It seems that many people have enjoyed "The Survivors" and as a huge Walter Matthau fan I sure wanted to be one of them. "The Survivors" is a muddled mess with script problems and, most curiously, problems with the casting of its leading actors Matthau and Robin Williams. Just reading that would make you thing that the casting is inspired but it ends up working against the film. Matthau and Williams have two very distinctive styles of comedy that work against each other and that aspect is clear throughout the movie. These two appear to be starring in different movies even when they are on screen together. Director Michael Ritchie appears to have let Williams and his manic sense of humor go crazy with no attempt to reel him in to a calmer level more suitable for the film. Take a look at "The World According to Garp" where Williams worked with the great George Roy Hill to see a restrained and terrific performance. Sure some of Williams' manic comedy sneaks through there but it was at a minimum. Here Williams is all over the map which is surprising considering director Ritchie's track record of only good movies up to this point ("The Candidate", "Smile" and "The Bad News Bears" among others).

Another problem with the film is the tone of the script. It wants to be satirical, farcical, and dark all at the same time. Had it stuck with just one of those tones we might have had a better movie. Perhaps a satirical look at the difficulties of big business which is suggested in a funny opening scene when Williams is fired by his boss' parrot. Or perhaps a dark comedy about two down on their luck guys who happen across a hit man, trying to stay alive or even perhaps hoping to be killed, as they get their lives in some sort of order. This is hinted at but the story falls flat with the casting of Jerry Reed as the hit man who turns out to be a likable guy. Reed never convinced me he was anything more then the Snowman with a gun waiting for Burt Reynolds. He always seems to be winking at himself and never comes off as menacing. And the last act of the film at the survivalist outing is so mundane and silly it doesn't even belong in this film.

"The Survivors" could have been a really special film had director Ritchie reigned in and restrained Williams some and having the script go through major overhauls instead of looking like they shot a first draft. As it now stands there are a few laughs and it's not a total waste of time but will be a huge disappointment to fans of the lead actors.


This movie was very boring. When I was a teenager, I saw it in a theatre. I got up halfway through the movie to get some Raisinets. My leg had fallen asleep and I fell down in the aisle. I remember that vividly but I remember virtually nothing about the movie. Didn't Walter Matthau and Robin Williams stand in some snow at one point?


As I watched The Survivors, I couldn't help but wonder what was going through the mind of director Michael Ritchie when he was presented with the script. Outside of the enormous gaps in plot and development, he had to see some humor in it somewhere to cast two direct opposites of the comedy spectrum to helm this project. There had to be a mission or a reason in Ritchie's mind when he decided that Robin Williams, a fast-talking comedian that can sometimes be uncontrollable, and Walter Matthau, a slow-methodical comedian that appeals to the "every man", would be his key players. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall during this opening meeting because this little fly would have spoken up and mentioned that this pairing would doom the script, and possibly put a black mark on both of these actor's careers. I wouldn't just stop there, I would tear this film to pieces trying to get others to explain to me the subsequent ending and missing tone. The only element that I would be content with would be the casting of Jerry Reed, who honestly brought some humor and intelligence to this scarred film. The Survivors was not a film, but instead an attempt to allow two comedians the opportunity to express themselves coupled with heavy firepower. Nothing more, nothing less.

Could somebody, anybody, please help me out with the story surrounding The Survivors? From the zigzag opening centered around the parrot and Robin Williams' job to the incident at Matthau's gas station (a plot point never mentioned or concluded), Ritchie spends no time developing anything. His choice of direction is simply to allow Williams to be as "zany" as possible and see how Matthau reacts to it. If it weren't for Jerry Reed this film would have been nearly an hour and a half of forced jokes, gunshots, and awkward moments. The story was pointless. In most instances I can find bits and pieces of a story which keeps my attention allowing me to be curious about how the ending will resolve itself. For there to be this resolution, there has to be a conflict. Ritchie attempts to create one with the entire "survival of the fittest" byline, but even that idea is never fully announced. I felt like a Ping-Pong ball in this film, constantly going back and forth between Williams and Matthau hoping that I would land on something that scored a point, but alas, this was the game that would never end. Ritchie even takes us into the wilderness in attempts to bring more laughs and eventually draw an ending, but again, nothing happens. Nothing is explained, nothing is developed, nothing is linear. Williams goes into the woods to be trained in survival, yet for the amount of time he was there it was as if he was unable to learn anything. Also, where did he get the funds to buy the house out in the woods? Then, without giving anything away, there was that pathetic ending. WHAT HAPPENED? I use big words there because there was not one iota of a conclusion. Enemies became friends, friends became enemies, and before words could be spoken the ending credits appeared.

I would like to announce this here, but I believe Michael Ritchie could not even handle the simplest of tasks with this film. The direction was horrible because Ritchie could not control his actors. It was obvious as you watched Williams and Matthau on screen that there were getting no advice or pointers from the man behind the camera. Ritchie didn't stop Williams during his rants (which at times were never relevant to the film) and did not help Matthau react to the insanity that Williams was bringing to the table. What should have been the best part of this film was easily the most painful to watch. Williams and Matthau, in this critic's eye, possibly could be ranked as the WORST comic pairing in cinema. Matthau's form of comedy is completely, if not 100%, different to Williams' shenanigans. While in some film cases this would work to a movie's advantage, for The Survivors, it did not. There were no characters for these two comedians to enter into. I sat during the entire hour and a half watching Robin Williams be Robin Williams and the same for Walter Matthau. I could not see any semblance of a character between the two of them. Both seemed to jump from one trait to the next. Neither seemed to have a complete hold or knowledge of who they were attempting to portray. This is half due to the flimsy story, but mainly I place the blame on Ritchie. With Williams and Matthau at the helm, this had the beginnings of a hilarious possible gut-busting, laugh-out-loud comedy that would be a staple in the film community, but Ritchie, in my eyes, could not handle it. He relied to heavily on his actor's comic "personas" instead of actually building characters for them.

Overall, this was a very sad excuse for a film. I have read some other reviews that speak highly of the comedy in this film while do speak similarly of the lacking story, but for me everything was broken. There were no characters, there was no direction, there was obviously no story, and our two central actors didn't work for their money, but just read through their lines and gave a measly 30% to the final product. The only plus I give this film is the accomplishment of Jerry Reed. He was worth watching. The scene between his wife and I was nearly close to perfection. I think it was the only time that I found myself chuckling through this entire film. Ritchie could not handle this film and in the end The Survivors is probably a film that neither Williams or Matthau wants to remember.

Grade: ** out of *****


Thou it's started like a comedy and social criticize of the famous Singaporean 'No U-turn', Jack Neo's movie turn, itself, quickly in a poor copy of Black Edwards' comedies when Fann Wong and Gurmit Singh exchange their souls to find themselves in each others body. Without this 'deja-vu' effect, Neo would have reach his moral easier and more originally.

Neo's direction still looks like a newcomer film student who wants to play with the effects and have more the aspect of a TV film than a cinema feature. Even during a serious scene (Gurmit's daughter hit by a car), the cheap special effect starts laughs among audience instead of fear.

This movie should have been be produce for TV with a cheaper budget, maybe this could have let a chance for others, and better, Singaporean filmmakers to produce a higher quality feature.

But you know they let him do. It's just because, long time ago, Jack Neo made laughs...


I saw this movie at a family gathering.

Don't let the summary and title fool you. While this is a movie satiring the bureaucratic behaviors of the staff of a typical Singapore government agency, it goes all out to convince the audience that the problems lie with the staff, the ordinary Singaporeans and not the country's leaders. Instead the leader/minister in the movie is portrayed as a open minded visionary who supports and rewards new ideas. This is illogical considering that Singapore practices top down leadership to the extreme, so how can the leader be so different from the staff? Add in the indirect encouragement to Singapore's Prime Minister Lee to work harder for the next elections, one couldn't help but feel that Jack Neo tries harder to boot lick the country's leaders than to make a decent movie.

And as usual, Jack Neo tries to disguise government propaganda as social commentary. The portrayals are too familiar and can be found in the daily nation building newspapers. Just 2 of the false portrayals I remember clearly.

- Old folks scavenging for empty drink cans are portrayed as financially independent people who just want to kill time (You will easily see how absurd this is if you are a foreigner).

- Blue collar workers are portrayed as lazy under-skilled workers who spend all their money on lottery and luxury items, and thus cannot even afford their children's medical fees. The truth is that one's potential is limited and wages for blue collar workers in Singapore is very low while the cost of living is high. Most blue collars workers in Singapore put in 50, 60 hours per week and still stay poor. Lottery is their only hope of making big.

The subplot of the 2 main characters switching bodies is an old idea and the director adds in nothing new.

To conclude, don't waste your money or time watching a movie that insults your intelligence, insults you and has no original funny moments.


It's not everyday that we see a movie so bad that we feel like walking out of the theater barely half an hour into the movie. This movie was one of those bad picks.

Why is this so bad? First of all, it's a known fact that Jack Neo gets overtly preachy in his films (semblance of well-thought-out social commentaries). It got really annoying to hear him narrate in the background exactly the point that he was trying to portray in different scenes. It makes one wonder if his script writer is so inept at building these messages into the plot that the director has to summarize the messages for the audience.

Secondly, the pacing of the movie was terrible. The movie spent too much time on the goofs after the main characters went through a body swap. The result was a really slow moving, hardly funny, occasionally distasteful half hour that made it hard to any thinking audience to stay watching.

Thirdly, you know a movie is bad when it has to resort to creating jokes out of farting, urinating, and hurling swear words in a different dialect. In fact, there were so many expletives that I totally think it deserves an NC-16 rating for coarse language. You know it was a bad movie when the only thing you hear coming out of the theater was a young kid citing the swear words that were repeatedly used by one of the leads.

I applaud Jack Neo's intention at highlighting social ills through comedies with mass appeal. But I think he has done it at the expense of art and craftsmanship. The result is a dull and unsophisticated TV drama that happens to be on the big screen.


