The relationship between Lillian (Jane Fonda) and Julia (Vanessa Redgrave) is that of dog and master; Lillian being the faithful puppy dog and Julia the condescending master. This may have reflected their real life relationship, as both are America-hating leftists. Hanoi Jane probably does dote on the pro terrorist Vanessa Redgrave. The story had its flaws. Lillian seemed to be sweet, naive, and down to earth until her overnight success as a playwright. Then, she instantly seemed to be a stuck up snob for the remainder of the film.Closeup after closeup of her pouty red lips as she boarded one train after another or sat in swanky European restaurants got a little old after awhile. Her cold demeanor severely detracted from the story. Even at their last meeting, Julia seemed as superficial and abrupt with Lillian as ever, while Lillian once again morphed from ice princess to puppy dog. Since Jason Robards could pass for Henry Fonda, it was a little creepy seeing Jane Fonda bedding him. Yuck!! One blooper in the film is Jane Fonda's typing ability. For someone who makes their living as a writer, you'd think they could type with more than their index fingers!


Balls of Fury wasn't the total disaster, but when that's the highest praise I can offer, well, that's a problem. Think of it as a lesser version of Dodgeball.

Ping-pong just isn't that funny, or exciting, or anything really - just like the film. The idea of underground ping-pong never really goes anywhere. The jokes are okay at times, but there are no big laughs and certainly no surprises.

Unless you are a 10-14 year-old boy, who given the film's humor and scantily clad actresses is obviously the target market, you will probably be disappointed by paying money for it. Wait a couple of years and watch it free some night on Comedy Central and spend your ten bucks somewhere else.


If hit-to-the-groin jokes are your cup of tea, then look no further than Balls of Fury, the newest comedy from the minds behind Reno 911. Not only are there punches to the groin, kicks to the groin, and paddles to the groin, there are even chopsticks and metal spheres to the groin! If, on the other hand, you're looking for something with a little more comedic value then men being hit in their nether regions, avoid Balls of Fury like the plague.

The plot, which serves no purpose but to string together a multitude of lame jokes, follows Randy Daytona, a 12 year old ping pong prodigy, who is sweeping the ping pong world by storm. Unfortunately he ends up losing an important match, becomes a laughing stock and his father, who was involved in illegal gambling, is murdered.

19 years later, Daytona (played by third rate Jack Black wannabe Dan Fogler) is washed up and performing ping pong tricks at a run down theatre. FBI agent Ernie Rodriguez (George Lopez), who has been assigned to take down Feng (Christopher Walken), a criminal mastermind who runs an underground ping pong tournament, decides to enlist Daytona to help take Feng down. Daytona, besides making a comeback in the ping pong circuit, wants to get his revenge on Feng, who incidentally, was responsible for his father's death. So Daytona and Rodriguez go undercover, infiltrating Feng's annual ping pong tournament, where they...get hit in the balls.

There are two very confounding things about Balls of Fury. The first being how a script so utterly bad was green lit and produced. The movies plot doesn't make a lick of sense and ambles on from one random scene to the next. In one moment, Daytona and a female ping pong master are shown as hating each other...and out of nowhere, a minute later, they are suddenly love interests. It would've been nice for the writers to put a little bit of effort in and at least include something leading up to that. Another scene has Daytona refusing to join Rodriguez in taking down Feng, only to learn that a water park has been built next to his father's tombstone. How does that provide any motivation for Daytona to strive to take Feng down? The answer is it doesn't, as the writers were to busy writing in jokes to develop a good story.

This wouldn't be such a big deal if any of the jokes were actually funny. Sadly, half of the jokes either involve testicles or an old blind man walking into things, or in some instances, a combination of the two. It's not funny unless you're 12 years old (I wouldn't be surprised if the writer actually was). Not only are the jokes unfunny, they've been done hundreds of times before and done much better. When Balls of Fury does manage to include some original jokes, it involves stuff like the aforementioned water park being built next to a tombstone, which sadly enough, is less funny then the blind man falling down a staircase.

The second mind boggling thing about this movie is how they managed to stick Christopher Walken in this film as the villain, Feng. There are a few other relatively known actors in here, but Terry Crews has already been making appearances in terrible movies for a while now (Norbit anybody?) and Maggie Q still hasn't become a house-hold name. But Christopher Walken? Walken is an amazing actor and it's a crime to see him act in crud like this. He's been in a few duds in the past (Envy springs to mind), but he's never sunken to this level before. Walken isn't fading out or losing appeal, in fact he just had a role in the critical and box office hit, Hairspray. How could he read a script that terrible and agree to take on a big role as the villain? The only reasonable answer seems to be that director Ben Garrant blackmailed him into taking it, as I've got to much respect for Walken to believe he'd actually willingly agree to.

Walken manages to get a few laughs, which is an impressive feat in a movie like this, and steals every scene he's in. Despite working with crummy material, he still puts in a decent comedic performance as Feng, far outshining the other actors. Dan Fogler is the least funny leading man since Jimmy Fallon and mugs for the camera every opportunity he gets, imitating Jack Black as best as he can. George Lopez and Maggie Q play their roles completely straight, which doesn't work in a movie so absurd. By the end of the movie, you'll be wishing they axed the main characters and just made a movie about Feng instead.

The tagline for Balls of Fury reads "A Huge Comedy with Tiny Balls". On the contrary, it took a lot of balls to make this movie. It took balls for director Ben Garrant to release the film without Alan Smithee in replace of his name in the credits. It took balls for Christopher Walken to act in this trash and risk losing his credibility as an actor. It took balls for Rogue to screen the film for critics, as if they expected any good reviews. Yep, it took a lot of balls to make this movie. What it didn't take to make the film was any talent. Balls of Fury is a horrid excuse for a film, and if you're looking for a funny movie to see in the theatre, go see Superbad or Hot Rod. Hell, you can even go see Halloween, as a film about a serial killer is bound to be more funny then this trash.


I can never wrap my head around the careers of Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant. On television, their work is some of the best comedy of the past couple of decades: The State, Viva Variety!, and, their triumph, Comedy Central's Reno 911. But when they write movies, the results are well nigh unwatchable. I had thought in the past that they were just defecating cheap movie scripts so that they could make money and continue producing fine work on television. I mean, The Pacifier, Herbie: Fully Loaded and Night at the Museum smack of the kind of audience-despising material you might expect from smart writers deliberately trying to dumb down their work for some cold hard cash. Add to that the fact that their movie version of Reno 911, which was released early in 2007, was pretty good. But then, later in the year, they made this film. It's a cheesy little comedy, and it has a lot of potential to be decent, if unremarkable, fun. This is their genre, unlike the children's flicks. There's no conceivable reason to hate your audience here, since presumably they'll be pretty close to the same audience that watches Reno 911. Dan Fogler plays a former child prodigy and Olympic table tennis player. Now he's a loser, but he's being recruited by the FBI to infiltrate an underground ping-pong tournament, hosted by an international criminal, played by Christopher Walken. The premise, reminiscent of other recent underground sports comedies like Dodgeball and Beerfest, doesn't have a lot of promise, it's true. But all a comedy really needs is some good jokes, and it'll fly. Or at least you'd think it would. The problem with Balls of Fury isn't exactly its jokes. They're funny enough, for the most part. It's the delivery. The actors have little ability in comic timing (what halfway decent comedic director would willfully hire George Lopez to be in their movie?), and Robert Ben Garant often fails to sell the jokes, even when they are potentially amusing. Even when the comic performances are good, as is the case with Walken and co-writer Thomas Lennon himself, the editing is so poor that the gags almost never hit. It's all quite maddening. Reno 911 is particularly brilliant in its editing. I really don't see how the same people could produce such a laughless comedy. I guess TV is just their medium, but I don't understand why film-making should prove so difficult for them.


At the very least, someone should have said, fix the script, "it's not funny." Give up some money to fix it. Everyone looks bad, including the Asians. That's why Asians should continue to play villains 'til somebody gets in there who knows what to do.

Maggie Q is cute from every angle. Be mindful of a limit. She can cross over and she needs to do it now before she gets stereotyped. On screen, she reads with a brain but if she doesn't show it soon ...

Christopher Walken as always is a professional and saves what little there is. Likable Aisha Tyler is a talent and she's smart, but she needs to take more control. The nice surprise is that Jason Scott Lee can be funny. The German character gave it a good shot.

What's George Lopez doing in there? His character works on his TV show, not here. Did the director say, just be George Lopez? The director deserves this criticism because Lopez' character has so much screen time.

This is a director who doesn't protect his people or himself. Sad.


If I could have given this piece of garbage negative stars, I would have. The plot is terrible, they take two bad jokes and beat them to death with a sledgehammer. Why some talented people agreed to be in this is beyond me. Did Christopher Walken need to make a car payment? Don't waste your money - even when this pile of poo comes out on DVD.

My husband liked the fight scene between Maggie Q and Jason Scott Lee, but that is about the only recommendation I can give it. There are some talented people in the film and they seem to actually try to do their best with material that isn't even fit to be called substandard.

I've only seen two movies as bad as this one - Bloodrayne and Sympathy for the Devil. Even The Weatherman was better than this.


I will start off by saying, I love stupid humor. I love movies like Talledega Nights, Dodgeball, 40 y/o Virgin, etc... This movie was the first movie I've ever walked out on. Ever. At first I didn't want to walk out. I kept thinking to myself "No, when Christopher Walken shows up, this movie will get better." Sadly it didn't. This movie used jokes that would've been funny about 10 years ago, and have since been beaten mercilessly into the ground. It seemed like the writers of this movie went about it the same way Nickleback goes about writing songs: they just recycled old stuff that was successful and hoped it would work again. Like I said, I very rarely dislike a movie, but this one just didn't do it for me.


What bugs me is how people are talking about how funny this is, and its just encouraging the producers and film companies to continue making garbage like this (i.e. the Scary Movie franchise with its 'Epic' & 'Date' movie spin-offs.) I went to this movie not expecting a whole lot, and same with my buddy. Its not so much that I cant get my money back for my ticket, its that I cant get the 1h 45 minutes back that was wasted from my life.

