instruction:
In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
question:
capsule : godawful " comedy
" that 's amazingly shabby and cut - rate , and rather bereft of laughs
.
i was having a bad week in my life when i saw austin powers :
international man of mystery .
i desperately needed something to cheer me up , or at least distract me so i could get a clear head .
get some perspective .
even dumb movies can do that for me , sometimes .
i tried hard not to let my dejection affect my judgment , but i am certain now that austin powers would have also sucked rocks through bamboo shoots on the day i won the lottery .
michael myers has taken a character that would barely have supported a five - minute sketch on saturday night live and stretched it to the length of a feature film , padding it out with toilet jokes and the sort of props - strategically - positioned - between - naked - actors - and - camera gags that benny hill got tired of fifteen years ago .
the plot , what little there is of it : back in the swinging mod hep sixties ( i do n't think i 'm doing a disservice to the movie 's attempted early look and feel by describing it that way ) , sexy british secret agent austin powers tangled with his nemesis dr .
evil .
evil launched himself into orbit and cryogenically forze himself to return decades later , when powers was out of the picture .
powers also had himself frozen , and he wakes up to find the nineties a very hard time to deal with .
the basic gag , that of powers ' total inability to cope with the nineties , is not so much exhausted during the course of the movie as never even really dealt with .
the bulk of the movie is taken up with dumb jokes of several basic rubrics : james bond gags ( of which this movie has no end , right down to the silly character names ) , inept slapstick , toilet humor , and strategically placed props . . .
the movie 's amazingly bereft of ideas , come to think of it , with a couple of bright exceptions .
one is dr .
evil 's son -- there is a sidesplitting scene where father and son go to an encounter group , chaired by carrie fisher -- and the other is a throwaway gag where austin mimics various forms of transportation from behind a couch ( it 's a visual gag -- hard to describe , and hard to recommend seeing the movie for ) .
a lot of sixties kitsch has been resurrected and thrown on the screen for this movie , but it 's desperate rather than clever .
instead of skewering the whole thing , it 's a rather bloodless and unfunny tribute
.
myers himself is also desperate : he 's given an idea to play , not a character .
plus , the attempts to make the character work by giving him a relationship with another sexy ( albeit " nineties " ) agent are a waste of time .
i wanted to have the movie end with him trying yet again to get it on with her , only to have her deck him one .
with a couple of exceptions , the movie misses all of its own best moments .
the movie even looks cheesy , and not in a good way : i kept wondering if it had been transferred down from hi - def video or something , so grainy was the film stock in a good many scenes .
the whole thing has the air of being done on the cheap .
my definition of comedy is simply : did it make me laugh ?
the few times that i laughed in austin powers were completely offset by the time i spent cringing and wanting out .
the most damning thing i could say about the movie is that wayne and garth would most likely have shoved it into mike tyson 's shorts and sent it sailing .
answer:
N

question:
the happy bastard 's quick movie review analyze this how does one do a comedy focused on the mob ?
well , a few years ago , there was a sly little comedy called the freshman , which had marlon brando doing a romp of a send - up of his famous don corleone character and , recently , the utterly stupid ( in a bad way ) movie mafia ! failed to really get the joke .
this time around , however , warner bros .
may have gotten it right with analyze this , a movie that hits its targets
more than it misses .
. .
and for plenty of reasons .
the story goes like this .
a mobster ( robert deniro ) finds himself receiving several panic attacks as of late , fueled by the stress of an upcoming mobster meeting and a near - death following a drive - by shooting .
it 's these attacks that prompt him to hire a psychiatrist ( billy crystal ) who 's mostly reluctant to take the mobster 's case for two reasons .
first , of course , he 's a mobster , but secondly , he 's trying to get married and enjoy a quiet honeymoon with his wife ( lisa kudrow ) and kid .
and , of course , he ca n't rest worth for a moment because the mobster 's goons are always needing the shrink for something , be it a quick consultation or dream analyzation .
fortunately , the movie is played out for plenty of laughs .
director harold ramis ( who also helmed the comedy multiplicity , which was n't half bad ) keeps the tone peppy and light , even if it 's sometimes sprinkled by slight dramatic moments ( shootings ca n't always be taken for laughs , you know ) .
deniro
does some of his finest comic work since the king of comedy , giving off a somewhat similar performance to his role in goodfellas , but with a bit of a lighter heart .