MY SWEET Satan is a low-budget short directed by and starring Jim Van Bebber (DEADBEAT AT DAWN). This outing has atrocious acting, and is really only good for laughing at all the horrible haircuts on display...

The story is about a Satan-loving jerk-off (Van Bebber)who kills one of his friends for stealing drug money from him. That's it. But I guess you're not gonna get TOO much plot in a 20 minute "film"...

Other than a few decent gore scenes - which are really the ONLY reason for watching this one - MY LITTLE Satan is a dud. ALL of the characters are completely annoying, and the Satan "side-plot" is stupid and unnecessary as it's never really explained or built on. Give DEADBEAT AT DAWN a shot instead, or hopefully you already got the Synapse release of DEADBEAT AT DAWN, and MY LITTLE Satan was on the extras...4/10 - only for the head-stomp scene...


This is why people hate sequels. Rob Lowes is a good actor. He gets involved in these movies that just suck like this one. The ghost in this lame sequel is trying to tell him something. Spoiler; it's telling him that his son along with friends killed him because they thought he was an Arab that hated America based of course on his rude demeanor and tone towards American soldiers, easy mistake.

This movie was made by obvious liberals because a conservative republican would be pleased that an American stuck up for their country and said hey, you want to mess with my land and talk crap about our soldiers well F-you. They should make a movie praising Americans for sticking up for themselves for once instead of preachy junk like this. The a-hole gets killed and then has the audacity to haunt the boy's father, (Lowe). At the end his son goes to jail and his wife gets shot and killed, while Lowes character seems to be placed into an asylum. Gee nice message thrown in my face to be tolerant of others. F uck tolerance! Whatever happened to America being home of the brave?

By the way... I'm not some racist redneck, I hate everyone equally


This is quite possibly the most hideously anti-American anti-patriotic film ever made by a western producer.

Persons who support the American war effort in Iraq and who are opposed to terrorism are portrayed as hateful racists who commit an unthinkable crime in the name of patriotism.

Then, these persons are brought to justice; not by secular forces, but by the supernatural and presumably infallible forces of the spirit world. It is a feeble attempt to put a supernatural stamp of approval on holier-than-thou liberalism.

I recommend that you watch this film just to see how deeply entrenched the forces of skullduggery have become.


This is the worst version of Joan of Arc I've ever seen - and I think I've seen them all. If you know the real history of Joan of Arc, you'll be very disappointed.

Instead of portraying Joan as a sane, sensible, highly intelligent young woman who rationally planned and led a series of brilliant military campaigns lasting multiple days to save France from the English (her profile according to historical records), this film portrays her as a mentally delusional girl suffering from weird hallucinations and irritating emotional outbursts with totally irrational, impulsive military leadership. Since quite the opposite was true according to historical facts as we know them and I don't enjoy watching a raving, irrational female take over leadership from calm, rational people, this is a film I would not bother to see again.

The acting was mostly well done (her part was often overdone) and the special effects were on par. That said, I don't think it's a film worth watching, especially if you hope to see a genuine heroine.

It's a shame they couldn't have portrayed Joan as the intelligent, rational person history records her as being...one who answered so ably in the heresy trials that they couldn't find any fault with what she said. A better version of this story would be the one with Leelee Sobieski, also circa 1999.


This piece of trash is totally without merit. There are many inaccuracies about The Maid. I have extensive knowledge of her life, and this movie must be about someone else. On the DVD, Milla Jovovich has the gall to say that the producers uncovered so much information about The Maid, that I am prompted to ask: "Then, why didn't your husband use it?" (She was married to Luc Besson during filming.)

Joan's sister was neither raped nor murdered by any raiders.

There is no history of Joan breaking into a church and drinking wine.

Joan was close to her parents, and left them, sadly, when she went to Vaucoleurs (sic).

Joan never killed anyone, nor tried to.

"The Conscience" is a creation of Luc Besson; no evidence that such a personality ever talked with Joan.

If you want to know more of the truth about Joan, read the book by Regine Pernoud, or even the movie "Jeanne la Pucelle", starring Sandrine Bonnaire, is adequate.


One of the few times I generally was embarrassed to actually be in a theater. The story of Joan of Arc generally appealed to me but the direction this movie took did not and this mainly due to the fact the storytelling itself is flawed. Milla Jovovich's character "Joan" describes the screenplay of the film to a letter, dazed and confused throughout. It interesting though how the story also tries to balance itself by introducing new ideas on what is and is not divine and even this element was clumsily and randomly introduce as plot elements, from Faye Dunaway's character fumbling with the vile of "blood" to Joan herself seeing "visions" Dustin Hoffman's performance was fair but totally unnecessary the film could have limped on without him. Joan rationalizing with herself would have been much more believable then this. As far as the cinematography goes it's quite nice, brilliant in fact along with the score. I was really was expecting much more from this film and Besson which usually makes excellent work, unfortunately this is a dud.


Besson's version of the story of Joan of Arc offended me on many levels. The opening sequences of the movie feature the gruesome murder and rape (in that order) of Joan's sister. This was completely unnecessary and untrue. While it is fact that Joan's town was raided several times and on one occasion burned by the English; Joan of Arc had 2 brothers, but no sisters. This alone was enough to ruin the movie for me, since Besson proceeds to build a case that all of Joan's actions and her descent into insanity were caused by the horrific death of her sister.

Besson also inexplicably created a sinister tormentor for Joan, played by Dustine Hoffman. Hoffman's character who continually played the devil's advocate to a clearly insane Joan, was just plain annoying, confusing, and yet another fabrication. Besson's Joan was never seen having the visions of St. Margaret, St. Catherine, and St. Michael which the real Joan of Arc was reported to have. Instead she saw a twisted and almost demonic Christ figure and the strange Dustin Hoffman character. For Besson to portray a saint and a French national hero in such a manner was purely offensive and in poor taste. Had Besson actually bothered to base his story on historical fact I may have felt differently. If you see this movie, regard it only as a work of fiction, for it bears little in common with the real Joan of Arc other than her name and that she freed Orleans.


I'll credit Milla Jovovich with an excellent performance within the framework of Luc Besson's interpretation of the tale of Joan of Arc. Besson borrows quite a little from other writers and directors in this film but his chief borrowing is from 20th and 21st Century psychiatry. In the end, he tells viewers through Joan's visible conscience (portrayed by Dustin Hoffman) that her "voices" were the product of hysteria and that the Messenger from God simply told her what she wanted to hear. To make this approach credible, Besson introduces the murder and subsequent rape of Joan's elder sister, which she witnesses when she is 10 years old through cracks in the door to the closest where she is hiding. "Hysteria" is a modern and plausible explanation for religious visions, but there is no historical evidence to serve as background -- and I found the modern day psycho-babble more than a little jarring, even though Dustin Hoffman does his best with the role. Fay Dunaway also performs very effectively but John Malkovich is John Malkovich, not the Dauphin. Despite acting that is generally good, I found this to be the least satisfying version of the Joan of Arc story that I have ever seen, and I've seen most of them at one time or another.


Besson's weakest film by a mile, a totally unconvincing portrayal of Joan's life and France at that time. The plot struggles to develop as you feel the film going round in circles. It's a mixed bag of mystical nonsense, ineptly performed political machinations and gratuitous gore. If you're hoping for battle scenes reminiscent of Braveheart forget it. Besson attempts to tell a grand scale story with unsatisfying small scale scenes, there is little tension after the opening. And the beautiful cinematography and taught direction so typical of his previous films is in little evidence here. Milla, as Joan, is hopelessly out of her depth as she squeaks her battle cries to the army in her command (she was mildly irritating in Besson's Fifth Element, she's a royal pain in the neck in this). Perhaps the only intriguing episode in the film is the arrival of her 'conscience' played by Hoffman - a kind of quasi zen buddhist master mirroring her selfishness. Indeed this would have been all the more intriguing if the script had made more out of the aura and holiness around Joan in her attempt to deliver Jesus' message to the English in a fervently catholic France


By directing this film, Luc Besson proved that he's made a big mistake by involving himself in Hollywood system. He's more successful in directing movies like Leon, The Big Blue, La Femme Nikita. He can not be a good director in sci-fi movies and epics like Messenger: the story of JF. Please somebody tell him.


Ever see a movie that you thought was so-so, but one aspect of it knocked it off that fence, solidly landing it in the realm of crap? This was that kind of movie, and the stick that shoved it off the fence was the ridiculous characterization of Joan of Arc.

For one thing, Joan went into battle in full armor carrying...a flag. That's it. In one scene she brandished a sword, but throughout the movie she scampered about the battleground with a damn flag instead of a weapon. In fact, several times she freaked out about her flag, "Where's my flag?! I must have my flag...!" Even for the crazy person the film made her out to be, this was nuts. Then there's Joan's dialogue. In one scene, as she prepared her men for battle, she uttered the inspirational and heroic lines "Watch out! Be careful!" I'll admit to not being Joan of Arc expert, but my guess is that it wasn't this sort of behavior that made her beloved by the people of her country.

The fact is, the movie seemed as though it's purpose was to show Joan as a mentally unstable kid who didn't even take part in the battles and fighting which have made her famous. I don't know if that's true or not, but I know that when I watch a movie that's supposed to be about a heroine fighting for god and country, I expect to see her fight.

Dustin Hoffman was pretty good, Mila was ok, given what she had to work with, and the battle scenes and wardrobe were very well done. But on the whole, the movie was a loser.


We all know the story already. For some reason, God thinks that the French should be spared the oppressive force of the English (why God 'mysteriously' gives up the French to the Germans countless times in later years is another question all together). Joan is appears to lead them to victory. Besson, who has created a number of memorable films, tries to spin a great epic in the manner of 'Braveheart'... but it's hit-and-miss. I was hugely disappointed.

Milla Jovovich, who was very good in "The 5th Element", is practically unbearable here. She should probably win an overacting award. And her strained voice sounds like a teenage boy just entering puberty... very grating. I can't imagine anyone following the real Joan if she had the same personality and demeanor of Milla. They'd get too tired of her whiny, holier-than-thou attitude.

'The Messenger' would make a decent rental, but not a purchase.