This movie was and is easily the worst movie I have ever seen.

*And its sad that not even the great Chris Walken could save a disaster like this.

If any of you are contemplating and seeing this, I strongly suggest you to not waste your time. Im not one take in the perspective of other peoples opinions, but please... trust me on this one... I have seen a lot of movies, and this one isn't even worth downloading.


I have to admit, the movie trailers leading up to this movie had me, and a few others hook line and sinker for what seemed like a fairly comical movie that was full of classic Walkenism. Unfortunately, those strategically cut previews were the ONLY good parts of the movie which weren't even nearly as good when shown in the uncut full length movie. The script itself was lacking severely and even with a poor script, the acting couldn't deliver an even halfway mediocre attempt at what would have made it a halfway decent movie to watch while intoxicated with this being the only movie showing within a 500 mile radius.

I honestly did not think that it was possible to make a movie this bad, and it was actually WORSE than the worst movie I had ever seen prior to this, which I lovingly declare- "Without a Paddle". In fact, the ONLY way "Balls of Fury" could have been worse is if someone was standing outside the doorway to punch you in the face on the way out of the theater. The only positive this film had was that Maggie, the daughter of the over-exaggerated ping pong master Wong, was fairly cute.... but why waste 10.50 to see her for a few shots when there's google images?

Verdict-

Save your $10.50 and put it towards something that is time better spent... like paying someone to punch you in the face to remove any suspicion you may have had regarding whether or not this movie was worth going to, or actually any good at all. AVOID IT!

Oh, yea, and their Scarface homages were feeble at best, and practically an insult to one of the best movies of all time coming from the worst movie of all time.


Much like a lot of comedies recently, Balls of Fury does a good job of appealing to the 13 and under crowd. People looking for a comedy that's smart and keeps the laughs coming should avoid this film. Reading a plot synopsis of this film, it certainly sounds promising, but experience it first hand and you can really get an idea of how it can't deliver. Dan Fogler is about as unbelievable as they come. The filmmakers seem like they want his character to be a bit over the top, but he seems like a mix between Jack Black and Chris Farley and he fails miserably. Christopher Walken is hilarious, but with the script as weak as it is, a lot of his potential humor is lost. George Lopez has his funny moments and he could have had more if the film would have played up his desire to be a James Bond-like hero. Diedrich Bader steals the show as a male sex slave with some affection for pandas, but this isn't saying much as he's only in the film for all of 5 minutes.

All in all, Balls of Fury should be avoided. What could have potentially been a send up of an obscure sport (ie Blads of Glory), turns out to be an uninspired waste of time and money. For good humor that can really be enjoyed, check out Superbad. I hated that movie too, but it is leaps and bounds above Balls of Fury.


I wanted to unwind a little after a long day at the University Library and so when I went to the local Cinema, guess what? Balls of Fury was the only movie closest to my desired time. Without second thoughts, I bought a ticket, went in and sat down in the middle-back of the theater without any expectations whatsoever.

"Oh yeah..." That's all I can say. The jokes weren't really jokes to begin with. Though original to some extent, I didn't find them that funny - and that's coming a lot from a guy who has a very wide sense of humor. All throughout the film, I think I only giggled ONCE (No, not laugh. Giggle.) I think the movie had two problems: One, the pacing of the film. Two, Dan Fogler.

I think the movie should have spent more time on the tournament and not during the "training". Watching the final scenes, it was like the movie was trying to catch a bad guy or something. Everything was moving pretty fast. It was as if the movie had to meet a deadline and the crew had to finish the film during the last hours.

In my opinion, Dan Fogler was awful in this movie. I don't know. Maybe it was the script or the director or whatever. OR MAYBE... It was his sideburns! I really think he could do much better on TV; like in a sitcom or his own show. But in the movies? I'm not really sure.

If you are really curious about this movie, just go watch it on video. Better yet, why not wait for it on HBO? Watching it on the big screen is really not worth it.


I picked this film from the local video store when noticing that Christopher Walken was in it. Man, it wasn't even "so bad it's good". It was just simply horrible and I couldn't watch it more than 30 minutes. The so called "jokes" were desperately trying to be funny and I found myself shaking my head and wondering what was going through Walken's mind when he agreed to be in this one. I guess every great actor makes mistakes, but...ugh! I tried, I really tried to watch it till Walken would appear, but I just couldn't. So here I am, warning you who haven't seen this movie yet. Don't watch it. Don't rent it. Don't buy it. Don't even THINK about it. Read a good book instead, you will thank me later. 1 out of 10 stars.


It takes a lot for me to take the time to comment on a movie, but this time I just have to.

After seeing this movie, I actually felt sick. I'm not sure if its the dinner I ate earlier, but I suspect it has more to do with the movie. Now it actually feels like my dinner is coming up. Thats how bad this movie is.

I've seen movies before that more or less has the same plot. The little man against the stereotypical bad-guys. But this was just...oh god.

The lead actor should find a new job, preferably at McDonalds receiving orders. He's not funny, not by a long shot, and I have a strange feeling that he might have done some really shitty stand up comedy before that the director happened to stumble into one late afternoon. And because the director lacks most of his humorous sense, he found it amusing. Contrary to everybody else who was at the pub for a beer or ten. I feel bad for Christopher Walken as well. Once I had a lot of respect for his work, now...well lets just say you've got a long way to go baby to come back from this. Do you have a drug habit in need of funding that makes you join the cast of such an awful movie? It would be better for your reputation to check in to a rehab clinic than to join the cast of such an awful movie.

To every single person out there, from deranged psycho to kids, stay the hell away from this movie. It'll only damage your precious minds. Don't even download it for free. Don't watch it even if it comes with your happy meal. Which it probably will if Dan Fogler is working there.


I try to go into dumb yet potentially funny movies like this with an open mind. Usually I can walk out having said, "that wasn't that horrible, 5/10 or 6/10."...and sometimes they turn out to be really worth it. The problem with Balls of Fury is that it just sucks. I went in with friends (most of which do not know movies beyond comedies like this) and an open mind, and all of us agreed that it was, in a simple word, bad.

The saving grace is, of course, the man - Christopher Walken. But even his supreme awesomeness could not save this waste of a film. I laughed sometimes but those laughs were forced, and if I had not been with friends, I wouldn't be laughing at all.

Not to mention very cliché, as you may have guessed...and sometimes for me clichés can actually be good. In this case they were just annoying.

2/10, avoid.


please please do not watch this film , it doesn't deserve it !!!! its without doubt the worst , unfunniest film ever and Christopher walken should seriously reconsider his career after it !!! i didn't laugh once during the whole thing and saw every single "joke" a good 10 seconds before it happened !!! it tries to get us cheering for the underdog like in great films like major league , dodgeball etc but i ended up actually totally disliking the main character whose main claim to greatness seemed to be sticking his chewing gum under the flipping ping pong table !!!!!!!! please listen to me and give it a miss , in fact when its on terrestrial TV (in about 4 weeks i'd say) just go out for a picnic or something ... anything to get away from it !! im just mad that the lowest vote i could give it was 1 !


The people that created the hilarious Comedy Central cable TV series "Reno 911" have only marginal success with their new table tennis sports movie parody "Balls of Fury" (** out of ****), about a former ping-pong prodigy past his prime who helps the FBI nab the nefarious Asian mastermind that killed his father. Sadly, despite its inventive comic premise and celebrity cast, this low-brow farce depends on bowel humor and lowest common denominator jokes for its laughs. Okay, you'll smirk a lot at what masquerades as comedy in this lean but lame 90-minute nonsense. You might even snicker at the groaners, but you'll seldom laugh out loud for long. Incidentally, the "Star Wars" epics and "Scarface" provide the inspiration for much of the uninspired dialogue. The wit in the script by "Reno 911" writers Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant is as anal as it is banal, but the PG-13 rating prevents them from stooping too low. When was the last time, for example, that you saw a character in a movie get punched or kicked in the crotch for a laugh? Worst of all, chubby newcomer Dan Fogler looks funnier than he isan obvious Jack Black wannabe with none of Black's drollery.

As "Balls of Fury" unfolds, we meet clean-cut, curly-haired Randy Daytona (Brett DelBuono of "The Casket"), a twelve-year old who wields a mean ping-pong paddle. Randy makes it to the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Korea, but he suffers a humiliating defeat from the paddle of his maniacal Soviet Bloc opponent Karl Wolfschtagg (Thomas Lennon of "Reno 911") and quits the game. Not only does Daytona lose the championship, but also his coach as well as father--U.S. Marine sergeant Pete Daytona (Robert Patrick of "We Are Marshall")--dies at the hands of the infamous Asian criminal, Feng (tough guy Christopher Walken of "Pulp Fiction"), because he cannot pay off his debt. Meanwhile, Feng becomes a legendary crime lord and strives to keep his identity a closely guarded secret. Nineteen years pass, and woebegone Randy grows up and out (Dan Fogler) to emerge as a lounge act in a small Reno, Nevada, casino. Randy keeps several balls at a time in the air with his paddle with expertise of a juggler. A guy with a talking cockatiel announces his act. Unfortunately, everything goes wrong for poor Randy. He solicits a volunteer from the audience to participate in a gag, and the guy drops dead from a heart attack because Randy's ping-pong balls strike him in such rapid succession.

Enter the FBI. Agent Ernie Rodriquez (George Lopez of "Real Women Have Curves") recruits Randy to assist the Bureau in their Feng investigation. They want Randy to come out of retirement and win enough games so that Feng will invite him to one of his illegal underground table tennis tournaments held once every five years. The Bureau wants to bust Feng for international arms smuggling. Despite his expertise, Randy has lost his competitive edge, so Rodriquez enlists a championship ping-pong teacher, Master Wong (James Hong of "Chinatown"), to train him. The catch is that Wong is blind. Naturally, Wong walks into fences, looks the wrong way, and takes a nasty plunge down an elevator shaft. Wong makes Randy appear foolish when Wong's slim, sexy, athletic niece Maggie (the woefully underused Maggie Q of "Live Free or Die Hard") whips him repeatedly at ping-pong. Eventually, after an initial setback against Hammer (Patton Oswalt of "Cake Boy"), a trophy licking wiseacre, Randy regains his skill and Feng invites him to his secret play-offs. The losers here get a poison dart in the neck in what Feng calls 'single-elimination, sudden death matches.' Feng tries to tempt Randy to 'go over to the dark side' and join him in his weapons smuggling operation. Feng has designed an automatic pistol made of polymer so that it doesn't trip airport alarms.