( a scene where he tries to display his anger over the phone and fails miserably is hilarious . )
crystal plays an excellent straight man to deniro 's character , uplifting him from such bombs as father 's day and my giant .
kudrow is also a hoot as crystal 's wife - to - be , who 's on the verge of a breakdown thanks to deniro 's presence .
is the movie perfect ?
not really , thanks to a simplistic ending and some slightly wasted moments with a character portrayed by chazz palminteri
( he 's a comic actor , too , come on , give him some more ! ) , but
it is an enjoyable romp
that lets deniro do something different but same for a change , taking his dramatic act to a new field of comedy . kudos to crystal and kudrow for not just making it his show , either .
line of the movie : crystal :
" when you said you needed family therapy , this is not the family i had in mind ! "
answer:
P

question:
when i first heard of contact , the hype was building it up as a sci - fi blockbuster .
now , with that in mind , coupled with the knowledge of jodie foster 's involvement in the project , i thought " what in the world is foster doing in a sci - fi blockbuster ? ? ?
" . as it turned out , my expectations were completely nullified and turned topsy - turvy .
robert zemeckis , back from the euphoria created by his last film , forrest gump ,
once again proves his mastery in fusing tales of adventure with along the endearing lines of human spirit .
do n't get me wrong , contact is sci - fi ?
but with a definite difference .
based on the late carl sagan novel of the same name , the story delves itself in questions on science and god ; fact and faith .
allie ( foster ) is a radio astronomer .
she spends her time listening to the stars , via ultra - huge communication dishes in search of intelligent life beyond the solar system .
her passion for ' long - distance communication ' is the result of her younger days being spent avidly in front of a ham - radio system ( a hobbyist radio communication device ) which her late - father bought for her .
a scene which particularly strengthens the audiences ' view of the passion is when she asked her father whether she could contact her late - mother through the ham - radio system in which her father replied " not even the most powerful radio in the world can do that , now " .
allie 's research is based on the seti project ( search for extra terrestrial intelligence ) , in which she listens to radio emissions from other galaxies in the hope of finding one which would suggest intelligent manipulation .
her work has never been off the scrutiny of the us government , which considers it a waste of taxpayer 's money and politically unviable , her supervisor ( tom skerritt ) pulls the plug on seti .
undaunted , allie managed to gather a loyal group of ' believers ' and eventually found funding from a large private corporation .
the following months were treacherous to their hopes and research as they are contantly pressured by the government but all that changed when one day , she caught an emission of a seemingly intelligent repeating sound - wave .
the news of her find attracted hordes of alien believers , cultist , the media and of course , the government .
the situation became intense upon her discovery of pictorial plans on building a form of transport which were embedded within the repeating sound emission .
as the world join forces to build this transport , allie is desperate to be the one to go .
she enrols herself among a few hopefuls , to represent the world when the transport is ready for operation .
her eligibility for the spot failed when she is questioned on her beliefs in the existence of god by the president 's spiritual advisor ( mcconaughey ) ; allie , being an atheist , a result of her belief in fact and science , refuses to budge upon questioning .
at this point the movie plot thickens considerably as she is romantically involved with the president 's spiritual advisor .
a strong point which propelled the movie is the depth of its main characters played by foster and mcconaughey .
from the very first meeting scene , it is obvious that the two of them was sort of kindred spirits but they were worlds apart in almost all aspects , foster being a person drawn to science and facts and mcconaughey being one who believes in faith , hope and the power of the unseen .
the meeting of their worlds , added with the situation which they are put into makes the entire storytelling process near flawless .
many people who read the synopsis of this film would find it a tad too ridiculous , but by actually immersing yourself in it , gives you an entirely different perspective ; one which is free from bias and pre - conceptions .
zemeckis and his team of screen writers have done a remarkable job in telling this tale through film .
contact works by not delving in controversy but rather , touches the thinking audience , urging them to ponder upon the questions raised in the film concerning fact and faith ; whether one can actually find compromise within .
i consider contact as one of the must - sees for this year .
answer:
P