The armor, scenery and especially the men in this film are fine and worthy of note. Mila however, I found to be simply terrible as Joan. Overlooking the fact that she is far too old, it seemed to me that she portrayed the fanatical Joan just as she was the fifth element. She is a poor actress at best. I was also sorely disappointed in John Malchovich's performance. A first for me that he has not shone. Faye Dunnaway was her marvelous self, however, and perhaps worth the price of a PPV. I watched this movie with several people varying in age from 22 through 52 and no one liked this film. I was the only one who saw it through to the bitter end. Nuf said.


This is a fun movie, in a campy sort of way. Two undercover "T-men" (United States Treasury Agents) attempt to uncover a counterfeiting ring as a narrator describes the technical details of the laborious process they use to do it... at great detail, in other words, repetitively, like thus: "He trailed him, shadowing, hiding, keeping hidden, shadowing, trailing..." and so on.

This movie would be little better than an Ed Wood movie except for the cinematography and the directing. Almost all of the acting is completely covered up by the continuing narration until later in the movie, when the actors finally have time to present their characters without someone telling us what to think of them. Even after they are given room to act, however, they have to deal with such cheesy and dated lines as, "Are you out of your whim-whams?" and "Have you ever spent 8 nights in a steam bath looking for a man?" However, it's all in the fun of film noir, even if it is removed from the existential angst and is more like a crime periodical sort of story. A viewer still gets that rich sense of chiaroscuro and guns flashing out of the dark still pack a punch.

--PolarisDiB


An average noir film is made horrible through the use of narration that assumes the audience is stupid as a rock. Every single action the agents make, for the first half of the film, is narrated, explained, praised, and explained again for good measure. I mean they really, really hit you over the head with it. The agents don't just gather facts, the gather "facts to be used." They don't only take notes, they "memorize those notes." And on and on. This isn't radio: we can _see_ the agents going over the material! The jingoistic, condescending tone of the narration ruins what would otherwise be a fairly thrilling crime picture, with superb black and white filming and some graphic, spine-tingling scenes of violence.


I seldom stop a movie part-way through and refuse to watch the rest of it. "The Curse of King Tut's Tomb" provoked that exact reaction. It tries to be an action movie and fails. It attempts, badly, to imitate elements of both "Mummy" pictures and falls v-e-r-y short. It desperately tries to grab onto parts of the "Indiana Jones" series and misses the mark every single time.

The acting varies widely from stilted, to just plain amateurish. Any resemblance to historical accuracy is fleeting, at best, and CG work is about on a par with a talented child wielding an Etch-A-Sketch.

The only reason I can fathom for hanging on to this DVD is to use as a coaster when you get unexpected company. I can only imagine that Messers McDowell and Hyde desperately needed work. They should have been more discriminating.

The Director, Russell Mulcahy, seems to be on a role at this point. His version of "Mysterious Island" (2005) suffered from similar shortcomings and is another Movie Worth Missing. It is interesting to note that both "Mysterious Island" and "The Curse of King Tut's Tomb" were produced for The Hallmark Channel. Thankfully Hallmark greeting cards are much better than their movies.

If you see this movie coming on, go floss your cat's teeth. It will be much more productive.


This is terrible. Do not watch! This made-for-TV 'extravaganza' is clearly intended to cash in on the success of Raiders of the Lost Ark and the other Indiana Jones films; however it is but a very pale shadow.

The characters are less than two-dimensional. Van Dien's character clearly tries to be Indiana Jones and fails so badly it's not even funny. He even dresses like Indiana Jones. However he has none of the charm and intelligence needed to be a believable character.

I don't expect, or want, fantasy to be realistic; but the characters have to act logically within the fantasy world the writer and director creates. They do not here.

I would rather watch paint dry than this drivel.


One of the most fascinating things about this film (apart from Jonathan Hyde's extraordinary resemblance with Henry Daniell)is watching how the plot meanders and wanders with no destination in sight as if it were an Art Nouveau filigrain.

I suspect that the archeology academics would seriously object at the unorthodox -but revolutionary- system that the protagonist and his buddies use to find the legendary Pharaoh's tomb, namely, by sitting in the terraces of Cairo's seediest bars and leaving them without alcoholic stock. Their interest is, however, scientific, except for the legionnaire buddy who is more interested in gold statuettes accidentally getting lost in his greatcoat pockets (Having mentioned the legionnaire, I must say that I admire the courage of the scriptwriter, who reveals to us -for the very first time- that Egypt was at the time a French protectorate, and not, as we've been led to believe by the official history, associated to the British empire)

The bad guys stick to the old, slow, boring system of studying the terrain and excavating carefully according to old Ieroglyphs, while our hero and his friends discover the tomb the legendary grave by happily throwing dynamite sticks at random: a new path is opened thus for archeology.


I've always thought I was one of the more forgiving movie viewers in the country, but I just can't describe how bad this movie is. The "Egyptology" described in the terribly written introduction voice-over must be from not a parallel universe, but a skewed one, because it certainly has nothing to do with this one. The dialog is just atrocious. The acting could have been good -- I choose to believe this because the bad directing so completely overwhelmed any performance talent that evidence of acting ability is completely undetectable. The characters would have to be improved to be two dimensional. The pacing was haphazard at best. I can't remember the editing, so it must have been better than the other aspects of the film. I wish Joe Bob Briggs was still reviewing movies, because that's the most entertainment anyone could hope for from this film.


My son is 8 and he enjoyed it. At three hours it was a too long for me, but I remember watching Tarzan movies for hours on Saturday mornings when I was his age, including those awful Mike Henry in South America Tarzan movies. This was better than those. So, even though I didn't like it much, I'm glad movies are still being made that a kid can watch and get lost in. One thing I thought was puzzling, they kept introducing characters that they never really did anything with. Steven Waddington was the only supporting character that managed to shine. The history was of course pretty silly, but they "fixed" that at the end. It made my son want to know more, so we went on the web and looked up what really happened. Definitely a "B" movie, with limited special effects and wooden acting, but still fun for kids.


Yes, Casper Van Dien, it's Tut. Well, actually, it's immortal, mystical, son-of-Ra Tut, with Mechanical Wing action, come to save the world from Set, Lord of the Underworld, in a (not very) climactic battle in a quarry.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure you read that right. Sorry.

Look, I understand that pulp can take liberties with history and, you know, scientific accuracy. That's fine, as long as it's fun and at least somewhat convincing. But when it isn't, you get "The Curse Of King Tut" (DVD titled "The Curse Of King Tut's Tomb"), a meandering wonderland of nonsensical cuts, bad dialog, magical explosives that cut 90-degree angles straight down and characters who add nothing, and I repeat, NOTHING, to the development of the plot.

What plot, you ask? Ah, yes. Casper Van Dien plays Danny Fremont, who is neither Rick McConnell nor Indiana Jones (and he's not Daniel Jackson, either), who has found 3 of the 4 fragments of the Emerald Tablet which King Tut (an immortal superhero, by the way) used to trap Set (who looks like a beardless Cthulhu) in the Netherworld. His nemesis Sinclair (Jonathan Hyde) belongs to a secret cabal called The Hellfire Council (who are not the Illuminati) and has stolen all three of them so far. If Danny and his pals (whose names you don't learn until, ummm...I dunno, 45 minutes in?) fail to find the final fragment before Sinclair, then Sinclair will wear his sunglasses a lot and have incredible powers with which to control the world. Also, there will be CGI demons.

Naturally Danny DOES find it first, but his proved ability to lose important artifacts and not, you know, take basic precautions secures the fact that Sinclair gets it anyway and gets the powers and ahoy, the CGI demons. There's the obligatory love interest (Leonor Varela, whose character's name we also don't know for a while), the Crazy Wise Man, The Sexy Spy, The Comic Relief Who Adds Nothing To The Plot, The Tough Soldier, and The Horrible Dialogue. Russ Mulcahy, who left all his flair in 1985 where the pop music was better, phones it all in.

Oh, and apparently India looks like Egypt. Who knew?

Seven bucks gets you the DVD at Wal-Mart; 3 hours gets you an experience you'll never forget.

Neither one, unfortunately, is refundable.


Too bad there's no negative stars rating... I was appalled by everything about this movie, including the chick's fake French accent, the terrible Indiana Jones/the Mummy ripoff, and the awful editing. I have honestly seen better acting in adult films. The few hours I spent watching this movie seemed like an eternity. The historical inaccuracies are so numerous that I found myself shouting "wtf" throughout the entire film. I have no idea how Russell Mulcahy's name ended up anywhere near this abomination. It shouldn't even be called a film. This "thing" is a pathetic attempt to combine the 'Indiana Jones' and 'Mummy' franchises.


I'm sure pre-teens liked this movie.

This is one of those films where a very competent technical staff has to watch their work being neutralized by flat and inappropriate acting and poor direction. The sets are good, the lighting is well done, and for TV, the Special Effects are more than adequate. But the main characters are one-dimensional, the supporting cast bad, and the bit-players, many who are local Egyptian people, are almost embarrassing. It's a shame. A director's job is to work with what you've got, and find ways to make even the smallest role as believable as possible. It just didn't happen here.


The only thing that kept me watching this turkey was the belief (fervent dream) that this sucker was going to improve, hopefully, dramatically. But...no..it..did..not...

There were some approaches to good action but they all fell short of Indiana Jones which the movie obviously impersonated, at least at times.

There was the usual Computer Generated Imagery made famous by the Mummy movies but that was impersonation on an amateurish level. This entire movie was like that - copycat and poorly made.

It makes me wonder how it got financial backing. Did someone lose a bet? Was blackmail employed in order to get funding? Extortion with a 9 millimeter to someone's head?


I'm writing this while watching it and i have to say, SWEET Jesus! who in their right mind actually green lit it? First of all, the opening speech is supposed to enlighten us to the comprehensive mythological aspects of Egyptian culture whilst introducing us to the fictional story wound into those aspects to form some sort of a plot. All we get from this is drivel! The mythology they base this on is changed completely to suit "the story".

