Q: Here's the good news first. "Spirit" is the most visually incredible animated film in current home theater release. The artwork and effects are revolutionary, and I recommend that you give this movie a look by virtue of the visuals alone.

And now for the bad news. I really mean it when I say that the animation is the only thing this movie has going for it. You may remember that "Spirit" got badly trounced by "Lilo and Stitch" last summer. The first person who argues that it was because Disney is more well-established and had better advertising can write me a four page long essay entitled "Why 'Lilo and Stitch''s Script Didn't Stink".

For all the incredible new animation technology on display in "Spirit", the story is almost *astonishingly* dull. There is a lesson here, and (needless to say) it doesn't just apply to animated movies. You can have the most mind-blowing visual effects ever to grace the eyes of a mortal, but if your story is boring and, more importantly, we don't care about your characters, it's bad film-making. Simple as that. The animation is still mind-blowing; I just can't wait to see what somebody with more imagination does with it. OPTIONS:
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A: negative
Q: Now I love Bela Lugosi,don't get me wrong,he is one of the most interesting people to ever make a movie but he certainly did his share of clunkers.This is just another one of those.

Lugosi plays Dr.Lorenz,a doctor who has had his medical license pulled for unexplained reasons.He is however doing experiments to keep his wife young and beautiful.It's revealed that she is 70-80 years old yet Lugosi looks to be in his mid 50's so why he is married to this old woman is never really explained.

Anyway these treatments or experiments involved giving brides who are at the altar being married some sort of sweet smelling substance whereby they pass out but are thought to be dead.Then Lugosi and some of his assistants steal the body on its way to the morgue and take it back to his lab where it's kept in some sort of suspended animation or catatonic state.Then the stolen brides have a needle rammed somewhere in their bodies,maybe the neck,and then the needle is rammed into the body of Lugosi's wife to bring her back to youth and beauty.We never really see where Lugosi sticks the needle or what it is that he draws out of the brides but it somehow restores his wife .Apparently old age makes you scream with pain because Lugosi's wife does a lot of screaming until she gets back to her younger state.Helping Lugosi in his lab is the only good thing about this movie....a weird old hag and her two deformed sons....one son is a big lumpy looking slow acting fellow who likes to fondle the snoozing brides and the other son is a mean little dwarf....little person, to be politically correct in today's world.At night these three just sort of pile up and sleep in Lugosi's dreary downstairs lab.Who these 3 are and how they came to be Lugosi's scared assistants is,like a lot of stuff in this film, never explained.

So anyway a female reporter is given the assignment by her gruff editor to find out where all the stolen brides are going to.She quickly figures out that the one common thing among all the stolen brides is a rare orchid that is found on them.So she asks around and is told that there is a world renowned orchid expert living nearby who just happens to be the one who developed this particular orchid.This expert turns out to be creepy Dr.Lorenz.She quickly tracks him down and upsets his little house of horrors.I'm not sure where the police were during all this but they came in to mop up after the reporter had done all the dirty work.

It seems that Lugosi's movies always had some sort of unnecessary silly plot line that just made the whole thing stink to high heavens.I mean a world famous orchid expert kidnaps brides by sending them a doped up orchid he himself is known to have developed? D'OH!

And then later it's revealed that the young ladies don't even have to be brides for the procedure to work so why would Lugosi keep kidnapping brides from heavily guarded churches for his experiments and create all the attention and newspaper headlines? Why not just grab a prostitute off the street like a normal weirdo pervert would do? This clunker reminded me a lot of another Lugosi stinker,"The Devil Bat"....same silly plot lines and bad acting and same silly 'reporter gets bad guy' deal.

But Lugosi is always good--he is creepy and sinister enough to keep you interested at least enough to keep watching him.The woman playing the reporter was just a terrible actor....she had no emotion whatsoever,she just delivered her lines like a machine gun ,spewing them out as quickly as she could.Everyone else pretty much blew too,when it came to being good actors.

But this thing is watchable ,if only for Bela Lugosi fans.Lugosi was always so intense even when the picture was a dog.He must have known he was doing terrible pictures but maybe he also knew that if he gave it everything he had a little of that intensity might shine through past all the bad plots and bad acting which surrounded him.

And he was right----we horror fans will always have a love for Bela Lugosi.He gave it his all every time he was in front of the camera.We do give two f**ks for you,Bela. OPTIONS:
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A: negative
Q: This movie was exactly what I expected, not great, but also not that bad either. In my opinion PG13 movies aren't scary enough so that's why I already knew I was going to be bored throughout the entire film. Sure there were scary things going on in the hotel room, but nothing we all haven't already seen. I guess I didn't like it because I thought there were too many twists and turns happening; it got old and repetitive. I also didn't understand if all the things Cusack was experiencing in the room was real or not. There is no explanation for any of the events that occurred. The movie just drags on and when it finally does come to an end you want it to keep going because you are still waiting around for someone to tell you what the whole movie was about. What I did like was the special effects. Other than that there wasn't much enjoyment from it. Maybe its just me but I thought this was below average. OPTIONS:
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A: negative