukas used here. You've seen 'em in the fifth element, in the trailer for men in black II (before the film started) and here they are again, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. Go figure. Furthermore, juxtaposing digitally composed fantasy settings/landscapes(as ridiculous as they are on their own), with a real, easily recognizable, famous swiss tourist attraction was appalling.

The music as a whole sounded like a parody of the original score (in other words, it was fitting). The dialogue was laughably atrocious. Probably my favorite line *POSSIBLE SPOILER* was when Anakin (or little Ann(ie?,y?,e??) as the Senator calls him) tells the senator, "I didn't just kill the men...but the WOMEN...and the CHILDREN TOO!" "Ooh am I a bad guy. I'm such an evil dude that I use cliches to describe my horrible deeds." *NO MORE SPOILERS* The plot is so delightfully convoluted that thousands of viewers at home will be able to watch this movie in less than half it's running time when it comes out on VHS. They can all simply fast-forward to the action sequences and not miss anything important in the film. In fact they might as well fast-forward through the whole thing, given that the ending credits are by far the movie's finest sequence.

I'm getting tired of writing, so I'll just say that there are so many problems with this movie that this review hasn't even nearly given it justice. PLEASE, DON'T DISMISS THIS REVIEW JUST BECAUSE IT'S NEGATIVE. IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE YET, PLEASE, WAIT TILL COMES OUT ON VIDEO. AT LEAST THEN YOU CAN GET THE PLEASURE OF TAKING THE TAPE OUT OF THE MACHINE AND SMASHING IT TO BITS IN FRUSTRATION.


First off, don't blame the actors or the special effects. It's not their fault. Whenever someone knocks a bad movie, which Episode II qualifies as, they immediately raise the pitchforks towards the actors. If your going to lay some blame, lay it at the feet of George Lucas. It was his puerile script that brought the actors to their knees, and his lack of direction that made them stay there. It was George's unholy fascination with all things digital that massacred the screen with billions of wasted pixilated images, making the flesh and blood actors seem like they stepped into the Twilight Zone.

This movie serves one purpose and one purpose only...to manually pleasure George Lucas' fanbase. The only things that seperate this wheelbarrow full of fertilizer from the average sci-fi schlock are the overinflated budget for Lucas' digital toys and the useless insertion of previous Star Wars characters.

(SPOILERS ABOUND BELOW)

The movie flows like a frozen sewage runoff. It goes from high speed, high altitude car chases, to boring, forced angst by the fireplace. To say that Christensen and Portman have no chemistry is to say that the Middle East might be facing some political problems. Their romance is about as believable as grass growing on the moon. Maybe they could have done better if the script hadn't been written with crayons.

I thought these prequels were about Anakin's spiral downward from the path of balance into the Darkside. Is that ever going to happen or are we going to be forced to watch a third episode of video game previews for the Game Cube? We were given a lackluster hint with the slaughter of the Sand People but that barely cuts it. It wasn't even shown, thereby castrating the power of the scene. We just have to hear Anakin whine about it for about three seconds. Usually, when someone butchers a whole village of men, women, and children there's a whole lot more soul searching going on afterward. Of course, Lucas goes the pansy route and glosses over the whole thing. Most people I've talked to didn't even remember the scene until it was brought up to them.

I'm probably one of the few people completely disgusted witht the Yoda fight at the end with the unimpressive Darth Sarumon (Lee plays the exact same character in LOTR: former wizard turned evil lackey=former jedi turned evil lackey). It's almost as if instead of a hand being up Yoda's posterior they've inserted a heroin suppository. Lucas has, in a brief half-minute, meaningless fight scene, destroyed the mystery of Yoda. The entire fight was unwarranted. If Yoda can raise ships from swamps and hold big chunks of pillar in the air, why can't he just pick up Count Poopoo and bang him against the wall a few times, soften him up a little, so to speak. Why? Because Lucas has toys he must abuse, that's why.

The real star of this movie is the CGI. And CGI doesn't make good film. CGI is a support for a movie, that's it.

There were far too many real world references, as well. Death sticks=cigarettes. Lame. Fifties diner in a galaxy far, far away, complete with sassy robo-waitress. Lame. This is supposed to be far removed from our world in the aforementioned galaxy far away. All I missed was the Fonz. Where the Hell was he? It might have been an improvement.

In closing..Lucas needs to stop writing, directing and editing. Let a grown up handle these things. All that crap about these movies being for kids is a lark. These movies are for the nerds of the late seventies and early eighties who can't seem to move on in the world. The charm of Star Wars was gone before Lucas unveiled his uber-deluxe, special treatment of the films for the third time. And now he's doing it again. Maybe he'll go the Spielburg route and replace all the blasters with peace symbols.

Rating 1 out of 10. I'd rate it lower, but I was never good with fractions.