Clearly, writer/director Robert Ben Garant and co-scenarist Tomas Lennon are poking fun at the classic Bruce Lee martial arts masterpiece "Enter the Dragon" with their premise about secret ping-pong ball play-offs. The idea that a relatively harmless sport like ping-pong can be as lethal as a kung fu tournament is the source of most of the film's best humor. Some of the participants--who can spin these tiny white balls on their fingertips, crush with their fists, and slice and dice them with a hatchet--are amusing characters, too. "Balls of Fury," however, runs most of its humor into the ground as well as elsewhere. Our heroes must smuggle mini-flashlight sized tracking devices into Feng's Central American headquarters. These devices will alert their FBI back-up as to their whereabouts. Yeah, you guessed, they enter Feng's premises walking a bit off-kilter with their FBI suppositories. Another example of the lowest common denominator humor here concerns host Feng supplying his guests with exotic courtesans that turn out to be male sex slaves. When Randy tries to send muscular young Gary (Dietrich Bader of "Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous") away, Gary refuses to leave. He explains that Feng's towering bodyguard, Mahogany (Aisha Tyler of "Death Sentence"), a Grace Jones look-alike who uses a blow-pipe to launch poison darts, will kill him. Homophobic Randy spends the entire night with Gary playing a board game to keep from falling asleep.

"Balls of Fury" isn't half as funny as "Reno 911," though it does have its moments. This is Dan Fogler's first major role, and he hasn't been around long enough to establish a signature comic persona like co-stars George Lopez, Patton Oswalt, and Christopher Walken who parades around in some of the most outrageous outfits this side of Elton John and Elvis Presley. Altogether, "Balls of Fury" lacks both the balls and the fury to be the side-splitting sensation that it sought to be.


There is absolutely no salvation for this abomination of comedic film. It's not even so stupid it's funny, its just really stupid. Thomas Lennon (Lt. Dangle from Reno 911) is just about the only character with any humor. The blind guy has no funny parts either, you basically have to force yourself to laugh. The main character is as drab as he is two-dimensional. This was an opportunity to be a good film, but it just doesn't even come close. Christopher Walken has once again embarrassed himself, not for being bad, for continually appearing in third rate films. He has never turned down a movie offer, and I respect that, but could he just stop doing things like this?? There are only two positives in this movie, Maggie Q is hot, and Thomas Lennon's performance, other than that, it's basically worse than Gigli.


This is by far, the worst piece of poop I have ever seen in my entire life. None of the people who ever produced,acted or directed this movie will ever hold a meaningful position in anything ever produced ever. Not once did I laugh, at anything in this movie (except obnoxiously to annoy people). Don't watch this movie, Ever. Please, I am saying this as a concerned human being. Oh yeah, and this is whats wrong with American film. At least it had something redeemable, like the fact that all the Asian's were masters of the martial arts, or all the great well written "hit in ball jokes", or even the special effects (see explosion at end of movie). Save yourself 10 brain cells and $10, don't see this.


I'd give it 0/10 stars if I could.

I'm all for mindless comedy sometimes. I love Ricky Bobby, BASEketball, etc, but this movie didn't know if it was a comedy or a movie with a plot. (hint:it was neither)

If you have a movie with funny writing, you can get away with playing it straight. This movie has poor writing, and straight acting making it one miserable 90 minute experience.

I've seen High School productions with better writing and better acting.

I should have left this so-called movie 30 minutes in and gone to see "Superbad" in the theater next door.

This movie was so bad, it makes me want to try to make a movie and my only "training" is an introduction to Theater course that I took in college. HEY !!! maybe that's how this movie got made in the first place.


This movie is a complete waste of time. This movie had the potential to be funny, but it failed miserably. The only thing that could save this movie was Christopher Walken, and he failed to deliver.

Walken was the only thing that I was excited about, and the 45 minutes or so he spent in this movie was terrible.

Something that really grinded my gears during this movie was the love plot. Randy likes this Asian girl named Maggie who is tired of "all the guys all over her", and she's also mad that Randy is the reason that her home was destroyed. But soon after, for no apparent reason, she falls in love with him and starts to kiss him. There was no explanation for this, but whatever. The whole movie fails anyway.

This movie was not funny. I basically forced myself to laugh. If you're walking into this movie expecting to see a funny Will Ferrell movie or something along the lines of Anchorman, or even a smarter comedy such as Superbad, you will be highly disappointed.

I give this movie a 3/10 because it had Christopher Walken in it, and because it had a plot that could have been used to much greater effect.

Do not believe what this movie is selling - a laugh fest with your buddies at the local cinema. This is garbage.


Balls of Fury was a poor excuse for a movie. It was not anything near what it was hyped up to be. Character development was crude to say the least, I have no idea where half of the characters came from. The relationship between Randy and Mahogany materialized out of no where, one minute they barely knew each other and the next they're kissing on a river, and Randy has a gun? (I don't have anything against guns-just very random). I felt like this was a Dodgeball rip-off; there was the handicapped trainer, fat and lazy rags to riches character(s), fighting for something barely obtainable, and the gung-ho girl ready to do it all (play dodgeball or pingpong), and some sort of try out where the team/person lost when it appeared to be a sure win. At least Dodgeball had a well written story.

In short, the character development sucked, as did the plot and overall development-everything could have been SO much more planned out. I would have liked to see more of the training, and more pingpong battles-there was hardly any pingpong for a movie that was ABOUT pingpong. More of the relationship between Randy and Mahogany-a date or something, please? Who are half these people, and where did they come from?!

I want $9.00 and 1.5 hours of my life back, please.

--John


"Balls of Fury" is an absolutely dreadful comedy. It amazingly would work better as a drama (not much better). With most films, I can find some redeeming quality. I looked hard and I this is what I found on this. The main character was slightly more tolerable than one would expect from such a poor movie. Christopher Walken was occasionally funny, simply because of his delivery...and well, that's it. Other than that, there are only negatives. Every joke could be seen by anyone a mile away. I could practically give the entire outcome of the film, including all the jokes, halfway through.

The plot, if you can call it that, started off slightly promising, but quickly became too stupid. Randy Daytona was a ping pong child prodigy. His father bet on him, and he lost, so he was killed. 18 years later Daytona works at a bad magic show. He is needed by the FBI to catch a Chinese mafia criminal. He gets lessons from a blind man, and it just gets dumber from there.

To go along with all of this, ping-pong just isn't an interesting sport to make in to a movie. It's repetitive and you can only do so much with it. I really hated this, and I have a feeling this will earn a well deserved spot in the bottom 100 very soon.

My rating: BOMB/****. 83 mins. PG-13 for language and sexual humor.


This one is the one to miss folks.

Not even the great one himself (Christopher Walken) could save this one. The lead character is at best painful to watch. Maggie Q was the only reason for me staying through the show. Stunning woman that Maggie. George Lopez, leave this OFF your resume there George. And for Jason Scott Lee to be in this show is reason enough for some intervention and immediate rehab! Get some help Jason!! I remember laughing once during the movie. Don't remember which part either. Sad sad sad. Previews are silly yes, but the movie isn't. Shhhhhocking!

Anyhow ladies and gents I am only writing more on this subject due to not using enough lines and comments. Thank you IMDb. Now we must all bare the burden of reading the rantings of someone who went to this movie on his only day off this week and kiss $4.50 good bye. Not to mention an hour and a half I'll never get back. And who are these other people who did the other reviews that thought this eyeball burner was "hilarious"? Must be the director or producer. And if it takes 3 film companies to produce a movie, man you're in for a rough ride already. Hope I now used enough space so I can submit. Take care all.


This movie was by far one of the top worst comedy's I've ever seen. There was nothing good about this movie. It was horrible in the beginning and it was even worse at the end.

While watching this movie I just became frustrated with it. I wanted to see a comedy. I knew the movie wasn't going to be a great comedy but I at least expected a few good laughs, but instead I got nothing. That just really sucked.

If you want to see a comedy, well then, you should rethink wasting your time, and just wait until something better comes out.

Don't Waste Your Time


This is a mostly flat movie that, I'm sure, read much better as a screenplay. It is trying so hard to be quirkily absurd that it does itself injury, and the collection of silly characters are mostly just going through the motions. Mediocre performances in most roles lend a sense of Acting 101 homework to the whole proceedings, events unfold without any build-up and even normally decent actors have lowed their game here. One plot line is so stereotypically racist as to be offensive, even with a slightly redeeming plot twist that might have been funny.

Timothy Olyphant is the only standout here, organically building a character that actually interested me. He impressed me enough that now I will look for him in other projects. Christina Ricci, always watchable, is given little in the script to support her nutty character. Still, without these two, No Vacancy would be pretty unwatchable.


The good news is that "No Vacancy" is not totally unwatchable. I managed to get through the WHOLE thing by breaking it into two days of viewing. This alone makes it better than "Lenny the Wonderdog" and many student films.

Back in 1995, a young Robert Rodriquez made a fairly entertaining anthology film called "Four Rooms", the setting is a hotel and the four stories take place in different rooms of that hotel. Marius Balchunas thought the idea so compelling that he appropriated it wholesale and wrote a script structured around the same premise. His one concession to originality was to change the setting from a hotel to a motel. Unfortunately Balchunas did not pay enough attention to the credits of "Four Rooms" and failed to see that its real strength was using four writer/directors (one was Tarintino), a different director for each room.