OK at least Casper Van Dien attempts his best with the shoddy script and frivolous dialogue but he too fails to conjure up any sort of character traits since character development is obviously overlooked in the script. There's so much wrong with the script I'm not even going to go any further than this! The directing is atrocious as is the editing, the only way i can describe it is by means of a films pace. This has none! I'm not even going to waste my time continuing with this "review" as it clearly isn't one, more so, id like to call it a warning to anyone who is ever looking to watch this.... DON'T! The curse of King tut makes the likes of "The Mummy" or even "The Scorpion King" masterpieces!


I almost cried after watching this move, not because it was emotionally moving, but because I wasted $5 to rent it for the weekend. First of all, the editing sucked, some parts of the movie seemed to be recorded on a camcorder. The climax scene was more flat than week-old soda. Many things didn't make sense at all - such as French soldiers in full uniform in 100 degree heat, or dynamite blowing a perfect square hole in the ground in front of a tomb. The whole movie was not believable AT ALL. Honestly, I've seen better acting in porn. If you want a good Egypt movie, watch The Mummy instead.

Too bad I can't give this movie negative stars.


I'm not sure how to describe this very long sci-fi fantasy. It rips off everything: The Mummy, Stargate, a dash of Star Wars, and of course a huge helping of Indiana Jones. It even has a Satanic secret society of super-villains whose whole "raison d'etre" is to take over the world and rule it with the usual iron fist. Casper Van Dein is clearly playing a younger Indiana Jones, complete with a professorship, a brown fedora, and a whip. Although the date of the setting implies he's a younger, alternate Indy in another, more fantastical universe, he doesn't quite cut it. Unfortunately for him, he's not Harrison Ford. He's not even Brendon Frasier, that other Indy-like action hero of archaeology and ancient legends. One cliché after another, not a single original concept. And at the same time, I found myself enjoying it enough to sit through all three hours of it. It is just escapist fantasy, and there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes a little nonsense doesn't hurt.


This is a B-movie, in all its glory, a ripoff of both Indiana Jones AND The Mummy. The dialogue? Horrible. The plot? Even more so. The special effects? Not to be believed. But that's what made it fun to watch. Just for the sake of a good laugh. It's obvious where the characterizations were pulled from (the studly archaeologist/treasure hunter, the studious librarian, etc) and the storyline was cliché as they come. The opening lines between the hero and the villain were cheesy to the max. And of course, the history- well, it wasn't. It was whatever the film makers picked up from other action/adventure stories, or just thought would be cool to throw in. The only people who'd claim this was an actually good film would be eight-year-olds going through a "Indiana Jones" phase. So if you're in the mood for some light entertainment (or want to get your kids out of your hair for a few hours) rent this.


Let's see, get a lot of neat sets and locations together, mix in lots of special effects and costumed extras, ditch the script and just tack it together, and finally completely forget about any real acting attempt and you have this uh, movie.

The Danny Freemont character tries so hard to fill Indiana Jones' shoes that it basically ruins the whole movie, since Freemont could never be Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) and everyone watching is painfully aware of this to the point of frustration.

So then there is this Morgan Sinclaire character who goes about literally sucking up friends and enemies like some mad dust-buster (for what reason is unknown) and you would expect this personified evil to finally get what for, but what happens? He himself gets unceremoniously vacuumed up, and thus there goes the villain, sigh, whoopee.

Oh you will just love the good against evil fan-dance of flapping wings - what a dismal finale.

Best line of the this disaster - "I wish we could all forget"; you said it lady! Unfortunately they didn't forget to produce this wash out.


Well i am a fan of Egyptian mysteries... and everyone knows there's not enough of them. This attempt was pathetic. At times they throw in things that have absolutely no plot behind them.. your like.. What The.. where did that come from! The writer should never be allowed to write a script ever again. What a complete and utter waste of time. My 10 year old daughter could write a film better then this. They could at least have the least bit of facts to put in the story. I feel sorry for the actors who worked in this.. though they must have realized as their characters were all so pathetic. I have enjoyed previous stories that contain the main character.. for example Starship Troopers.. he has really taken a step back starring in this absolute sad joke of a film. Complete drivel. Do not bother to watch.


This movie was AWFUL. It was like a horrible combination of The Mummy and the Indiana Jones movies. I'm not kidding when I say this is a stinker. Let's start from the beginning - the opening dialog is apparently there to introduce us to the story of the movie. It's kind of like a prequel, a la "What happened to bring us this far." Except that it's horrifically inaccurate and just plain wrong. They completely change Egyptian mythology, and even who Tut was and where he LIVED for the purposes of this movie. I honestly felt like I was watching an episode of The Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. I was left repeating, "WTF?!!" over and over again to myself. Then you meet the main characters of the story. I am utterly astonished that such good actors as Casper Van Dien and Jonathan Hyde are associated with this movie. They both try desperately to work with the crappy material they've been given, and they both fail horribly. I tried very hard, but my ability to suspend disbelief ran away screaming about ten minutes into the movie. At one point I turned to the other person watching the movie with me and said, "It burns! It stings!" This movie is soul-scarringly bad. The only one I can think of that MIGHT be worse is that Sci Fi movie that had the ants from the AMAZON in ALASKA eating a town. That's it. This is beyond bad.


who is Set??? i know about Seti and Seth but no Set. Is he even real? this movie doesn't follow history its been proved that Tut was hit in the back of the head and it killed him plus Tut was buried with his his death mask on. Also all pharaoh's were thought of as gods just like Ramses II who declared himself a god. They all thought of Ra as there father. i think if u wish 2 make a movie at least make it the right way. Has any one ever heard of the emerald tablet? i sure haven't. Please correct me if I'm wrong but this movie makes not sense. it like the Da ViNcI cOdE only about Egypt. And what it up with the hellfire council? what is that about? if anyone can tell me email me or I'm me at brat_mya_zoey@yahoo.com


just absolute piece of utter drivel..although I admit I only lasted about half an hour somewhere in the middle You can't even call this rubbish... for instance, I caught the scene where they are supposedly digging in the wrong place, find the right place (72 steps, but no ones counting) and about 20 metres away the heroine brushes away a few CMOS of sand BY HAND and uncovers the tomb....a few rubbishy sentences later we see someone put a dynamite YES DYNAMITE stick in the very same sand, it blows up, and you have this beautiful SQUARE HOLE with nice clean staircase going down to the tomb. No wonder they call it King Tut. Tut tut, exactly.


I can understand why planktonrules is so irritated at so many mediocre episodes getting high ratings just because it's got the Twilight Zone name. My issue is when he (or she) targets episodes that I think are pretty good. Maybe the people who like this episode just happen to like this episode. There are different opinions, after all. To use a line from one of the episodes, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

This episode though is just boring. Why it was chosen for the movie, I don't know. Maybe I'm missing the point. Maybe if I ever get to old age, I'll understand why it's special. For the time being, it's a bad episode and I can do without it. It's corny. People should act their age.


The Twilight Zone has achieved a certain mythology about it--much like Star Trek. That's because there are many devoted lovers of the show that no matter what think every episode was a winner. They are the ones who score each individual show a 10 and cannot objectively evaluate the show. Because of this, a while back I reviewed all the original Star Trek episodes (the good and the bad) because the overall ratings and reviews were just too positive. Now, it's time to do the same for The Twilight Zone.

This is a far from engaging episode that is, at times, embarrassing to watch. I feel a lot like the old crank in the episode when I say that the sight of a lot of oldsters running about pretending to be children is pretty embarrassing. Plus, the whole thing seemed very preachy and silly if you ask me. My advice is watch the series--just don't expect much from this particular episode.


It's too bad that DARK ECHO never really gels, because it is an interesting ultra-low budget production, made in Austria & Hungary by people with good intentions who just didn't seem to understand the horror genre. Apart from a couple of effective underwater sequences, a nice gross-out horror moment and the film's unique mittel-European flavorings it really doesn't have much zest and seems unsure of exactly what it wants to be. But it IS interesting ...

Unknown actor Wolfgang Brook stars as a psychic brought in by the local police detective to solve a series of bizarre attacks on the local populace of a sleepy Austrian village nestled between the mountains ringing a cold, deep, icy clear lake that was the site of a tragedy a hundred years before. It seems than an excursion craft loaded with sightseers sank under mysterious circumstances, and apparently it's captain is seeking revenge for having been abandoned -- ala John Carpenter's THE FOG. A still lovely Karin Dor wanders into the film from her retirement as a distant relative of one of the victims, and joins forces with the plucky detective to try and get to the bottom of the mystery.

The film does have some really nice atmospheric scenes filmed in and around some nice, crumbled old ruins of local medieval monasteries & castles, filled with the skulls of long dead worshipers with their names and dates of death painted on the bones. A subplot about some sort of cult practicing blasphemy in the catacombs of an old church provides some brief frissons but doesn't really go anywhere and seems tacked on just to provide some salacious content. There's also a cackling old witch played by veteran supporting actress Hanna Hertelendy, who's presence is the most interesting role in the film aside from the captain, who's rotting carcass is remarkably spry and intact for a body that has supposedly been festering in the wreck of a ship for a century.

The film was the sole directorial effort of George Robotham, a stuntman turned sometimes actor famed for his double work for John Wayne and Rock Hudson, amongst others, and his affinity for staging fight scenes and underwater photography. And indeed the underwater scenes provide the film's most interesting moments, especially the evocative images of the zombified captain swimming up from the depths to claim more victims. Zombies living in lakes or waterlogged conditions are of course nothing new, with Jean Rollin's ZOMBIE LAKE being perhaps the most well known example aside from Carpenter's THE FOG, which may indeed have been inspired in part by DARK ECHO's basic story.

Mostly however the film serves as a sort of travelogue of the sights & sounds of the regions in which it was filmed, with ample trips to the local tavern for mugs of fine Austrian beer, performances by musicians playing traditional instruments, trips to the ornately magnificent churches and centuries old town halls, and lots of conversation scenes between the principal actors as they wander about the picturesque settings. If only the film knew what it wanted to be: There's one dynamite scene where the captain returns to pester the old witch and actually slices her skull in half, providing a great barf-bagger moment that is in stark contrast with the rest of the film's somewhat lethargic pacing. This is not a film for those with low attention spans and in fact it's primary interest besides the presence of Ms. Dor is probably how it's absolutely obscure and difficult to find.

