In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.

zero effect gets its title from the main character , daryl zero ( bill pullman ) , although we do n't understand what it truly means until the very last line of dialogue in the film .
zero is a private investigator , perhaps the best private investigator who ever lived ( at least he 'd like to think so ) .
however , he 's a socially inept being , and eccentric in every possible way -- this fact certainly makes his talents as a private eye even more bewildering than they already are .
zero 's accomplice is steve arlo ( ben stiller ) , a " normal " guy who does the business side of the job -- he 's the one who actually speaks to clients and explains zero 's greatness as an investigator .
the opening scene has steve explaining the many virtues of zero 's talents to soon - to - be client gregory stark ( ryan o'neal ) .
it turns out that stark has lost a key to a safe deposit box , and is now being blackmailed for something that he apparently knows nothing about .
zero takes the case , and the plot thickens .
his path leads to a young , pretty paramedic named gloria sullivan ( kim dickens ) .
despite her luminous and seemingly - harmless presence , she turns out to be the one blackmailing stark .
through his investigations , zero learns why , but not without developing feelings for gloria -- feelings that , because of his reclusive behavior , are new and confusing to him .
i have no particular affinity towards the mystery genre of film .
i can idly enjoy movies about private investigators , and , every once in a while , a film like chinatown comes a long that blows me away ( actually , no private eye film has ever reached chinatown 's greatness ) .
zero effect , which is jake kasdan 's first effort as writer / director , is a film about a private investigator that succeeds in all attempts :
it 's
an original , funny , and completely involving motion picture .
with so many cliches available to this genre , i find it amazing that kasdan avoided all of them .
but he did n't just successfully avoid flaws
: he has created a great film here , one that had me interested and fascinated from the first shot to the final moment .
take , for starters ,
the great cast of characters .
pullman is terrific as zero , showing a comic flair that i really have n't seen from him since spaceballs .
zero is the kind of guy who seems at ease switching personalities so frequently as he does here ; the fact that he 's an almost exaggeratedly twisted , emotionally unstable man outside of his profession is not at all difficult to believe .
pullman 's performance is much more layered than it might seem at first glance , and the occasional voice - over as he 's going through the motions of his job are insightful and often hilarious
.
ben stiller is also a very funny individual ; he 's the kind of comedian who makes normal lines sound funny .
"
i 'll shoot you , " he says to stark at one point .
"
i have a gun , and everything .
" his character is also well - drawn , with an interesting subplot involving his girlfriend ( angela featherstone ) who is not happy with the extensive amounts of time he must spend away from her due to the unpredictability of his job .
o'neal also gives his character a bit of depth ; and kim dickens , last seen ( and underused ) in mercury rising , gets a chance to show us her talent here , giving gloria the realism this kind of character really needs .
i find zero effect to be an immensely funny and witty film .
kasdan 's humor is of the best kind --
soft spoken , and mostly dialogue - driven ( though
there are some great visual jokes ) .
it 's the kind of humor that 's funny even after you 've seen it five or six times .
there 's one scene in which zero talks about how detached he is , an how that makes him such a great detective .
what we see during this narration are various shots of him sitting on a bed , or standing motionlessly , with his hair destroyed and an utterly blank look painted on his unshaven face , his eyes pointing to something off camera , but obviously to nothing in particular .
i ca n't convey to you how funny this is , but what makes it great film making is that it has a point -- scenes like this are frequent , and they provide solid characterization of zero .
as a side note , i do n't consider myself an average viewer when it comes to comedy ( not to sound elitist ) -- i find things funny
that many do not , and vice versa .
there was a clump of people near me in the theater laughing uproariously through this film , and the rest of the theater was relatively silent through most of it .
i have a feeling the humor here wo n't appeal to everyone , but there 's certainly enough story and character development to keep anyone 's interest .
jake kasdan , son of writer / director lawrence kasdan , is only 22 years old .
i found this out after seeing the film , and i ca n't remember ever being so impressed with a film maker .
his direction is stylish without being pretentious , and his writing is mature , full , and developed .
zero effect is the kind of film that i 'll buy for my collection
-- smart , original films like this are rare as it is , but this one actually has a heart and a soul
.
at the end of the film , i was involved in the characters , and
i was satisfied with the outcome .
and , with kasdan 's undeniable talent at such a young age , all i can do is hope to see a lot more from him in the future .
P