"No Vacancy" has three main stories. Lillian (Christina Ricci) wakes up in her room to find that she has spent the night with Luke (Timothy Olyphant) instead of her finance. Reynoldo (Joaquin de Almeida), the motel manager, is sizing up his daughter's Anglo boyfriend. Two seemingly non-actor personal friends (or enemies) of Balchunas are trying to figure out a way to pay for the escort service they used the night before. There are a few other quirky characters but they add almost nothing to the mix. Robert Wagner appears at one point playing Harvey Keitel's "The Wolf" character from "Pulp Fiction"; Balchunas cleverly (Duh!) disguises this identity theft by naming the character Mr. Tangerine, apparently more homage to Tarintino (insert "Reservoir Dogs" here). Because the low budget did not permit any decent music or original score, Balchunas had to rely on lounge music, possibly borrowed from old episodes of "Surfside Six". There is no danger of a CD release.

Joaquin de Almeida's stuff is really well done, it would probably hold up well in a good movie but looks even better here because of the awful stuff that surrounds it.

Ricci's performance is nothing to write home about although that is probably due to the lame script. But "No Vacancy" is a must see for her fans because of her physical appearance. This was her mega-fat phase and her outfits reveal a lot that I didn't really need to see. But "No Vacancy" is worth seeing just to fully appreciate the miracle physical transformation that took place between it and her next film, "Sleepy Hollow". I defy anyone without prior knowledge to detect that it is the same actress. Tim Burton must have locked her down for a few months of food withdrawal and exercise before he started filming. It helped some that she wore period costumes in "Sleepy Hollow", but her face has narrowed significantly and she has gotten actual definition back in her features.


No Vacancy is 83 minutes of bad writing, bad acting, and a fiasco of a film. This 1997 release, which I'm sure was a straight-to-DVD-budget-rack special, stars Christina Ricci (in her heaviest film appearance ever), Timothy Olyphant (of HBO's "Deadwood"), Lolita Davidovich (in a role so overacting you'll want to run from the room screaming at the sight of her herbal-masked face), and Robert Wagner. How the film attracted anyone to sign on to act in it escapes me. It's a true disaster.

Set in a motel of misfits, the movie's cross-cut edits and haphazard structure only serves to make it more annoying. I really regret every second of watching this mess.

Viewer beware! Watch a good Christina Ricci effort like "Opposite of Sex" and pass on this turkey. I squandered 83 minutes of my life. Save yours!!!


Kamchatka is a terrible film. I believe what seems to pass for "understated" is its plain dullness, and the main character (a kid whose POV is nominally carrying the movie) doesn't show a single instance of child-like perception - save for a couple of commonplace animal shots, the kid sees the world exactly as the rest of Piñeyro's characters; a polite, well-framed shot by Alfredo Mayo.

Since "Caballos Salvajes" I've been trying to figure out who the bad guys are in Piñeyro's films (back then, bullets always came from outside the frame). I'm sad to report things have gotten even worse, since now we need to resource to _our_ (external) knowledge of the period to understand what's going on. He seems to get away with it because, sadly, not that much happens in the movie, anyway.

Kamchatka might be worth seeing, however, if you're interested in recent developments in the political genre. It was interesting to me how, by trying to detach itself from the political movie tradition, it achieves the complete opposite: this is a film that couldn't possibly make sense unless you are not only aware of the external circumstances that affect the characters but also have already a clear position on the political conflict in case.

As justified as the generic, elegiac tone of the movie may be in the real world, its fictional consequences are devastating. It leaves us with no real characters and not a single dramatic scene proper.

Characters here are archetypes and, most of the time, it's not entirely clear of what. It doesn't help that the movie looks often derivative of other films that have successfully portrayed the specifics of perception in children (the soundtrack mimicking Thomas Newman is particularly painful in that respect).

Piñeyro's former writer (Aida Bortnik, who also wrote The Official Story) used to be quite annoying to me, but at least she seemed to know and like drama as a tool.


Or you'll hate or you'll love it, simple as that and I am quite afraid that I rather hate it. The story itself could have been interesting as we follow a couple who have to escape from their hometown (I suppose due to political reasons but that's never been explained) but everything is seen through the eyes of a boy who is called Harry (his new identity) as in his own created world his hero is Harry Houdini. Oh I wish I could escape from sleep during this movie as it's so dull and slowly filmed that you constantly watch the clock till it's going to end. Naaah sorry, films with a different view are always more than wellcome but they must have been made good as well otherwise...yup, otherwise you're bored.


Simplistic and predictible plot. I was hoping for an unexpected twist until the end. Burman says that he wanted to make a movie not related to the current situation in Argentina. He succeeded. However, is this goal worth a movie?


When this shows up, I watch it, never seeming to remember that I've already seen it. It's very predictable. It's implausible. It's forgettable.

The cast is good. I always get a kick out of Sydney Greenstreet. Humphrey Bogart was a good actor, though I am not a slavish worshiper by any means. Alexis Smith does OK, as she always did. And Rose Hobart is an excellent, cold villain as the wife who -- well, I won't give it away.

She is too unpleasant. Why would the two of them still be married? She is an incessant nag and a scold, with never a kind word to say.

And once we learn that Greenstreet is a psychiatrist -- it's pretty easy to write the basic plot outline oneself.


I needed that extra thumb to point straight down to the depths of hades where this monstrosity belongs. Terrible writing, coupled with worse editing, made for a nightmare of a movie. From the too-long opening, until the ridiculous and un-decipherable end (I probably crapped out on the spelling of that one)I watched in horror as a junior high-school student with a cheap video camera attempted to be Hitchcock. I think that I am a worse person for watching this. Well... maybe not, it did lower my standards for any movie... of any genre... ever. Only a few movies have graced my wall of shame, and I proudly place this one with them. Right next to Double Dragon. All that said, I had a great time watching this with a friend, and just tearing holes through it. Great cheese-filled fun in here. But, unfortunately, the cheese is rotten.


A Few years ago, I found this at a Flea Market, after catching the trailer on the VHS of The Wizard Of Gore years earlier. All I remembered was that it seemed like something worth the three dollars the guy was asking, but after years of being burned in my search for decent-bad cinema, I wasn't all that shocked to discover that Class Reunion Massacre is, in fact, not worth the three dollars I paid. I like old B-horror because it's different, because it's outlandish and rebellious, because it can be refreshing compared to all the big-budget, super-hero garbage of today. But none of that means anything if it puts you to sleep.

Typical Horror plot. Some kid walks out of a lake, gets on a bus, and goes to Church, where we find a rather loud Priest doing his thing...

and I'm sure all of this has something to do with the six "sinners" the story now revolves around. Four People I barely noticed, Mr. metro-fem, and a lesbian are headed to their 10 year high school reunion where they can sit around and eat, and "act", and wonder where the hell everyone's at. With the doors now locked, one by one, everyone is taken out by the redeemer, some guy who probably fancys himself some kind of righteous/sadistic chameleon, hence the killing in the name of God, and constant wardrobe changes. Feeling tired yet?

Class Reunion Massacre is mostly made up of endless conversations and ironic killings meant to punish sins such as gluttony, and drinking too much. This film manages to be blasphemous against Christianity, as well as B-cinema. I expected very little, yet was somehow still disappointed. What I find most irritating about Class Reunion Massacre is I can almost detect a hint of potential somewhere in there. The atmosphere is all it has going for it. Ultimately, this is not a good horror movie, not a good B-movie, Class Reunion Massacre, for the lack of a better word, is a failure. Actually, I wouldn't mind a DVD release, with some audio commentary, which might shed a little light, because I just know I missed something. I don't get it. There's way too many positive reviews for this... come to think of it, I'm wasting my time here. I could be reviewing something worthwhile, like Nightmare In A Damaged Brain...


What is it with all these folks in horror movies? Most of them look like the type of people who would watch gore films all the time, but except for the characters in the SCREAM series, it's as if all these dumb dodos have never seen even ONE slasher flick in their soon-to-be-curtailed lives. They always persist in running off alone on pointless errands, instead of sticking together and overwhelming an often vulnerable looking killer (such as the "Redeemer" here) through the sheer force of a mass attack while they still have the advantage of superior numbers. And Jeanetta Arnette, who plays former high school glee club singer Cindy (destined to be drowned in the sink of the girls' john), did you realize you spoiled the whole movie by flopping around about two minutes after you were supposed to be "dead"? Sheeesh!


I would like to preface these comments by saying that I saw this movie on a poor quality double feature DVD (paired with Andy Milligan's "CARNAGE") that I picked up at the dollar store, so I honestly wasn't expecting much from CLASS REUNION MASSACRE (aka "THE REDEEMER: SON OF Satan!") from the get-go. I read some reviews of the film on this site and several others before viewing it, and I noticed a lot of comments about its "dreamlike" or "surreal" quality. After watching the movie, I wonder how much of that "dreamlike" quality was intentional and how much was just dumb luck on the director's part. There were a few interesting scenes in CLASS REUNION MASSACRE but for the most part I found myself laughing at the screen more often than not.

Here's our "plot" more or less: six people, each a cartoonish stereotype representing a "deadly sin," (a greedy lawyer, a vain gay man, a lesbian, a rich bitch, a male chauvinist pig, and a promiscuous former teen-queen) return to their now-closed high school for a ten-year reunion, where they quickly discover that they're the ONLY people in the school building aside from a psychotic killer who locks the doors and proceeds to pick them off one by one while wearing a variety of masks and costumes. Our six victims, to be blunt, are idiots. After nearly every death scene, the remaining survivors invariably sit around looking dejected and discuss "NOW what are we going to do?" until the crazed killer strikes again, rather than doing the logical thing, like trying to smash out a window, break down a locked door, or whatever is necessary to escape. They also tend to stand around in shock and horror after every death while the killer makes a long, drawn-out speech about their sinful lives, letting him say his piece rather than simply rushing the guy and trying to kick his ass. Oddly enough, our killer (who is a fire-and-brimstone priest, judging from the not-very-helpful exposition shown at the beginning of the movie) seems to have no connection to the six people other than the fact that they're sinners and he hates them. If he had gone to school with the six and they'd shoved him in a locker or otherwise mistreated him in some way in the past, then perhaps the rampage would make sense. I'm not even going to get into the kid with an extra thumb (?) who rises mysteriously out of a lake (!) at the prologue of the movie (accompanied by some of the most annoying synthesizer music ever recorded) and is not seen again till he returns there in the epilogue, because those scenes feel like they were pasted in from a different film. The prevailing theory seems to be that the kid is actually "The Redeemer" and that he's the one pulling the strings (those of you who've seen the movie will get that reference, I'm sure) behind the Priest's murder spree, but overall CLASS REUNION MASSACRE isn't coherent enough for the viewer to know for sure. It seems to me like the makers of the film were trying to mesh the then-popular "Satanic child" genre (i.e. "The Omen") with the slasher film genre, but they bungled both sides of the equation. The highlights for me were the teen-queen character, a Farrah Fawcett wanna-be who was wearing a short skirt, and one kill scene involving a pendulum hanging from the ceiling and a creepy puppet in a clown suit. Otherwise, CLASS REUNION MASSACRE was 90 minutes that I should've put to better use, like clipping my toe nails or watching paint dry.