If only those who made it perhaps had a bit more experience with horror as a genre. The images of the rotting carcass sliming out of the lake is pretty creepy and the low budget sort of works in the film's favor, allowing it to be a study in moods rather than the all out assault on taste and senses that it probably should have been. Then again you can't fault art for simply being what it is, and for my money this is an interesting example of regional Euro Horror that defies the usual formula of bloodshed & breasts.

4/10


"Joseph" is probably Andrew Lloyd Webber's best show, because it's intentionally derivative,and everything else he's written has been unintentionally derivative. Take one calypso number, one country number, one French-bistro number, etc., et al., and you've got a hit! Throw in an astonishingly illiterate script ("Famine's hand will stalk the land" -- how's that for a mixed metaphor?), and you've got a mega-hit.

I did, to my surprise, like Donny Osmond in "Joseph." Ain't enough. The overwhelming unoriginality, tedious score and 2d-grade libretto easily make it one of the worst musicals ever.

As Tim Rice candidly stated in an interview, "The best line in the show was the list of the colours in Joseph's coat. And I didn't even write that."


It is perfectly comprehensible that in converting a book into a film, certain aspects become altered. There will always be deviations from perhaps the original idea, and of course certain literary concepts will be lost. Only very occasionally does a film come out that may seriously be considered a faithful adaptation of the novel in question. What is totally incomprehensible is the mutilation suffered by the highly readable 'La Tabla de Flandes' by the most popular Spanish author Arturo Pérez-Reverte. The novel is set in Madrid  the film moved that scenario to Barcelona. The quiet, absorbed, meditative intellectual chess-player Muñoz in the book was replaced for the film by a vulgar, gaudy, flamboyant, almost gypsy-looking, blonde called Domenec, and the nicely composed Spanish señorita called Julia was transposed into a terribly British Kate Beckinsale. Indeed, all those fine characters penned by Pérez-Reverte were transformed into British Isles actors. Apart from these unbelievable  and unforgivable  changes of convenience, the film hustles along from scene to scene in a highly disordered and accident-ridden way, confusing those who have not read the novel, angering those who have, and no doubt leaving the author feeling nauseous.

I have read just about everything Arturo Pérez-Reverte has published to date. In film versions I have only seen 'La Tabla de Flandes' and 'Territorio Comanche' (qv). Suffice to say: forget about the films in all cases, and Sr. Pérez-Reverte himself is the first to veto these films. But if you would like some challenging, exciting reading of good style and pace, carefully meditated and ingenious plots, frequently based on real history and exhaustive investigations to prepare them, I recommend in the following order: El Hussar, Territorio Comanche, El Maestro de Esgrima (q.v. - 1992 directed by Pedro Olea and worth a watch), El Club Dumas, La Tabla de Flandes, and La Piel del Tambor, as well as the 'Capitán Alatriste' series  all available in English (am not certain about the first title being in English) and probably in French and German, as well as other languages.


This movie is a very poor translation from the novel. Loosely based at best, with location and characters changed to the point where they are barely recognizable. The original plot of this story was intriguing and one that would make a great movie, had it been written with clarity and thought. However this version is designed with plenty of liberties taken on character development and plot continuity. Some I am sure would love the generous portion of nudity without reason or cause. Kate Beckinsale wandering around on the screen naked for no apparent reason is something I doubt we would see much of now. If you enjoy laughing over a miserable attempt to make a mystery, then by all means, rent this one, have some friends over, make popcorn, and have a cooler of beer on hand, and prepare to be entertained. But if you are looking for an edge of your seat afternoon of entertainment, look elsewhere.


This film is so terrible that everything about it vies for the distinction of being 'the worst of ' Is it the worst directed film? The worst acted film? The worst screenplay? One could go on and on. Every character in the film is despicable, and every actor and actress is at his or her worst, with the men and women equally disgusting in every respect. How is it possible to make one of the world's worst films from an interesting novel by a distinguished Spanish author, Arturo Pérez-Reverte? Well, these things happen. Just think of all the terrible films made of classic novels ever since the cinema began. Perhaps most offensive of all in this film is the performance of Kate Beckinsale, who looks like she is about ten years old, and the director is always making her take her clothes off so he can have another look at her breasts, and when they are covered up, the tight little garment over them keeps them well in view because the director is apparently obsessed with her and her sexuality. Nor does she seem any less obsessed with herself. We get great gory close-ups of her slobbering kisses with some of the most disgusting men one has seen in a long time, one young blond fellow in particular whose mouth is larger than her face is wide, so that one wonders how she avoids being swallowed. The arrogant vanity of all of these people, who clearly believe themselves to be the most beautiful creatures on earth when they are in fact extremely ugly (except for Beckinsale who qualifies as cute but disturbingly vain and rampant), is nauseating in the extreme. Only one performance in the film has any merit to it at all: John Wood as a lonely old queen who is the lifelong protector of Beckinsale manages some genuine pathos, and as that is the only wholesome emotion visible in the entire film, one notices it. The story could and should have been made into a really interesting film, a film as compelling as, for instance, that of Reverte's novel THE FENCING MASTER (1992), which was a triumph of film-making. But the story is thrown away and the horrible screenwriter starts using the word 'f' as soon as the film commences and continues to do so throughout, obviously thinking that it will make him popular with some imaginary 'youth' or 'trendies' who he thinks might watch the movie sometime. But the idea that one is somehow going to be in the vanguard of popularity because one can say 'f' a lot is a tired and outworn notion which never had the slightest credibility to begin with. Sinead Cusack is terrifyingly horrible in this film in every respect, and I expect she wishes she could destroy every print and DVD of it in existence to eliminate the evidence of her greatest folly. Michael Gough and James Villiers also disgraced themselves. No one was safe in the hands of that director. The original story itself is intriguing. A Flanders panel painting comes to light in Spain after 500 years in the private hands of a noble family who live in an ancient castle. The title of the film, UNCOVERED, does not really relate to Kate Beckinsale's juvenile form, but rather to the Flanders panel itself. Kate Becksinsale (aged ten or whatever she really is, as who can tell with her hair cut like a boy and her tomboyish figure) is the unlikely picture restorer hired to clean and restore this valuable painting, and if you can believe that you can believe anything. People hire ten year-olds to restore valuable paintings every day, surely. She commissions an infra-red photo and discovers that a mysterious inscription had been painted over, which says in Latin 'Who killed the knight?' Two men in the painting are playing chess, but one of the men himself is a knight, and it turns out that he was killed as part of the intrigue portrayed in the painting. Meanwhile people start getting killed all round Beckinsale, and these killings seem to be related to those of 500 years ago and follow the pattern of the same chess game which is portrayed in the painting (the next moves of which predict who will be killed next). Well, there is no point in going on, because who cares, when a film is so terrible, what the original story was.


The book LA TABLA DE FLANDES becomes UNCOUVERED in the movies. It is common said that books are ever better than the films that came from it, but in this case it's a complement on the film. I've read the book and seen the film and they couldn't be more far apart. This book with a good adaptation to the cinema would make a great thriller, with various points of historical interest. Even though 'The 9th Gate' was not the right adaptation from the 'El club Dumas', from the same author, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, it is a good film, making the fans of a good thriller eager for a much better work in what concerns 'LA TABLA DE FlANDES', stating yet that it's very easy not to drift from the book, while make a new movie...


This one is for that small coterie of Kate Beckinsale fans. She's quite young here and, with a tomboyish haircut, looks and acts like a post-Disney Hayley Mills. And a little obligatory nudity from our heroic pixie helps her fans put up with the mediocre goings-on before and after. The film itself has an interesting core idea, but I frankly thought it would be more about the ramifications of the painting's ancient mystery (ala 'Da Vinci Code') than an excuse to pile up present-day murders via a chess game associated with the painting. Of course, I didn't realize that this film is from 1994, before the 'Da Vinci Code' phenomenon. But the chess game routine is quite old hat, 1994 or otherwise. The music score is also far too lighthearted and bouncy for what is supposed to be a thriller. As always, the carnage accumulating around the heroine doesn't seem to faze the cops who appear to wait for the next killing, show up, then calmly survey the damage and ponder why it just keeps happening around our female lead. This one is a time killer for those who have way too much time on their hands.


Without Kate Beckinsale in it, there would be no reason whatever to watch this piece of mindless drivel.

I haven't read the book, but I can well imagine it was a rollicking good, unputdownable page-turner. It should have been easy to make a good movie from it. So why didn't they? I don't think Jim McBride is a bad director, so let's not blame him. So I guess it must be the screenwriter, and maybe the producers, if they agreed that the finished product was what they wanted in the first place.

Anyhow, as I said, there is absolutely no point to watch this other than to marvel at Kate. She seems to have been a top actress from the word go. If you're a fan of hers, you'll like this. Otherwise, don't waste your time. Especially don't watch it if you know anything about chess. You will be frustrated and enraged. Did you know that experts call rooks "Castles"?


I totally agree with Keith - the Beckinsale version is a total rape of one of my favorite books and I would much rather have seen a carefully made version where the actors speak Spanish and fit with the characters in the book. Hey, Almodovar, Amenabar and friends - where were you when the decision to make the film was set????

When Jean Jacques Annaud made films as for example The name of the Rose or Enemy at the Gates he did a perfect job in carefully creating the moods and atmospheres and directing characters, so in those cases I could actually stand the fact that most of the characters spoke English. But this film really sucks - I am really disappointed.


"It is a well-known psychological fact that people's behavior is strongly affected by the way they dress," claims the narrator. That sets up the premise of the cartoon which shows Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd both changing personalities as different hats fly on them. (A truck carrying lots of hats spills its merchandise in the forest where are two stars are, hence the different hats/helmets keep falling on their heads.)