i guess that if a very wild bachelor party had gone really bad , there would be broken furniture , traces of smack and cocaine on the floor , and a dead prostitute in the bathroom .
i guess that if a movie had also gone really bad , there might be the same elements present .
coincidence ?
poor kyle ( a meek looking jon favreau ) . . .
he is about to marry his radiant fiancee , laura ( cameron diaz ) .
but before he exchanges his vows , he embarks to las vegas with his friends for one last blowout .
but this bachelor party has gone about as bad as it could possibly get .
the prostitute has met a horrible , though accidental death , and drugs are everywhere .
the five friends agree that there is enough bad evidence here that will send them to jail for a very long time .
a surprisingly calm robert boyd ( christian slater ) , who looks like he was groomed to make nefarious decisions , ponders their dilemma for a few minutes before deciding that the best thing to do is to bury the body in the desert where she 'll never be found .
although they stomach the gruesome deed of getting rid of the body ( which also disturbingly involves dismantling the body using power saws in order to stuff it into suitcases ) , when they return from their trip , guilt and paranoia begins to set in which slowly consumes some of the five friends .
one is adam ( daniel stern ) he grows increasingly agitated .
whenever people look at his van or whenever a cop glances his way , his blood pressure increases .
or that just may be because of his dysfunctional family .
another is michael , who was actually responsible for her death .
he tries to bury his feelings , but the burden of guilt begins to affect his judgment as well .
boyd is the ?
doer ' of the group .
seemingly suffering from a long psychosis , when he feels as if his secret is about to be exposed , he is apt to take extreme measures to cover up his tracks .
kyle just hopes that his wedding will live up to laura 's demanding expectations .
then , there 's moore ( leland orser ) who speaks 5 lines and walks around with a puzzled look on his face .
the problem with this reprehensible movie is that it wants to be a cruel comedy , but it presents things in a manner that just are n't funny .
drugs , mutilation , and killing your own friends is n't something to be laughed at .
as a straight psychological drama , i could see how it might have worked , as each one tried to maneuver and overcome the weight of their own guilt in their own sometimes - sick ways .
but this movie insults us by assuming that we could simply discard our values for 2 hours .
if you do like this movie , i do n't think that i want to know you .
i did find slater a convincing leader who sways his friends to choose not the right thing
but the ? smart play . '
and diaz adds some brightness to this film as a wedding - needing fiancee .
but
her talents are essentially wasted here .
it 's obvious that the film maker is trying to strike a certain tone .
but the way that he chooses to do it is tasteless .
do not make a very bad decision by seeing this film .
N

a disappointing biography about the homosexual relationship of two famous 19th century french poets .
the film managed to remove all the poetry from the poets and instead concentrated on their abrasive personalities .
the result is merely an academic exercise , leaving an emotional vacuum that it could n't build on to show them as the poets they were . on paper , this should n't have been so terrible -- it had a talented director in agnieszka holland ( " the secret garden " ) , a proven screenwriter in christopher hampton ( dangerous liaisons ) , and a capable cast .
but the film was done in by its inept script ,
the unappealing way the film was directed , and the miscasting of leonardo dicaprio as rimbaud .
i found his performance to be the most risible one in the film , with him acting more like a teenage brat than a young genius , spouting obsenities without giving a hint that a true poet lies behind that facade .
he , especially , looked bad because david thewlis as paul verlaine looked so good despite the turgid dialogue that was thrust upon him and how thin a character he was forced to be
.
but when the two of them were together , it looked like a mismatch .
leonardo 's rimbaud only made the young poet look petulant and crude , yet we know from rimbaud 's poetry , that he must have had something going for him because his poetry was awe inspiring .
the film opens in post - revolutionary france in 1871 , the 16-year - old rimbaud has sent the established symbolist poet verlaine a letter with his poems .
he accepts verlaine 's praises and invitation to be a house guest in his splendid paris home , and rimbaud leaves his sullen farm in rural charleville .
once there , rimbaud is disappointed in the bourgeoisie household , has an immediate conflict with verlaine 's busty 18-year - old wife mathilde ( romane ) , and finds to his regret that the drunken verlaine loves his rich wife for her body and that he lives off her family 's money , even though he has nothing else in common with her .
when verlaine states , " poets can learn from one another , " rimbaud replies in a haughty tone , " only if they 're bad poets .
"
he will continue to treat the older poet like dirt for the rest of their relationship .
verlaine proves to be weak - willed , beating his wife regularly , and plays just as despicable a character as rimbaud .
when mathilde 's father kicks rimbaud out of the house , verlaine finds him in a rooming house and the two become lovers .
it 's a real downer to watch this story unfold into a series of obnoxious behavior patterns on the part of the two poets , which leads them to traveling together and mathilde asking for a divorce .
in brussels , verlaine gets arrested for sodomy and spends two years in jail .
while rimbaud becomes angered at the literary world and never writes another poem after he becomes 19 .
he instead goes to north africa and becomes an adventurer and a gun - runner , and after ten years there , comes home with a tumor on his knee and dies a changed man at the age of 37 .
the hopeless relationship between the two is what the picture covers in detail and that was not very satisfying .
the film ends on a whimper . . .
with verlaine talking with rimbaud 's sister about her brother and the poems of his he still possesses , which the sister wants destroyed so as not to embarrass the family or ruin the name of her deceased brother if published .
this film was especially annoying because rimbaud 's poems are filled with a visionary tenseness that are not even approached in this film , as the film only manages to skim the surface of the lives of these poets and completely ignores the value of their poetry .
i have no idea what the filmmaker was trying to say in this film , but whatever it was , it just did n't work .
it certainly did n't bring any light into understanding
what rimbaud meant to modern poetry and why he earned the reputation as the so - called father of modern poetry .
N