BIG SPOILERS

There was absolutely nothing I enjoyed about this film.. those who think "Carnage" is the worst ever.. they should watch this...

There are 6 people who have done something sinful, who knows what it was-- and these six people get invites to a class reunion at their high school.. It's just them, and then this preacher guy shows up at the school --I have no idea how or why!! And he basically murders the six people who try desperately to elude this loony toon to get out of the school alive!!!

The preacher also uses like 4 different disguises, a skeleton, clown, and something else....

I really didn't care whether these characters lived or died-- it was that boring...

The deaths are basic--- shotgun, revolver, sword in head, little flamethrower another sword killing, and a girl gets drowned in a restroom sink!!!!

6 different deaths for each of the six people..!!!

As it turns out, they all never escape, and they ll get murdered!!

And the psychotic preacher is shown at the end as a very regular "unpsychotic" preacher preaching at a service...then the boy who we see rise from the lake in the beginning, gets back on the bus, and gets driven to the lake.. and he walks back under the water to where he arose from... ends with a quote from the bible!!!

Don't watch unless you have insomnia-- this will put you right to sleep!!!

This was a double feature DVD with Carnage from EastEnd DVD's.com--

Absolutely no extras, no scene selection on either movie--- I already have the VHS movie of Carnage which was better than the Redeemer: son of Satan!

So I took the DVD, and ran in electric saw through it!!!!

"The Plumber" is as just as bad- except I rented that one-- good thing I did!! Took it back IMMEDIATELY after I watched it!!


I'll give it to you straight: This movie is a stupid, boring waste of time. the acting is some of the worst i've ever seen, the charachters are faceless sterotypes, the plot (if you can call it that) is absurd, the soundtrack is a loud, annoying rip off of halloween, and to add to all that, it just doesn't make any sense. Unless you enjoy painful experiences, skip it.


When THE REDEEMER: SON OF Satan was released back in 1978, the ad campaign made it look like another THE OMEN. I remember seeing the ad campaign but I never saw the movie because I was too young back then. I've wanted to see the movie ever since. I finally got hold of a very cheap video, renamed as CLASS REUNION MASSACRE, and watched it for the first time. Boy, what a letdown. The original OMEN angle was extremely deceptive. The film is more like a standard Agatha Christie kind of movie (and no, it's not even close to being a giallo), sorta like a crude version of TEN LITTLE INDIANS, were people are locked up in some big mansion, in this case it's a rundown High School (it doesn't look like a school) and the stupid people are killed one by one by a maniac. The whole thing is soooo lame. I expected Jessica Fletcher to pop in at any moment and try to solve the killings.

If you look at the cast list at the IMDb page for this movie, the killer, or the REDEEMER, is played by T.G. Finkbinder, a doughy guy who overacts shamelessly in a theatrical manner and looks like he ate too many twinkies. Now how scary is that for a murderer? There's NO supernatural element in this film, or no one is killed with supernatural means. The boring killer uses a flamethrower, death by drowning or a standard shotgun to off his victims. Again, where's the originality? I suspect the producers of this film had original intended the film to be a standard TEN LITTLE INDIANS kind of movie but decided to make a few superficial changes to the film in order to sell it as an OMEN kind of film, which were popular back in those days and were making a lot of money at the box office. The core of the movie is the Agatha Christie part. The superficial additions I suspect were added at the last minute to bookend the movie: they happen at the beginning and at the very end, with a little boy (sorta like Damien from THE OMEN) walking out of a lake(!) and heading for the school, and ends with the kid going back into the lake. If you cut those two pointless scenes, it wouldn't make any difference to the bulk of the movie. In fact, the scenes with the kids don't have anything to do with the group of six adults locked up in the mansion. The whole thing is obvious and remarkably tacky and transparent. Imagine, back in the 1970s, the producers tried to sell this turkey as an OMEN kind of film. When the film was released on video in the 1980s, the producers retitled the film in order to sell it as a slasher, which were all the rage thanks to the success of HALLOWEEN and Friday THE 13TH. I wonder what title they'll come up with when they release the film on DVD today. SCREAM AND MORE SCREAMING ?!?!

Having said that, is the core of the movie good? Nope. It's lame. Acting, dialogue, cinematography. Practically everything about the TEN LITTLE INDIANS portion of the film sucks. The only good thing in the movie is the main theme of the soundtrack. It's actually good and effective.

If you expect an OMEN or DAMIEN kind of film with THE REDEEMER, well, you'll be sorely disappointed. If you expect to see a slasher kind of film under its second title, CLASS REUNION MASSACRE, well, you'll be disappointed by it as well. And if you expect a good movie of any kind, well, you won't find it with this sad excuse of a horror film.


I watched this in my Foreign Films class. Taking place in an isolated community of Scottish Bible Thumpers, Breaking the Waves stars a young, clingy woman who must have sex with lots of men if her husband is to recover from a horrible accident. In the end, she gets raped and dies, and the husband makes a full recovery.

Before going on, it is important to understand the movement this film was part of. This was one of the so called "Dogme 95" films. A group of directors got together and set up a cult like group where all films produced had to follow a strict set of rules, such as no tripods, no unnatural lighting, on location shooting only, etc.

In an artistic sense, Breaking the Waves was a good, emotionally challenging film. However, I, being somewhat Spock-ish, do not like emotionally challenging films. All the hardship and mental pain makes me sad. (In a bad way. I don't understand why people ever see sad movies, if sadness=displeasure and happiness=pleasure)

So...ya. I don't like emotions.


Uggghhh!!!! This is one of several Looney Toons cartoons that were shelved decades back due to their strongly racist content. And while SOME of them are actually highly offensive BUT well-made, this one is a bore even if it weren't full of racial stereotypes. For some of these offensive cartoons, I have recommended people watch them--particularly for their historical value. However, this one has really nothing to recommend it--being a long cartoon with nothing but stupid music and very, very big-lipped Black characters acting,...well,...STUPID! So, the film is offensive, poorly made and not particularly entertaining--everything you'd like in a cartoon, huh?! (this is sarcasm, by the way)


Others here have described the plot of A WHISPER IN THE DARK; my few comments focus on the film's disappointing, unimaginative finale.

For nearly two hours, A WHISPER IN THE DARK sets its audience up to believe it is watching an old-school ghost story that is leading up to a definitive (perhaps revelatory) finish. However, in the film's last moments, the audience is blue-balled by a dissatisfying, ambiguous finale that seems to expose a clear lack of imagination on the parts of director Aliprandi and screenwriters Rienzi. This is one of those endings that will leave most asking "Are you kidding me? That's it?!!!"

The primary question raised again and again in the film -- does Luca exist, or is he only a figment of Martino's imagination -- seems to be answered in three particular scenes in the film. A soccer ball kicked by Martino is stopped by an unseen force Martino names as being Luca; a blindfolded Camilla senses an unseen presence kissing her in full sight of several witnesses; and little Matilde seemingly sees and speaks to an unseen Luca who entices her to fall from a balcony. Still, even with what appears to be convincing evidence of Luca's existence, the final scene around the family breakfast table seems to forget much of what the audience has already seen, showing the family apparently accepting Luca's ghost (whether imagined by Martino or as a "real" ghost) as an unavoidable fixture in their lives after all of those same characters have spent the rest of the movie expressing views and opinions quite to the contrary. I can only assume Aliprandi and the Rienzis never had any clear idea of where they were going with the story and tacked on a slapdash ending just to be done with it.

I would have liked to recommend this film because the acting is good and the story is interesting, but the disappointing way the filmmakers chose to wrap up the story puts too much of a damper on the overall enjoyment. That being the case, I'd actually recommend that viewers skip this one entirely.


I'm glad there are companies like NoShame that are resurrecting lost Italian genre films for DVD. I just wish these films would live up to their reputations! _A Whisper in the Dark_ is never even remotely scary and is, ultimately, a very slow-moving and rather pointless movie. It is not in the same league as films like Mario Bava's _Shock_ or _The Sixth Sense_, as another poster here has suggested. It doesn't even really have much to do with Henry James' _The Turn of the Screw_ or films based on that story. I kept waiting impatiently for something--ANYTHING--to happen and it never did. When the final credits rolled, I was thinking "is that it?" If you really want to see the movie for yourself, save your money and rent it from Netflix, as I did. Even then, you might regret taking up a space in your queue with this nonsense.


It's a pity this movie is practically unknown, 'cause it would be a serious contender to reach the top of one of those "worst movie" lists... Intended to be a supernatural thriller, in the end it's only a collection of horror stereotypes, bad actors performing at their worst, embarrassing kitsch moments (yes, those great kitsch moments that can transform a b-movie into a trash cult!), the most disagreeable couple of twin girls in movie history and a screenplay that, lacking any trace of logic and plausibility, manages instead to deliver some tragically funny (alas, unintentionally) dialogues

The only real frights come courtesy of the scary costumes (pure 1970's-style) the actors wear throughout the movie: a collection of the worst of the worst of fashion...