Bugs goes from army sergeant to game warden to native American to gangster to judge to groom. Elmer goes from hunter to, General MacArthur, to pilgrim, to a little lady with a bonnet to policeman to bride. Why bride-and-groom? "Because it always helps a picture to have a romantic ending," Bugs tells us at the end.

I hate to spoil the party here but I did not find this cartoon funny, just stupid. I like Bugs Bunny cartoons but this one was just plain dumb despite an interesting premise.


I don't mind low budget movies - "Saw" started out with a small budget & worked very well. Even the "Blair Witch Project" had some redeeming moments. Unfortunately, this one didn't.

From the very beginning, I couldn't understand what the plot in this movie was supposed to be about.

I understood that the lead character was undergoing some serious issues in his life, which affected those around him, but there seemed to be too many obscure incidents being introduced that had little or no relevance to what was going on in the movie.

In the end, I decided to log on here to see if anyone else had the "answer" to what the heck was supposed to be happening - unfortunately not.

Personally, I wouldn't invest my time on this wasted effort. It's not the money I was concerned about losing, it's the time I'll never get back again :-(


The story line of this film is almost completely non-sensical. The director/writer of this film took ideas/concepts from other films and tried to put them together into a 'uniquely' drawn out story (with the always great 'twist' ending), however, the end product is a piece of garbage. The characters in this story lack any depth whatsoever. The film contains no original scoring, poor editing, and at times, even worse acting. The director/writer clearly did not care about his characters and it shows in his work. While I hate to slam the 'efforts' of a low budget film maker, everyone should steer clear of this wasted effort. I did manage to sit through the entire 'experience' and can only offer that if you are feeling sad, lonely or just misunderstood, watch this film, you will laugh at how ridiculous it is.


After one large movie and this made-for-TV version, why can't someone stop messing around with the true story of the "Great Escape" and present it as it actually happened. The ending also fails to make clear that there were 2 UK-mounted war crimes trials of the murderers of the 50 escapees. Also Burchardt in real life was sentenced to death by hanging at the 2nd trial, but was reprieved. There are loads of other changes from the real events, but then Hollywood and the film industry has rarely cared about accuracy.


I only saw this silly made-for-TV sequel in it's chopped-down 93-minute video version, and it was quite obvious that there were many things missing. On the plus side, I didn't care.

Where THE GREAT ESCAPE was a somewhat-fictionalized version of a true story, GE2 is a fictional story which only touches reality at odd points (and sometimes the oddest: the part about recognizing some Gestapo officers from a painting in a nightclub is true).

The real story of the investigation of the Stalag Luft III murders would probably have been a lot more interesting, but there might not have been a part in that for Christopher Reeve.


This film bored me a little and reminded me very much of Death On The Nile, for example, the man cheating on his fiancé (same as in DOTN) The plot wasn't very exciting and seemed a little bit plain. Also, the cast was a bit weird looking with a pale lead and a weird looking other woman. Poirot is weird too and doesn't act normally. I don't know why this it and I don't know why I feel like this. The twists are predictable and boring and uninspiring. The cast is unlikeable and I can't sympathise with them at all. I was actually glad when some of the characters die. The death scenes are boring and plain (death by sandwich?!) Whats with that?


Did you know a horror franchise drowned a day before this week? The Producer and Directer weren't paying any attention... They were counting their money while that cult icon drowned. It's name was Friday the 13th. I watching the night it happened. Losing my temper... there. I was a fan. Friday the 13th should have been awesome. Every minute! It was... It wasn't a very good remake. We can give up now... fans.

You see Friday the 13th was my favorite movie... and today it was raped.

I mistakingly had high expectations of this movie. Of course I was bothered by the fact that Marcus Nispel, who did such a smash up job on Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, was directing. In fact besides the fact that Jason wore a hockey mask, had an affinity for machetes and his mother was in it for five seconds. It was almost impossible to differentiate between the two movies. Lots of slack jawed yokels and shaky camera action in the dark, just like Chainsaw. Poor story telling with numerous loose ends, just like Chainsaw. Terrible adaptation, just like Chainsaw.

Okay, maybe I'm being a little too hard on the movie. The first few minutes of the movie were incredible. Of coarse there' no rhyme or reason to Jason's return from the grave, but they never had on in the original either. The elements that they took from the first four movies were there, and yes I said 'Four' movies. There were elements from the Final Chapter despite what the propaganda says. The acting wasn't terrible. Yoo's character was probably the funniest character to ever be in a Friday the 13th to date. The under the dock kill was so classic that it felt like it belonged and it was good to see Jason in his old sack mask again.

Many key elements were there, but only for a second or two. Mrs. Voorhees head wasn't really elaborated on and wouldn't be caught as significant to anyone who hadn't seen the original movies. Despite all the hype about how Jason gets his hockey mask in this movie, it was a big let down and just seemed a little too convenient. The locals in the town were basically rejects from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In fact the scenery may have appeared New Englandish... but the locals just screamed, "I'm from Texas!"

Jason Voorhees. How could they screw up a character like Jason Voorhees? Give these folks a hand though. They did it. I started to realize that Jason wasn't quite himself around the sleeping bag death scene. First and foremost Jason is a killer, not a sadistic torturer. Sure he's done some pretty brutal things to his victims, but roasting a person alive, just isn't his style. It's too much set up for Jason honestly. Additionally, if Jason has you on the ground with a machete coming down at you, you are DEAD. He doesn't lock you in his basement and keep you alive for months because you're a pretty girl who looks like his mother. Jason kills. And he especially kills if you impersonate his mother.

The end... in more ways than one. When I watched the ending of this movie I literally had the feeling that I was ripped off. The pay off with the wood chipper wasn't even utilized here. And then for some reason the survivor(s), another thing that was lame, decided to dump his body in the lake. This means they had to actively decide it was a good idea to get rid of the evidence that they were not the manics that killed a bunch of people, but it also means that they had to take Jason out of the chipper, take the chain off his neck, remove his mask, and carry him all the way out to the dock. And if Jason was playing possum the entire time, why didn't he just kill them when he still had access to a wood chipper and a barn full of tools?

In fact this movie raised nothing but questions. Who killed Mrs. Voorhees? What ever happened to her? Why did Jason miraculously come back from the dead? Why was his body still intact after all those years in the lake? Why does Jason wear a mask? How did he keep the rats from eating his mother's head? Why did the local cops not bother investigating anything? How did Jason learn to hook up electricity to his camp? Why didn't the power company notice nobody's paying the electric bill for an abandoned summer camp? Why would Jason keep some girl chained up in his basement? Why do all the locals of Crystal Lake appear to have come from Texas? Why did they bother doing makeup for Jason when they show his face for maybe two frames of the whole movie? Why does Jason pop out of the lake at the end with his mask on? What were they thinking? Why did I see this miserable attempt to remake a great movie? Why am I wasting more time on a bad review? Why are you still reading?

All in all a terrible movie.


I didn't expect much of anything other than a few memorable kills and maybe a cheap jump scare here and there. This pathetic excuse for a movie couldn't even deliver that much. For starters, I personally can't stand how recent horror movies are shot. Everything has the same dark, muddy and flat-looking quality, with no real clarity of picture and irritating shakycam going into overdrive during 90 percent of the horror/action scenes because far too many directors today aren't talented enough to stage an effective horror or action scene without it. The gore was often even hard to make out because of the camera-work, too, which renders something like this almost completely pointless. And while the 1980s Friday films aren't what I'd call genre classics, you could at least clearly make out the gory scenes instead of getting a split flash of some CGI effect while the cameraman goes into a seizure. Bah-humbug, I know. But I swear I really did try my best to like this one. Honest!

Defenders of this latest bargain basement remake will say things like...

"It's not supposed to have a storyline or plot!" or "The acting is supposed to be bad!" or "The dialogue is supposed to be stupid!" or "The characters are supposed to be unbearably obnoxious and annoying!" or "It's not supposed to be scary!" Well OK then. I'd now like to take the opportunity to congratulate Mr. Nispel for making an unscary, ugly-looking, suspense-free movie with bad acting, terrible dialogue, forgettable kills and annoying characters. Way to go Marcus!

What other "goodies" do we get here? Let's see...

For some reason, the film opens with all the credits but waits until about twenty minutes in to reveal the TITLE.

Half of the dialogue seems to consist of either the "f" word or "dude." And what's up with every person talking to themselves? Every time a person was alone they were having a conversation. With whom? I have no clue. When a floorboard creaks it's not really necessary to have someone say "What was that? I better go upstairs and see what that is!" Or, in Friday remake terms it's more like... "What tha @#!* was that @#!* ? Dayum I need to go up doz @#!*' stairs to investigate me some @#!*!" The characters are all pretty awful - a bunch of annoying, smug, self-satisfied, foul-mouthed twits who seem like they need to immediately be committed to a rehab program. Naturally all the white characters get to pair off and have sex, while no one seems the least bit interested in the one black and one Asian character. Since the black guy can't get laid he's reduced to pleasuring himself while listening to whitey going at it upstairs. At least three different male victims said "What the @#!*?" when they were confronted with Jason. The black guy had a slight variation though since he's black. Seriously, whoever wrote this should be embarrassed.

The cast was also bad. Travis Van Winkle should never act again. What is the appeal of this guy anyway? He can't act for squat and resembles Vincent from the Beauty and the Beast TV series. And Jared Padalecki (though one of the better actors here) would probably look better without the Farrah Fawcett hairdo. I had a very difficult time telling the actresses they hired apart. When blonde #1 was killed and they cut back to the cabin to blonde #2 I was like "I thought she was already dead?" And then there's a missing sister, who I kept confusing with the rich jock's girlfriend toward the end. If you can hire a black and an Asian actor to help diffuse all the shaggy-haired white boys, then why can't you hire an attractive black or Asian actress? Preferrably one who isn't sporting a set of distracting and unnatural-looking silicone cans like several actresses in this film. No wonder Willa Ford couldn't keep herself under water for long! Note to parents: If your 18-year-old daughter begs you for a set of DD bolt-on's for her 18th birthday, get her a Prada handbag instead. She'll thank you later.

