In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
Example: plot : two teen couples go to a church party , drink and then drive .
they get into an accident .
one of the guys dies , but his girlfriend continues to see him in her life , and has nightmares .
what 's the deal ?
watch the movie and " sorta " find out . . .
critique : a mind - fuck movie for the teen generation that touches on a very cool idea , but presents it in a very bad package .
which is what makes this review an even harder one to write , since i generally applaud films which attempt to break the mold , mess with your head and such ( lost highway & memento ) , but there are good and bad ways of making all types of films , and these folks just did n't snag this one correctly
.
they seem to have taken this pretty neat concept , but executed it terribly .
so what are the problems with the movie ?
well , its main problem is that it 's simply too jumbled
.
it starts off " normal " but then downshifts into this " fantasy " world in which you , as an audience member ,
have no idea what 's going on
.
there are dreams , there are characters coming back from the dead , there are others who look like the dead , there are strange apparitions , there are disappearances , there are a looooot of chase scenes , there are tons of weird things that happen , and most of it is simply not explained .
now i personally do n't mind trying to unravel a film every now and then , but when all it does is give me the same clue over and over again , i get kind of fed up after a while , which is this film 's biggest problem .
it 's obviously got this big secret to hide , but it seems to want to hide it completely until its final five minutes .
and do they make things entertaining , thrilling or even engaging , in the meantime ?
not really .
the sad part is that the arrow and i both dig on flicks like this , so we actually figured most of it out by the half - way point , so all of the strangeness after that did start to make a little bit of sense , but it still did n't the make the film all that more entertaining .
i guess the bottom line with movies like this is that you should always make sure that the audience is " into it " even before they are given the secret password to enter your world of understanding .
i mean , showing melissa sagemiller running away from visions for about 20 minutes throughout the movie is just plain lazy ! !
okay , we get it .
. .
there are people chasing her and we do n't know who they are .
do we really need to see it over and over again ?
how about giving us different scenes offering further insight into all of the strangeness going down in the movie ?
apparently , the studio took this film away from its director and chopped it up themselves , and it shows .
there might 've been a pretty decent teen mind - fuck movie in here somewhere , but i guess " the suits " decided that turning it into a music video with little edge , would make more sense .
the actors are pretty good for the most part , although wes bentley just seemed to be playing the exact same character that he did in american beauty , only in a new neighborhood .
but my biggest kudos go out to sagemiller , who holds her own throughout the entire film , and actually has you feeling her character 's unraveling .
overall , the film does n't stick
because it does n't entertain , it 's confusing , it rarely excites and
it feels pretty redundant for most of its runtime , despite a pretty cool ending and explanation to all of the craziness that came before it .
oh ,
and by the way , this is not a horror or teen slasher flick . . .
it 's just packaged to look that way because someone is apparently assuming that the genre is still hot with the kids .
it also wrapped production two years ago and has been sitting on the shelves ever since .
whatever . .
. skip it !
where 's joblo coming from ?
a nightmare of elm street 3 ( 7/10 ) - blair witch 2 ( 7/10 ) - the crow ( 9/10 ) - the crow : salvation ( 4/10 )
- lost highway ( 10/10 ) - memento ( 10/10 ) - the others ( 9/10 ) - stir of echoes ( 8/10 )
Example solution: N
Example explanation: The phrases used in the review convey a negative sentiment (e.g. "presents it in a very bad package").

Problem: a movie about divorce and custody in 1995 seems about as timely as a movie about mood rings .
family breakups have been an all too familiar part of the american landscape for nearly thirty years , and countless dramas have told stories of acrimonious court battles in hand - wringing detail .
still , i ca n't recall a comedy about the subject before bye bye love .
and after it , i still ca n't .
bye bye love is rarely funny , more often
a weak and melodramatic retread of common tv - movie fare .
only a few moments which have nothing to do with the film 's main premise offer big laughs instead of cliched emotion .
bye bye
love follows one weekend in the lives of three divorced fathers who get weekend custody of their children .
dave ( matthew modine ) , a father of two , is an inveterate womanizer having difficulty staying faithful to his latest girlfriend ; vic ( randy quaid ) is a foul - humored father of three about to go on a rare date ; donny ( paul reiser )
pines for his ex - wife and has trouble relating to his teenage daughter emma ( eliza dushku ) .
over the course of the weekend , the three men face various crises , including vic 's blind date from hell ( janeane garofolo ) and donny 's growing estrangement from emma .
the three lead actors form a rather unlikely combo , and the quality of their performances is of widely varying quality .
randy quaid is the best of the three , bitter without being irritating , gleefully spiteful without being frightening .
his run - ins with is ex - wife ( lindsey crouse )
are a bit over - played , though , and his confrontation with a pompous radio psychologist ( rob reiner ) is gimmicky and implausible .
he does get bye bye love 's best sub - plot , a hilarious dinner date with a gloriously demented janeane garofolo , and he does a great slow burn .
paul reiser really has only one character , his slightly befuddled , uptight nice guy " mad about you " persona , but he does it well .
as a personality , he is appealing , but as a character , he becomes pretty boring here .
matthew modine , is , quite simply , terrible .
this is n't a performance good enough to be called mailed - in ; he even forgot to put a stamp on it .
modine lacks any charm in an appallingly under - written role , looks bored most of the time , and gets stuck with a trite little speech about how it 's all his father 's fault
he 's such a cad .
carolco 's executives , whose entire future is resting on modine 's bankability for the upcoming cutthroat island , must be sweating buckets right now .
bye bye
love basically comes off as a very confused movie , because it spends far too much of its time on the new relationships of its main characters instead of on the relationships between the fathers and their kids , making it just another " dating in the 90s " movie .
when the movie does deal with the children at all , it is to have one of them scream out an accusation and/or cry , perhaps to be resolved later by a sensitive talk and a hug , perhaps not .
even more confusing is a sub - plot featuring the late ed flanders as a widower who goes to work and a mcdonald 's and befriends a troubled youth .
it is a sad end to flanders ' career , getting caught up in a truly annoying over - use of mcdonald 's as a location , a plot device and , apparently , a major advertiser .
even if bye bye love had decided to spend its time focusing exclusively on the parent - child relationships , it still would have been pretty difficult to pull off , because ultimately there is very little humor
one can wring from family break - ups and their effects on children .
any way you slice it , it is a bad situation for kids , and the makers of bye bye love mostly go for the heartstrings when dealing with the single parenting issue .
it is left to the dads ' romantic fumblings to probide what little humor there is , and it is n't enough .
there have been comparisons between bye bye love and parenthood , but parenthood was both genuinely funny and genuinely touching .
bye bye love is a genuine shame .
Solution: N