And the only real mystery is why Joseph Cotten is in this mess...


I don't know why, but it seems like the makers of the film had a 3-week deadline to get the film done. Many of the shots are poor, and a few reshoots could have done it well in the long run.

But, overall, I did enjoy the movie. I admit that the starting was not great, but towards the end there was so much going on, you just couldn't stop watching!

Many cameos make this a worthwile watch, with Jabba from Channel V even making a star appearance as the new Fat Pizza employee, who is hell bent on whatever drugs he can find.

The story is not great, but it ensures many events to happen along the way. There's Bobo's wedding and his (extreme) bachelor party, Sleek being stalked by fat women, Pauly looking after Bobo's wedding ring, and Habib growing even more afraid of police activity, whilst trying to get any chick he can (and if you've seen the movie, ou'll know what I mean!).

But, even these many events cannot overpower the production values. Much of the acting is poor, and nesarly every culture or group is attacked in one form or another. What I mean is, some people may get offended.

Overall, I give it 4 out of 10.


This movie is insane... Haven't ever seen so bad movie ,if you wanna see the worlds worst movie ,then this is it!!!! If you wanna know which movie is good ,you have to see the worst!!! All group who is involved in this movie must be ....!!!!! There is no storyline ,very bad actors.. Sorry Paul Fenech but please don't do more movies ,this is madness. I call people to vote this movie "Bad movie for all the time". I hope i have warn people ,that you may go crazy ,if you watch this movie to the end!! Thats advisory opinion.I don't wanna insult no-one ,but there's must be a best movie and the worst!!I can't say even one thing ,what was right in this movie! Sorry.


This cheap POS is unbelievably bad.

The jokes aren't funny, often it's just grossness as a cheap humor substitute, the rest of time they're just flat, and even if they were they are so obviously coming that all of the humor has dissipated by the time that they arrive.

The characters are cardboard and even if they weren't the actors all look like they are playing drunkenly drawn caricatures. Furthermore the actors are so obviously playing to a camera and getting cues that even if the first 2 problems with the character depiction weren't there you'd still have the realism of the typical elementary school Christmass play.

This movie looks cheap, not just low budget but tacky colors and deserted scenes along with ham handed camera work make it look even cheaper than it likely was.

God this sucks!


This piece of worthless rubbish could only be made in Australia. The humour is definitely aimed at the sort of man (I can't imagine any women watching more than 10 seconds of it), who thinks it hilarious to drop his trousers after drinking 15 pints.

Not that the Australian film industry is devoid of humour. "Malcolm" for example, was both clever and funny and an absolute gem. "Fat Pizza" on the other hand seems to have been made in a couple of weeks by someone who's idea of a joke is to say f*** a few times and then bleep it out. There are loads of brain-dead jokes that a four year old would not find funny and if the makers of this film spent more than the price of a can of Fosters on the film sets, they were well and truly ripped off. Despite this, the acting is acceptable and there are some reasonable performances, despite the script.

For the first few minutes I couldn't decide whether I liked the film or not. Sometimes a film can be awful, but work really well, but it soon became obvious that it was trying desperately hard to be funny, and failing. I am not averse to the "no brain required" sort of humour that Hollywood turns out on a regular basis, it's fun and and a bit of light entertainment. This movie, however, is awful and a real chore to sit through. The childish attempts at being (oh so) politically incorrect are just embarrassing. I can imagine that the actors and crew had a great time making this movie, but it simply doesn't work on the screen.

There is nothing else to compare this film to. The closest thing I can think of is if a bunch of not very bright schoolboys trying really, really hard to be naughty, got hold of a camera.

This is the first review I have posted, and that's because this is the only movie I have ever felt angry about wasting my time trying to watch. Don't waste your time or money renting it, just do yourself a favour and avoid this complete rubbish at all costs.


I think the film had enough humorous moments to make a 30-minute episode of the standard we've come to expect from the TV series. Because I love the TV show so much, my expectations were perhaps too high, but I found most of this movie vexatiously unamusing.


Maybe I am just too old. Maybe it's because I am not an Aussie, and I did not get all the subtleties of this film. Anyway, I did not like it.

Seeing 'Fat Pizza' was to me kind of like trying to listen to rap / hip-hop music. I am 50+, I belong to the rock generation, I love all kind of music and pretend to be a liberal, but rappers still are beyond my taste. I have nothing against, I respect the right of other people to listen and like them, they are just too far away from my universe and taste for me to enjoy their work. I cannot follow all their texts, I do not like their music (ar lack of music), they are too fast, I do not share their feelings.

Same with 'Fat Pizza'. The film is apparently inspired by a TV series. What I did like was that it's different from your usual TV comedy stuff. The film does not try to be politically correct, which is really spoiling many American comedies today. The rhythm is crazy, and this is the main problem in my opinion. It is so crazy and fast that you do not have time to follow the jokes. There is not too much connection between the gags either, no line of action or humor, and the result is unfortunately no better than in a less than average sitcom.

That's too bad. The watching experience is different but the result is not better than bad comedy, scarcely extracting a smile now and then.

But after all, it may be just me. Perhaps after seeing a few more rap comedies like this I will get to understanding better and even enjoying the genre. Same as with rap music. The question is whether they will get me watching or listening to them.

4 out of 10 on my personal scale.


The story takes on the adventure of a reckless guy who is away from his pregnant wife in the rural-area and seeks to become a singer in the city but things turns out badly (or funny?). He goes through a series of unexpected events and finally returns home at the end.

A lack of skills in filmmaking is obviously shown in "Monrak Transistor". The music is somehow nostalgic, reminding me of the old days but the film itself has nothing to do with that feeling . Predictable plot, poor adaptation from country songs to few musical scenes and formulaic ending make it totally dull from start to the end. This film cannot lie itself exactly on what its gene is? is it musical or drama? I guess it's just a drama with some comic elements. Is the stereotype of people livings outside a big city like Bangkok supposed to be funny in a sense? Of course, there are many more ways to portray Thai country lifestyles than a bunch of unnecessary, pathetic jokes that only trigger your physical reaction from your stomach rather than your intellectual reaction from the brain. You might laugh at some gags but later on you might realize that it is a kind of movies that are so bad that it makes you feel you should laugh at it. This is one of the worst Thai films in recent years.


This is an old-fashioned way how a film is made. The characters and the story are not what we can relate to. They are totally dull and unconvincing. Who cares about the pathetic jokes a guy putting himself in a difficult situation. Just painfully waited until it ended. This film is overrated and a big disappointment from Thailand.


the most catastrophic result in Christie's TV movie story! Dr Sheppard, the world-famous ambiguous narrator of the story, doesn't narrate anything at all, and he do not collaborate in any way with poirot .His role is completely sucked by Inspector japp, and so the highly celebrated Agatha Christie's final twist is deprived of any sense.The tender relationship among Dr Sheppard and his sister,the psychological key of the novel, is substituted by a silly shooting in a chemical factory, as in a Batman film(but of course without special effects) and by the absurd murder of the butler.Certainly the worst screenplay in a series duly highly praised for the excellent Suchet, but not certainly for the uneven quality of the screenwriters,throwing usually in their scripts Labour party marches or speed water records with no sense or relations with the story they must to adapt.


As usual, the production values and the acting are top notch, with David Suchet once again performing the perfect Poirot. The historical accuracy is good; the right cars, buildings and clothing for the period make it believable for that time period. As far as the film being a film, it is is good. I'm a big fan of Christie, not just Poirot and Miss Marple, but also her other characters, most of these novels have been made into decent programmes (although when her short stories are adapted for television there is obviously some padding put in,) but in most cases they tend to stick quite close to the source. However, as an adaptation of Agatha Christie's book of the same name, this version is appalling! To the point whereby when my brother recorded this for me at it's first showing, he entitled the cassette "The Murder of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd". 'Nuff said?


The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is rightly regarded as one of the best crime novels of all time. Its initial publication caused controversy in some quarters because of a startling trick pulled by Agatha Christie. To bring this across properly in the form of a TV movie would take considerable skill, but with the right script-writer and director, it could make a fantastic film.

This certainly isn't it. The normally-reliable Clive Exton has seen fit to add another murder for no reason other than to provide a cliff-hanger for a commercial break, most of the characters have been destroyed, and what on Earth are factories and airports doing in there? The film only needs to feature three houses to work - it's a puzzle, not an action film.

It's such a pity that this should have been part of the regular Poirot series. For the rest of its run, the adaptations have been fairly faithful to the source material. This one's destruction of the structure of the plot is the sort of thing which we'll see more of in ITV's Marple travesties in a few years time. Unfortunately, I doubt that ITV will ever go back and do this one properly, because subjective camera-work could lead to a very atmospheric film version of this story.


In most instances, I like to begin one of these "reviews" (I put that word in parentheses because I'm not sure that what I'm doing here would actually constitute a "review") with a plot summary. But, this being Agatha Christie and all, I would hate to give away even the most insignificant of clues. So I'll be very glib and just say that there's a murder, lots of suspects, and Hercule Poirot (I told you I was being glib).

I was prepared to write a rather lengthy review detailing all of my many problems with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, but after reading what others have already written on IMDb, I'm not sure I see much of a reason. The issues I have with the film have been spelled-out more eloquently than I could ever hope. Like many other Agatha Christie fans, I've always thought of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd as one of her better efforts. It's a clever mystery told in an unusual style (at least unusual for Christie). As other reviewers have noted, gone is much of the mystery that makes the book so wonderful. Instead, the movie adds on a quite tacky finale that's completely out of character with the source material. I understand that creative license must be taken to bring these novels to television, but this time it's just too much. I could, and probably should, have rated The Murder of Roger Ackroyd lower, but the acting, sets, locations, etc. are too enjoyable to rate it a total disaster.

Maybe someday someone will tackle The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and gets it right.


OK. This is just laughable garbage. Really not worth my time writing this, typically I'm the type that keeps negative opinions on films to myself because I still consider movies an artful expression. But I guess after a slew of garbage recently, I must draw the line. It's frustrating to see people with this vision in the driver's seat to make a film. Not to mention the director has a horror niche background. His biggest film to date, 2001 Maniacs isn't something to be too proud of either. Bigger budget.