The film is full of extremely stupid moments and scenes. Getting hit directly in the head by a speedboat going about 50 miles per hour will only result in a tiny little boo-boo. And the extensive lair of underground catacombs under Jason's house? Did Jason dig all that out or is it some sewer system in the middle of the woods? Maybe a former coal mine... with an escape hatch through an overturned school bus? Whaaaaaaa? Then we have Jason keeping a hostage. Well, the Jason I like don't play like that. Are they trying to now "humanize" him like Rob Zombie did with Michael Myers in his equally wretched "remake" of HALLOWEEN? Urghhh...

It all leads up to an ending that fails just as badly as the rest of the movie. The original has that legendary moment that made people jump from their seats while the people who made this botched that opportunity because of a completely awful editing cut. So I'm sad to say, but in my estimation, this was sloppy, irritating and pretty much just plain boring and tiresome. It could have been fun. It's not. At least to me. JASON GOES TO HELL and JASON X were even better than this!


(Slight spoilers, though nothing major. Hell, the whole rotten movie is a "spoiler")

Upon viewing the opening third of this movie, I swear I thought the film had been written by Peter and Bobby Farrelly (the talentless brothers behind such pieces of dung such as THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY, and ME, MYSELF, AND IRENE) because the film assaulted the audience with embarrassingly crude, off-color, profanity-ridden dialogue.

The film also stoops to presenting distressingly stereotypical characters, including blatantly adding the token black guy and the token Asian guy and then tries to poke fun at it! ("Just because I'm black, that mean I can't listen to Green Day?") The film didn't get any better from there.

As a longtime, die-hard Friday fan, I cringed as I watched the filmmakers completely destroy the myth and character of Jason Voorhees by turning him into a psycho, inbred redneck -- directly out of the Texas CHAINSAW series (directed by an individual who directed the crappy remake of that, and using actors from that remake too!). Absurd was the plot point of Jason holding the girl hostage (for reasons that were never truly made clear)-- since when has Jason EVER done anything like that? Oh right, we're making him into Leatherface now.

The lighting was awful, the kills were mostly too fast and too dark to be enjoyed, Derek Mears was OK but unremarkable as Jason. I'll credit him for doing the best with the sickeningly bad material he had to work with.

Worst of all, the film tries to have it both ways -- it tries to create a scary Jason, but makes the characters so repugnantly unappealing that the audience is rooting for Jason. You can't have your cake and eat it too: either have a scary Jason that we're rooting against because he's the villain, or portray him as the (anti)hero who's there to wipe out teenage scum. Not both.

A couple good touches, such as the topless skiing scene (even though that didn't show off what it could've) and the ax kill (now THAT was pure Jason) can even begin to save this pile of sludge. But I'm sure we'll have another awful remake (or sequel to a remake), since this crap hit it big at the box office.

Grade Z tripe.


Here is the usual "SPOILERS ahead" warning. Read at your own peril!! I've always been a F13/Jason fan. Can't say I was excited about the remake being produced by Michael Bay but at least I hoped we would get some cool new special edition dvds (which we did). So expecting nothing and knowing I had my old favorites still to watch I went to check it out.

Have to say I was under impressed. One of the charms for me about F13 has always been the fact the movies didn't take themselves very serious. The creators might disagree with that statement but come on, how do you explain his healing factor, the fact Jason never runs but somehow always get ahead of his victim and his "victim radar"? This new movie tries really hard to make it "realistic". Jason runs (*sigh*) after his victims. (Runs? Runs? Jason doesn't run!) There is some sort of crazy mine below Camp Crystal Lake (?) that Jason now uses to get around (because the director wanted a mine. You know, a generic mine, not any particular kind). Along with bear traps and trip wires to let him know where people are. Some half buried bus to come out of ... somewhere on the camp ground. We only get one "Kill, kill, kill, Ma, ma, ma" when he finds the hockey mask. (I remember reading that the new creators wanted to have some "meaning" about why and where he got the mask. Guess they forgot that because it's the same thing, he finds it.) And oh yeah, not much happens at the camp because the producer, Michael "Big Explosion" Bay, thinks that summer camps aren't scary. That reminds me of the director for a Captain America movie who said he hated the costume so he kept the hero out of costume as much as possible. Where the Hell do they get these people? It's more of a remake of F12 Part 3, than Part 1 or Part 2 though there are parts of both in it. Nana Visitor is utterly wasted as the new Mrs. Voorhees. There are some great comments over at Stacy Ponder's Final Girl blog review. Then I found out something that would have kept me totally away from the flick, the director is the same guy who did the god-awful remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre from a few years back (Marcus Nispel). Honestly, if I had known that, I wouldn't have wasted the $9.50 nor the time. But, I would have warned you my friends, this guy doesn't ever need to make a movie again. Let alone another "horror" movie.

It's not totally horrible and I'm sure the kids who like the remakes of the current time will like it. But for this old timer, it takes the parts of F13 I liked and totally ejects them in favor or "realism". Honestly, it makes me worry even more about the upcoming "new" Star Trek.

For old fans, I would recommend picking up the new versions of F13 1-3 and "His Name Was Jason". F13 P3 is finally in 3D, and His Name Was Jason is hosted by Tom Savini. All kinds of 80's slasher goodness there. Don't forget the original "Valentine's Day Massacre" just released, also uncut for the first time ever. You'll enjoy it more than this remake.

I'll give it 1 hockey mask out of 5.


Friday the 13th, number ??? Do we really need to count them anymore? In this flick we have obnoxious, drunken, dope-smoking, 20-somethings that have their karma leveled by a hockey-masked super-killer named Jason. As in previous renditions, there are a couple of sympathetic characters added for audience appeal while Jason murders the other repulsive young twits one by one. There is much discussion in these pages about the lack of originality in this movie, but the fact is there is little originality in the entire Friday 13 series. The first Friday the 13th., 1980, was just an American re-hash of horror master Mario Bava's Bay of Blood, 1971. Fortunately, Mr. Bava had the good sense to quit after one entry; that good judgment is missing from the American side which merely sees the opportunity to squeeze a little more cash out of a dated idea. Only for hard core fans of machete-massacre movies.


Jason is back with a murderous vengeance in "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remake director Marcus Nispel's "Friday the 13th" (** out of ****), and he doesn't aim to please. This invincible villain with his attitude toward pre-marital sex has changed. Essentially, the new "Friday the 13th" synthesizes Sean S. Cunningham's above-average original along with Steve Minor's first and second gratuitous sequels to deliver the maximum amount of mayhem. Nevertheless, despite its slick, ultra-polished production values, nudity, and carnage, this "Friday" lacks a shred of creativity. Clearly, nobody expected anything fresh from the new "Friday the 13th," but Nispel's remake shows more interest in Jason than Jason's truly demented mother. Gorehounds weaned on the "Saw" sagas will gripe about the lack of brutality. Everybody else will feel like they've suffered through a nightmare in a hospital emergency room. Prudes will carp about the soft-core porno scenes and the voyeurism that panders to its lusty teenage audience. Bluntly, "Friday the 13th" generates no suspense, but does a number on your eardrums.

The original "Friday the 13th" dealt with a mom gone amok over the drowning death of her son while teenage counselors who were supposed to be watching him indulged in sex. Mrs. Voorhees vented her rage and cut a swathe with a machete through those amorously distracted teenagers. Indeed, Jason appeared only at the last moment in Cunningham's 1980 original and he was only a boy. Incidentally, the first "Friday the 13th" helped launch the slasher genre a couple of years of John Carpenter's mildly bloody "Halloween." Mind you, Jason didn't don the hockey mask that provided him with more personality than any other slasher stalker until the second sequel, "Friday the 13th in 3-D (1982) and by that time his immortality was taken for granted. After all, Jason is basically supernatural. He has more lives than a cat. He's been frozen, blasted into outer space, and consigned to Hell with few ill effects. A mute, inexorable, slaughter machine with the mentality of a battery powered hare, Jason is Death personified. The new Jason, however, takes on some of the characteristicsnot surprisinglyof Leatherface from the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" franchise. Jason operates in and around Camp Crystal Lake, where he drowned as a youth, like a cunning Viet Cong guerrilla, living in a maze of tunnels with booby-traps galore. Boasting his usual god-like omnipotence, he is tall, dark, and deadly. You never know where he is going to strike and where his weapon of choice will penetrate you.

The problem with the new "Friday" is Nispel disposes of Mrs. Voorhees in the first few moments without giving the dame her due. The Damian Shannon & Mark Swift screenplay doesn't take place in Camp Crystal Lake, and nobody is trying to refurnish the old campgrounds. Instead, the latest lambs for Jason's machete are a half-dozen, college-aged hikers searching for marihuana growing wild on Jason's stomping grounds. This subplot recalls the Leonardo DiCaprio movie "The Beach" where college kids swarmed into a pot field and died at the hands of machine-gun armed natives! Of course, these kids don't have a clue that they're trespassing on Jason's bailiwick. Our deformed killer dispatches them with extreme prejudice in the first 30 minutes. In a throwback to an earlier Jason sequel, he bundles a babe into a sleeping bag and smokes her to death over a fire. Unmistakably, Nispel is paying homage to Jason bashing a girl trapped in a sleeping bag against a tree in "Friday the 13th Part VIIThe New Blood" (1988).