This is a film that took three of the most beloved films of all time and sold their souls to CGI. The original Star Wars Trilogy were not labelled as the greatest films ever made because of Light Sabres, or Storm Troopers, or groundbreaking motion capture special effects, but because of the human side. The quality of the acting from Sir Alec Guinness, the chemistry between Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, the excellent dialogue that made every line a memorable quote and the context of faith and religion are what made them so everlasting. In this film Ewan McGregor's acting is surprisingly wooden for such a talented actor, Hayden Christensen has less chemistry with Natalie Portman than a 12 year old student's test tube, the dialogue is boring, the lines are cheesy and clichéd, there does not seem to be any actual emphasis on plot, it just being an excuse to glue one over-long action set piece to another, so the intrigue disappears fast and the themes and contexts are given a back seat to (admittedly impressive) CGI. It seems that George Lucas thought that what made a good film was as much soulless eye candy as possible.

Star wars was once a trailblazer in Science fiction and its originality gave most of the future Blockbusters the templates for their scenes, and what was originally Star Wars innovation became cliché at the hands of other films. Now it is Star Wars using the same plot lines we have seen over and over again, copying others and Episodes 1, 2 and 3 in a lazy attempt to seem interesting.

You do not need spectacle to create a good film you need drama and humanity both of which this film sorely lacks. In my opinion the best Light Sabre Fight of the series was the Showdown between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi. The fight didn't have any flipping or flopping or any fancy kung-fu, but it did have the enormous tension of the concept of the final fight between Master and Pupil. That made for a great scene, and the elements of drama are completely void from this movie. This is a cheap CGI fest that misses the point entirely.


I gave this film 1 out of 10 because it is honestly one of the worst films I have ever seen. *****SPOILERS***** The log-fire scene where Anakin Skywalker woodenly tells Natalie Portman about his intense "pain" and "suffering" was fortunately drowned out by the sound of the entire audience failing to suppress their giggles and guffaws. We know how you feel, Anakin. Am I the only one who thought this was actually worse than the Phantom Menace? I don't remember anything about the plot of that film but I remember feeling mildly entertained. This was just plain boring. From the high-speed chase in the city to the weird tall thin aliens to the political assassination attempt it all felt like a TV spin-off of the Fifth Element without the famous actors, the beautiful models, the slick direction, the humour, the dialogue or the fun. The waterfalls in the background on Naboo looked like the tongue-in-cheek idyllic backdrop on a Kraftwerk CD. The gladiatorial scene was straight out of your first Dungeons & Dragons game. The big battle at the end was SO BORING people were leaving their seats and returning ten minutes later... they'd probably gone outside for a cigarette. The acting and the dialogue would, by and large, not have passed muster on a Mexican soap opera; the most interesting part of Natalie Portman's performance was the surprise appearance of her nipples. On the plus side: Yoda drew some genuine laughs with his "kung fu" stance, although high-speed Yoda was a bit too fanciful for my liking. Ewan McGregor's effort was good considering the material, and his fight with Jango Fett should put him in the running for a role as 007. But what this franchise really needs to do is bring back Harrison Ford... perhaps Han Solo was a clone?


Am I mistaken or was Hayden Christensen just playing the same character fomr Life as a House? A rebellious son, independent and who doesn't need the help of anyone?

The film had no blatant plot. It appeared they rolled the dice and by chance this year of Star Wars history faced up. So they just cut at on end then the other coming up with a film that more a glimpse than anything with a story. It felt like a day in the life of type story. Just arrive film and leave. No reason or event to be there.

This then presents some issues. Episode III must be very long or the opening very long because we have only one film left for Anakin to change and become evil, reach high power, and appear as Darth Vader. Also he must marry the Queen have 2 kids and what were they thinking making Episode 3 so void of anything except (SPOILER) Jengos death.

A few action sequences that got the ticker pumpin' but yoda with a sabre was more funny than exciting. The corny: dialogue, avenge my mamma, romance and all other plot points ruined the film, embarrased the series. I am glad I am not a fan of the series its bad enough Im a religious follower of the Bond Tradition when something like DAD opens.


Easily the most tedious film of the year and of the series and of the genre. You'd find better action sequences on a cheap games console and better acting in a primary school production of the wizard of oz. And the blame lies squarely on Lucas' shoulders. This kind of dialogue would get you kicked out of film school. Dribbled with strained references to the original series and delivered with the verve of a George W. Bush speech on international trade agreements. The only people who come out relatively unscathed are the traditionally camped-up hammer-horror-style bad guys and Ewan McGregor's continuing pastiche of Alec Guinness. The "romantic" leads are like being forced to watch the world's least interesting high-school sweethearts pretending to have a squabble. Wait until it appears on DVD then at least you can edit it down to a three minute Natalie Portman fashion shoot and fifty seconds of yoda break-dancing.