Anyway, avoid at all costs. It's just laughable, corny, with some severe gay undertones.

Diamond Dallas Page was pretty decent, Talan from Laguna Beach is so awful. Why? Why, guys?


not great nothing new.

ghost looked like a mask for 2 dollars for Halloween.

production value is OK compared to the budget...

i got bored, and had to fast forward to get to end, which was well untouching.

some of the production team members are writing comments of praisal, and giving 10/10 ... we'll those people suck.

a a a

not the worst... but definitely NOT a good movie. wouldn't miss anything by skipping this one.


I watched this because of the same reason I watched the first three, they were on basically... I love 1, 2, and 3 but did not enjoy much of this at all. I'm not going to go down a list of things i liked and disliked, but will point out a few things. First I thought it was offensive (more because of the acting than the way the disabled were treated). Second, I thought it was a little too much like I thought the first three were going to be like (basically soft porn). Third, Too much of everything except the two things I wanted: Violence and humour. And finally, the fact they said at the beginning this was the true sequel to the first film, even though it pales in comparison to the films that came before.

Oh... And what were Lemmy AND Stan Lee thinking!?!?!?


If you are 13 years old, completely mind retarded and drunken you maybe will enjoy that movie. But only when you haven't seen ever any other movie before. I made the failure to rent it. Next time i am thinking about renting a toxic avenger movie i will just burn the money and stare 1.5 hours against a wall. this will be much more fun and less painful.

But if you are think that watching a class of retarded eating tacos is fun. Or if you want to see every five minutes the boobs of not really pretty women without any senceful reason. Well then you maybe should rent that video. And if you really enjoy it, get sure to keep the genepoole clean from you're DNA.


The Toxic Avenger...

The idea of this movie is that a person that the common population would call this person a looser and then after being thrown into a barrel of toxic waste, mutated into a superhero that is completely disfigured sounded OK even for 1985. This movie is listed as a horror... I even have read of a cult following with this series....

Now this movie even given when it was made was so bad that I couldn't stop watching... the acting is horrible even for an independent film that I think was to be the horror part of this movie...

Personally I am almost ready to write to the film company that made this and ask them for the 87mins or so of my life back.

To me 1 out of 10 is too high it's too bad that there isn't a 0 (zero) or even negative integers to place on a movie here.

In other words this movie is J-U-N-K......

If this is to be Troma's best offering to date.... all I have to say is yuck and avoid like the plague.


It has some beautiful landscape shots and really good cinematography but it ends up being dull and sluggish. The best part of the movie contains the bear scenes, which were truly impressive considering that they used a real animal in these scenes. It is a big movie for east European standards. But stays short of an epic, which it had a potential to be. Overall slightly disappointing experience.


Douglas Fairbanks jr had already been in the movie business for 14 years when he made this film, despite being a youthful 21 years old. Although he would go on to become one of the more delightful actors of the '30s and '40s, he shows little promise of that here, nor any sign of talent acquired during his previous 25 films.

A prologue announces the virtuous intention of depicting a moral scourge so that an informed public can combat it--but this is clearly just a CYA that allows the intriguingly-named "Personality Pictures" company to run this cheesy exploitation flick past the already toothless production code office.

Maude Lindsay (Almeda Fowler) runs a "party girl" service for business functions, and she tries to send her hootchiest coochies to the United Glass soiree. (The only real humor in the entire film comes from her secretary continually addressing her as "Madame Lindsay," and Lindsay admonishing her, "Don't call me madam!") John Rountree is an upright business man who wants to work with the district attorney to eliminate the party girl influence on doing business; his son Jay (Fairbanks) is a ne'er-do-wheel frat boy in love with dad's secretary, Ellen (Jeanette Loff)--a girl with a secret.

Jay and his frat brothers crash the United Glass party, and a drunken Jay is trapped by a party girl, herself in a delicate situation.

The usual confusion ensues.

As the previous commenter notes, the sound quality is abysmal, but it may be just as well--the dialogue is no great shakes. There are certain scenes painful in their laughableness, especially the death scene of a tender young thing who's fallen 6 stories, and yet appears not to have a scratch on her.

It's a dreadful film, and not even dreadful in that delicious "so bad it's good" sort of way.


Wild Women! Bootleg hooch! Hot jazz! Sequins and furs! Blackmail! Suicide! This pre-Code cautionary tale opens with a typical disclaimer stating "It is our earnest hope that this film may arouse you..." Of course, they mean arouse your indignation to help eliminate such vices as you view in this exposé. Or, do they?

Pleasant juvenile Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., headlines along with a bevy of largely talent-free "party girls". Judith Barrie has some especially embarrassing scenes, leading one to wonder whether she may have gotten her part by being a party girl. Almeda Fowler, making her film debut as Maude "Don't call me Madam" Lindsay, and veteran actor John St. Polis put in decent performances adding some humor. The well regarded Earl Burtnett and His Hotel Biltmore Orchestra from Los Angeles provides suitable jazz accompaniment.

The best scene is the party where guests arrive in their automobiles via a service elevator directly to the party. The much commented upon perfumed fountain scene seems to have been excised from the version available from Alpha Video. Altogether, this is a pleasant diversion that pushes the envelope even for pre-Code Hollywood.


Too late the hero is one of the most boring movies that I've ever seen,well its not that bad,the action was good,the acting is decent and the battles are good.For a start,half way throughout the movie some things can just drive you insane and I'm not going to talk about that.It's about an American lieutenant who leads a platoon of British soldiers into a jungle somewhere in the Pacific to destroy a Japanese radio station.At that time a Japanese Major captured two men and are threatening the rest of the survivors to surrender or else he will kill them.As a lot of WWII movies are found interesting I found absolutely nothing interesting at all.The atmosphere for this movie is good and the effects are crap.

This movie is nothing but sheer disappointment nd nothing can change that(yes,even a remake).The blood wounds are cheesy for a movie that was made in 1969.I don't know what the deal was on making this movie,it was probably seen as spectacular for its time.I was going to give it a 5 at the start but the boring parts made me give it a 4 instead.Mostly if you see a war movie you are expecting to see a lot of action but this is a war movie that should be avoided because there is barely any action in this movie.War movie fans will be disappointed with this heap of junk.


Far too noisy,far too long,far from subtle.And it had Lance Percival in it.I don't really need to go on but I shall because "Too late the hero" or 'ero as our professional cockney might have it, is one of the worst kind of movies.The kind that pretend to be one thing but turn out to be quite another.Here we have a bash - crash no prisoners war movie full of squaddies with gritted teeth firing machine guns at other squaddies with gritted teeth accompanied by belicose music ,dramatic sunlight through the trees and much crunching of the undergrowth.One by one the good guys are killed off until only the professional cockney and the smug yank are left and then there's a rousing climax as they race across a huge expanse of open ground the Brits have inexplicably left unmined outside their camp until one of them gets his and the other collapses at the feet of his lantern - jawed C.O. who clenches his teeth manfully.OK.It's a Robert Aldrich war movie,a sort of "Dirty Half Dozen",but hey,now it's 1968 man,it's not cool any more to make war movies,let's pretend we've made an anti - war movie and really clean up. And so they did.Don't be fooled,this is not an anti - war movie any more than it's big brother "The Dirty Dozen" was.A handful of misfits and psychos take on an impossible mission led by a misfit and a psycho. Ground - breaking stuff it isn't.Lance Percival tries a bewildering range of accents before settling on a vaguely Scottish lilt but cannot compete with full - on nutter Ronald Fraser or frankly weird Ian Bannen in the "Barmy Jock" stakes.Our favourite cockney veers between Bob Hoskins and John Gielgud as the whim takes him.Denholm Elliot sweats far too much to make a convincing officer,"We have a place in Wiltshire" he tells Cliff Robertson who absorbs this nugget unblinkingly Robertson himslf changes from a man willing to resign his commission rather than go into combat to a gung - ho battle - hardened leader of men in the space of ten minutes.Whatever he's on they should have given the whole U.S. Army and the war would have been over by 1942. The worst film about the war in the East since "Never so few".


The only thing that stops me giving this film one star is the cast. It's rare to find this many good character actors in one movie.

I didn't realise as I watched, but apparently "Too Late The Hero" is meant to be an allegory for America's war against Vietnam. Trying to draw parallels between Vietnam and WWII really doesn't work.

Despite a vehement anti-war streak, the movie seems to delight in its action sequences, almost daring us to cheer as the nominal bad guys get shot or blown up.

It's this inconsistency in tone that destroys "Too Late The Hero". What point is the film trying to make? Is Denholm Elliot's character a cowardly villain or a shot-away, crazy-brave hero? Why does Cliff Robertson's character refuse to accept a simple change of plan at a crucial moment? Is he a coward or a by-the-book officer? Why does Michael Caine's character alternate between anti-authority and gung-ho heroics? What, quite simply, is Ronald Fraser's character's problem? If he's that much of a coward, surely he'd have found a more effective way of invaliding himself by now? What makes Lance Percival's character follow a murderous and cowardly comrade into a Japanese trap? There are too many questions going unanswered, even before the film's "50/50 Chance of Survival" finale.

If you're looking for a more realistic portrayal of British soldiers fighting in South East Asia during WWII, watch the 1961 B&W film "The Long and The Short and The Tall". If you're looking for a more realistic portrayal of American troops in Vietnam, the choice is endless. "Too Late The Hero" was recently given away as a free DVD with a UK newspaper, which gives a good indication of how lame it is.


Veteran director Robert Aldrich tried to re-work the success of "The Dirty Dozen" with a blatantly anti-war remake, "Too Late the Hero". Unfortunately, an able cast is wasted in this very anti-war effort, which plays out more like an anti-Vietnam allegory than a tale of wartime heroics.