In a departure from the norm, Jason takes one of these girls, Whitney Miller (Amanda Righetti of "Role Models"), hostage because she reminds him of mom. He keeps her chained up in his subterranean lair. Later, to her credit, Whitney parlays her resemblance to Mrs. Voorhees to her advantage. Whitney's motorcycle riding brother, Clay (Jared Padelecki of TV's "Supernatural"), is scouring Camp Crystal Lake for her and handing out missing posters. Clay is reminiscent of Rob in "Friday the 13th Part IV: Jason Lives" (1986) who wanted to kill Jason for slaughtering his sister. Anyway, Clay encounters a group of obnoxious twentysomethings hanging out at a cabin on Crystal Lake. These kids look like they stepped out of a WB soap opera. They are pretty, but bland, except for Asian-American Aaron Yoo of "Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist" who provides some comic relief. Eventually, Clay finds Whitney, but by then Jason has appropriated his hockey mask, whittled down virtually nondescript nitwits, and bears down on the hero and heroine. Nispel generates his scares with sudden bursts of deafening music timed with occur with Jason's sudden appearances. Everything is rather dull when Jason isn't slashing and gashing his victims. "Pathfinder" lenser Daniel Pearl's atmospheric photography creates a modicum of mood. Incredibly, Nispel doesn't take full advantage of Harry Manfredini's memorable "ch-ch-ch/pa-pa" music. Comparatively, Nispel's unsubtle remake makes Sean S. Cunningham's original slasher look Shakespearean.


It stands for "Classic Horror In, Re-imagined Garbage Out". You can substitute "Camp" or "Crap" for the C, depending upon how you feel about the original "Friday the 13th" - the rest of the acronym remains the same.

The re-imagined "Friday the 13th" isn't scary. It isn't creepy. It isn't suspenseful. It isn't funny at any point, and it's only the slightest bit sexy. It doesn't add anything to the Jason mystique or, for that matter, to the "unstoppable boogeyman" archetype in cinematic horror.

The characters in this flick are so one-dimensional they make all the throwaway performances from previous installments of the series look positively Oscar-worthy. And that includes episodes 5-9, which are hard to beat on the Unwatchable Meter.

As many have noted, the lighting in a lot of scenes is bad. This is probably done for realism, but frankly it doesn't detract too much because you never feel like there's much to see anyway. Likewise for the relatively sparing use of shakycam.

Considering all the things they might have updated 29 years later, there really seems to have been little thought put into this movie. Yeah, there's more sex and nudity than in the original installments, but it doesn't seem that over the top and it definitely isn't titillating. Most of it is accompanied by insanely annoying dialogue.

There are plenty of scenes that will make you cringe and groan for their stupidity, but I don't want to include any spoilers, so I'll skip them.

Instead, I'll just mention the two most memorable non-spoilers:

1) There is gratuitous use of sudden loud noises to create shock or suspense when none would otherwise exist. Lots of movies do this when they can't be scary - I can't think of another one that does it so often or so loudly.

2) There is also a major preoccupation with weed. Was "Pineapple Express" that big a hit?

If there is any horror in this movie at all, it is that Amanda Righetti and Willa Ford felt it necessary to star in it to advance their careers.

This movie does to the "Friday the 13th" franchise what "Quantum of Solace" did to James Bond. I hope Bond can be revived somehow. I no longer have the slightest interest in the goings-on at Camp Crystal Lake.


Lots and lots of spoilers below.

First of all, let me be clear and say that I have not seen the original "Friday the 13th" in over 10 years. It isn't a movie that stayed with me in any way - I've always been a fan of Halloween / Michael Meyers. That said, I think I know what makes a good horror film, and I know that none of those things are in this film.

My first complaint lies in the structure of the story. The first thirty minutes or so of prologue lend nothing but confusion as to where the story is going. When we find out after the first group of murders who has been kept alive and how they are connected to the second story line (Clay's search for his sister), I had spent so much time being repulsed by the group of friends that I really had no emotional stake (re: I couldn't even remember the character's name) in whether the girl lived or died.

My second complaint lies with I expect that there will be the obtuse sex, drinking, and drugs in any "campy" horror film like this, but these first 30 minutes were so packed with inane boobs and weed shots that I was ready to consider this a comedy, not a horror film. I'm not looking for social commentary when I see a slasher film, but all of the references to marijuana seem like they're being made by people who have never even come in contact with it. It's almost like when you're in High School, bragging about how high you got, and the guy you're talking to lies so that he doesn't feel stupid for not partaking in substances like that: "Man, I got SOOOOoooo freaking high last night. What'd you do at the party?" "Oh, uhm, I smoked several weed cigarettes and drank a couple brewskis, then passed out." Apparently, this guy wrote a screenplay for a Friday the 13th "remake".

Lastly, although I could probably keep complaining about this film, Jason is absolutely NOT SCARY in the first half of this movie. By the time we're midway through the second story line (I contend that this movie should have been called: "Friday the 13th: A Bunch of Douche Bags Go Camping, and Jason Voorhees Is Somewhat Involved") there have been so many crappy people on-screen, and they have been killed by Jason in typical Jason style, he just isn't that scary anymore. We know he's there, waiting for the topless girl with fake boobs to swim ashore so he can decapitate her. WE KNOW. This film is neither atmospheric, nor does it even attempt to build tension. It is simply a terrible movie.

Other grievances: The pot-dealing redneck, who is only introduced so that he can be killed and Jason can find his hockey mask (a full HOUR into the film), is the single most disgusting character I've ever seen on-screen. This is not a compliment: just before his "untimely" demise, he talks to a mannequin, and asks the mannequin if she "remembers that night, when (she) took (his) virginity". I would rather be decapitated by Jason than ever hear those words spoken in a film again.

Why is it that every Michael Bay production or direction has to include the blue halo / lens flare around electric lights? I noticed this early on, but at one point later in the film, as a flashlight goes across the screen, there is actually a sound effect applied when the lens flare hits the audience. WHY? How much money did you spend on that? How much time was spent adding that tiny "swoosh" into the soundtrack? God, Michael, get a freaking life - you can't just add things like that and hope that you've produced a good film. You haven't. And you never will.


First off, I will say that there are some good things about the rehash of Friday the 13th. Though I was less than thrilled when they announced they were remaking one of my favourite franchises from the 80s, a little part of me wanted to see how they will remake this.

What's good about the film? The quality of film-making is much improved. Technically speaking, it's an attractive, modestly-budgeted film with great special effects. As well, the first 15 minutes of the film are strong, summarizing the plot of the first two films (Mother's massacre, Jason's revenge) and showing Jason as a stronger, meaner killing machine. It even gives a glimpse of how Jason actually lives, stealing from townsfolk and hiding in the woods, left to fend for himself.

Now... what's wrong with it? The characters are extremely unlikeable. Aside from the three leads (Jenna, Whitney, Clay), I cringed at most of the one-dimensional, obnoxious characters, even though the acting were fine. This is a contrast from the older films, where the characters were memorable and most of the acting was bad.

The plot holes. So let me get this straight... Jason is in the woods for all of his life, killing tons of people; yet the cops have no idea that anything is going on. "People go missing every day". The townsfolk don't, either. And, the majority of the plot takes place in a beautiful (and well kept) house in the woods owned by a character's rich father who goes there frequently... they never had a chance run-in with the maniac living in the woods for the past 20 years?

The lack of subtlety. The old films flirted with peek-a-boo nudity, mild language and quick kills, making it fun to watch and more effective. This one features full-on, almost explicit sex, F-bombs dropping almost every minute, and long, drawn out, unpleasant kills that make it more tuned for the "Saw" or "Hostel" crowd. I'll note now that I'm not a prude, I have no problems with sex and violence, but sometimes less is more.

All in all, I didn't hate Friday the 13th, but I hope five years from now I'll be watching Friday the 13th The Remake Part 5. Sadly, if they do make one I know I'll probably watch it.


Look, I know F13 series was never high art. it was never really clever (except maybe part 6).. it was camp. but in general, it was fun.

This film alternated between three moods

1) nothing. I mean there is at least ONE HOUR where NOTHING HAPPENS! a bunch of moronic, profanity-laden kids TALK!!! No suspense. No horror. No humor.. NOTHING!!

2) Sex. Hey, part of the slasher genre is some sex scenes. But this felt more like soft-porn. There was one sex scene that felt like it went on for TWENTY MINUTES.. I didn't clock it, but it sure felt like it to me. These scenes went WAY beyond T&A or tease. I actually felt uncomfortable watching some of these.

3) Sadistic-torture porn. When Jason was around it felt more like a Saw movie, or maybe the remake of the Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Jason TORTURES his victims? Huh? Instead of a supernatural zombie he is more in line with a sadistic serial killer. a VERY different personality, and one that I felt was repugnant. In the original, Jason was alternately fun and scary. In this, he was just a sicko. Ugh.

This pretty much sums up the movie for me.

Oh, except one more thing. It looks like they used the lights over from AvP:Requiem. The scenes were TOO dark to see. And the Michael Bay 2-second scenes just made it worse! This wasn't some heavy cheap=CGI that had to be 'hidden' with low lit scenes and fast cutting!! I couldn't take it anymore.. And found myself fast forwarding to get through the picture.. Every time I played the movie it was one of the above 3 moods..

I never thought I would appreciate the 1980 original so much. That was truly a brilliant piece of film-making compared to this.

I have NO idea of who/why someone would like to see this. I am seeing some folks giving this high marks, so obviously it is filling a need. Just one that I don't understand.

Where was the fun?

If there are sequels to this reboot,then I will pass..


This is a awful movie. Another teenager movie but this time with Jason.

This movie is full of bad jokes, poor writing and very poor imagination. The ones from the 80's are far better than this one.

The girls in this movie serve two purpose only: They are there to show their body and to show some sex scenes. The guys look like Ken (Barbies boyfriend) and came straight from the model agency. The only thing that matters is that they look good on film. No one cares if they can't perform. Obviously the director didn't care.

And what about Jason? Well, Jason had some evolution. He can use a bow and arrow now becoming Jason Hood. He runs (wich is fine) and he looks at himself in the mirror (even Jason cares about looks now). Oh and for some reason he can travel at light speed because he changes from place to place so goddamn fast.

This isn't a horror movie. Its a comedy with some gore (not too much). I was hoping to see a remake with the quality of Halloween (from Rob Zombie) but this is even worse than Freddy vs. Jason (and that one is really bad).

And please! If any director is reading this. Please!!! Avoid the stupid racial and teenager jokes. No one cares about them and they ruin the whole movie feeling.

I gave it a 4 for 2 reasons only: Jason is back and he keeps doing is stuff.

Avoid this movie if you can. And my advice is to not even spend money renting it.