In the spring of 1942, American Lt. Lawson (Cliff Robertson, "Up from the Beach") sits lazily on a Pacific island, doing everything possible to avoid hazardous duties. Captain Nolan (Henry Fonda, in a one-scene cameo) disrupts his comfort with a hazardous assignment. Lawson is flown to the New Hebrides for a cooperative mission with the British. We find that the British hold one end of the island; the Japanese hold the other. Lawson and a patrol will penetrate enemy territory to destroy a vital radio station.

At first, the film seems utterly predictable. Lawson is a type we've seen before  an unlikely soldier who redeems himself heroically by the final act. But with the introduction of the English characters and their Japanese counterparts, all audience expectations are shattered. Captain Hornsby (Denholm Elliott), the unit commander, proves to be a bungling  and homosexual  idiot, and the men have no faith in him. Pvt. Hearne (Michael Caine, "Play Dirty") is obviously dis-satisfied with Hornsby's indecisive "leadership", and after his incompetence results in unnecessary deaths, Hearne breaks into an open rebellion. Before long, the mission goes downhill, and Lawson and Hearne find themselves united in a mutual struggle for survival behind enemy territory.

Aldrich all-too-clearly means to convey a heavy-handed message that war is bad  very bad. He's got several points to make: officers are corrupt, cold-blooded incompetents. In one scene, Hornsby is seen to shoot wounded prisoners without flinching. In the past, typical Japanese characters have been portrayed universally as evil, murderous dogs. Here, Aldrich tries far too hard to humanize them. First, he introduces a sympathetic Japanese character, Major Yamaguchi (Ken Takakura) in the second half of the film. Yamaguchi is tall, handsome and compassionate  even though he is taunting the fleeing Allied soldiers over loudspeakers spread throughout the jungle. He urges them to surrender, promising good treatment  and seems utterly sincere. Secondly, Aldrich makes the English out as the villains. Pvt. Campbell (Ronald Fraser) is a coward who runs from battle, but also loots the bodies of dead soldiers  both English and Japanese. He stirs up dissension and even murders one of his own men who won't cooperate with an attempt to surrender to the Japanese.

Please don't misunderstand me. I am not trying to say that all of the Allied troops were heroes or saints, as many historians and movie makers will try to tell you. Nor do I believe every Japanese soldier was a murderous villain. I tend to oppose war and find it utterly despicable - there are good men and bad men on both sides; some enjoy the killing and some would prefer to be anywhere else but in combat. But Aldrich goes to ridiculous extremes to show imperfections among the Allies (he nearly demonizes all of them in some way) and makes the Japanese look for compassionate and friendly than most of them were. We're supposed to see Allied soldiers during WWII as substitutes for the American military during Vietnam, and anyone will agree the two simply cannot be compared side-by-side.

The ensemble cast is what holds this piece together. The actors are all very capable and seem sincere, despite the lunacy of much of the script. Robertson seems a comfortable lead, although Lawson's character is never totally fleshed out. As the film begins, he's obviously a coward, but steps into the role of leader far too easily in the second half. He doesn't seem to struggle with his previous notions of warfare or leadership, his role has suddenly shifted without explanation. Robertson is so good, though, that this can be overlooked somewhat and is forgivable. As Hearne, Caine is the real star of the film. He's just as cynical as Lawson, but is open and blunt about it. He knows that Hornsby is incapable of leading and isn't afraid to point it out to him, even if it means a threat of court-martial. Throughout, his arguments seem legitimate, and Caine always come across as completely sincere. Finally, Denholm Elliott is exceptionally fine as Hornsby. He doesn't seem to know his role as a leader-of-men too well, and this often results in the deaths of his men and, ultimately, a botched mission.

The jungle locations are beautifully photographed by cinematographer Joseph Biroc, but never come across as particularly dark and foreboding. Here, gory death and destruction takes place among beautiful trees, ferns and flowers. Again, this is a film meant as an anti-Vietnam statement, and the jungle locations are a perfect setting.

Unfortunately, as I've repeated ceaselessly, "Too Late the Hero" can't seem to decide supposed to be a movie about a jungle patrol in the New Hebrides in 1942, not a movie about a patrol in Cambodia in 1968. The social commentary on the Vietnam War is delivered too heavily and blatantly distorted. The characters garnish little sympathy, and there is not enough action to keep the slow, talkative pace flowing. As a drama, it almost succeeds; as the action spectacular the trailer claims, it is barely serviceable. If you would like to see a well-made, moving film that uses WWII for an allegory on the Vietnam War, and war in general, see BEACH RED, made in 1967. It's a much more even-handed and a lot fairer than this piece - hands down.

4 - maybe 5 out of 10


At the Sundance screening of this film, the director told us that the "evergreen" of the title referred to the green envy the main character feels toward those who have so much while she does not. This was a realistic story of a young girl who moves into her grandmother's ramshakle house with her grandmother. They are quite poor, and when the girl (Henri) meets a rich boy at school, she wants to be part of his family. The movie is about Henri's discovery that money doesn't really take away problems. This was good effort for all involved.


This film attempts admirably to show the pain of adolescence, especially in a poor family. Unfortunately it lacks the quality of acting and direction to give it real impact. We are distracted by the fact that some of the characters at least don't seem real and the actors often don't seem to be "on the same page".

This viewer made the mistake of taking at face value a reviewer's rating of four stars - a reviewer I didn't even know! - and then being disappointed. My own fault!

Perhaps if I had entered the room with different expectations, or been given the realization that this movie was truly a first time effort or compromised somewhat by low budget I would have been able to be more charitable - and possibly derived more enjoyment from it. But alas the unknown reviewer gave it a glowing rating. Too bad.


I saw this movie at a screening at a local AMC theater - they were at the time considering whether or not to pick up the movie and show it at some places in their chain and randomly invited people to come and see it. I was selected and brought a friend of mine.

I didn't have any idea what to expect so went in with an open mind. The premise of the movie was interesting and showed promise, but the characters were all complete clichés and had no depth. I blame the writing of the script because the actors did a decent job with what they were given to work with. The way the story carried out was just slow, slow, slow! All of the conflict felt manufactured and not real. The plot development just didn't work in my opinion. There was just no reason for me to actually care about anyone involved in the movie.

The main plot involving the girl and her "rebelleous side" could have been lifted out of a bad "Svaed By The Bell" episode it was so shallow. The subplot involving the mom and her new boyfriend, for example, felt completely fake and contrived.

I feel bad writing such a bad review of this movie but the fact is it just isn't good. I respect the fact that the writer really put a lot into making this movie (she was at the theater and we got to talk to her afterwards) and made it this far, but it just isn't worth seeing. I have seen many independent films that I wish would have been promoted by AMC at arthouses that never made it and they were thinking of giving THIS film a shot at the big time? Give me a break!

Check the user ratings - currently 4.5/10. That says it all IMO.

* 1/2 out of ****


RENT the film works for exactly four minutes. The opening credits role and then the cast sings 521,600 Minutes and its all downhill from there. What follows a nice opening is a film so pointless, so banal, you'll ask as my wife did for the two and half hours back you spent watching RENT.

I remember when RENT opened on Broadway. I remember I had a buddy who camped out on the street to see the play. I remember people called RENTheads would record the shows in other cities and trade bad audio and video of the off Broadway productions starring Molly Ringwald and Doogie Howser. It was a phenomenon based on the tragic death of it's creator Jonathon Larson more than a well made show, and so the play stayed untouched, unfiddled around with, for who would dare touch the Genius of Larson? Who would dare walk on his grave? If I were the director of this movie I would have begged for a rewrite. If ever there was a film dying for some heart, some central core, its RENT. It's jumbled, it's messy, it contains characters that don't mesh, there's no coherence, no one worth rooting for, no one worth hating, and that's wrong. The passion and drive of the clunky play may work as live theater, heck CATS works as live theater, but RENT is charmless, pointless, and murky and it really shouldn't be.

RENT follows the exploits "in the year of the life" of Mark (Anthony Rapp) the angst ridden film maker, Roger (Adam Pascal) the Rockstar with AIDS, Mimi (Rosario Dawson) the heroin addicted Stripper with a heart of gold (and AIDS), Tom (Jesse L. Martin) the unemployed professor with AIDS, Angel (Wilson Jermaine Heredia) the Drag Queen (with AIDS) who steals Tom's heart, Maureen (Idina Menzel) the performance artist and Mark's Ex-Girlfriend, and Joanne (Tracie Thomas) the Lawyer who falls in love with Maureen. They are the bohemians, they can't pay the rent, they can't pay the heat, and everyday they stand the chance of being evicted. So they sing. They sing a lot, and at one point at a protest, they Moo. That causes a near riot. I wanted to laugh, but I didn't because I didn't want to be mean to the rest of people in the theater. But I had a feeling they were watching a different movie cause they kept clapping.

Why was this film so joyless? Why were the main characters so whiny? Why does RENT have no real heart? The film just assumes that we the audience will like these people and so it makes no attempt to allow them to win our hearts. It assumes that because the script has introduced us to them that they are friends. But half the film revolves around how these people don't get along. They are disgruntled about life and yet the film praises that fact and instead of doing anything about it they whine. They hate progress, they protest the idea of personal responsibility, and fight the man, for what? Nothing but a crappy apartment in New York City.

The most honest moment in the film comes when the Mark films a homeless women who was being harassed by the cops. The homeless women look at him and screams something like "don't exploit me, get a job." These people are not happy, the lifestyle they promote is pointless and the film fails to take a stand on any of it.

The film also doesn't work on a purely technical level. The dialog clunks haphazardly into the songs. The actors take a moment to reflect before the songs take off, and none of the songs are worth humming when you leave the theater. But you'll have 521,600 minutes attacking you in your dreams. If the screenplay would have been retooled to fit the screen instead of the screen trying to replicate the stage a better movie would have emerged. But RENT will appeal only to those who love the play.

The other glaring problem is the actors seem too old to embody these parts. With actors culled from the original off-Broadway cast, it casts and even deeper gloom over the film. We all have to grow up, this group of 30-somethings edge on pathetic. A new cast of twenty-somethings would have worked a bit better.

So save your money. You thank me I promise.