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

you know something , christmas is not about presents .
it 's about over - hyped holiday films with lots of merchandising and product tie - ins . at least that would seem to be the message of " the grinch , " which has been advertised since last christmas and whose logo is currently plastered all over stores .
hollywood expects us to ignore this cynical greed as the movie scolds us about losing the true spirit of the season .
you know the plot : there 's this evil furry green guy called the grinch ( jim carrey ) who lives on a mountain overlooking whoville .
down below all the who s are preparing for their whobilation , but the grinch is determined to steal their christmas .
the movie is , of course , a live - action version of the beloved children 's book , which was previously adapted into a 1966 tv special by looney tunes animator chuck jones .
it 's rare that a big budget hollywood release is shamed by a thirty - year - old half - hour cartoon , but that 's the case when jones ' version is compared to ron howard 's .
the tv grinch hit all the right notes : boris karloff 's soft , deep narration ; thurl ravenscroft singing " mr . grinch " ; max the dog weighed down by the gigantic antler tied to his head ; and the grinch 's wide
, toothless grin .
by contrast , the movie hits one sour note after another .
first
, there are the numerous bad choices that jeffrey price and peter seaman made in padding out the short book into a 105-minute movie .
young wide - eyed cindy lou who ( taylor momsen ) is depressed about the misplaced priorities of her parents ( bill irwin and molly shannon ) during the holiday season .
she begins to sympathize with the grinch , who turns out to be surprisingly sympathetic .
cindy lou discovers that the grinch turned tearfully away from whoville in grammar school when he was publicly humiliated while expressing his love for the prettiest girl in the class , martha may whovier ( played as an adult by christine baranski ) .
are we expected to like the grinch , hate the who s , and want him to steal christmas ?
the grinch is n't even the villain here ; that role is filled by the corrupt mayor of whoville ( jeffrey tambor ) who was the grinch 's rival for martha 's affection .
not only are the characters needlessly complex ,
but the once - simple plot becomes so convoluted that the actual theft of christmas seems like an afterthought .
the casting choices are n't any better than the screenwriting decisions .
jim carrey seems woefully miscast .
while his face is so supple that the rubber make - up seems superfluous , carrey brings nothing else to the role .
his accent keeps changing ; i assume he was shooting for karloff ,
but he ends up sounding like a weird slurry of richard nixon , sean connery , and cartman from " south park .
" not knowing what else to do during his many scenes alone in the grinch 's home , carrey falls back on his stand - up comedy and clowns around ace ventura - style .
needless to say , his wise - cracking antics do n't quite fit the character of the grinch , who is an embittered loner filled with hate .
little taylor momsen brings little to role of cindy lou except big eyes and a cute smile .
she would have been fine if cindy lou was limited to her original purpose in the seuss story ( finding " santa " in her living room stealing the tree ) .
however , the expanded script makes cindy as important as the grinch , and momsen is not up to the challenge .
bottom line : when you 're stealing christmas ( movies ) , leave this one behind .
N

i 've never written a review for a movie i have n't watched all the way through , but i had to make an exception with powder .
i was about forty - five minutes into this one at a friend 's house when he and his brother got into a huge shouting match that would have ended in violence
had we not left the house .
so i never got to finish the movie
and i 'm sure as hell not going to pay three more bucks to watch half of a bad movie .
but i can at least get a partial review out of it , because i saw enough to know this one was n't worth finishing in the first place .
the movie centers around a freaky teenager who 's spent his entire life living in the cellar of his grandparents ' house .
when grandpa dies ( taking his department store down with him ) , social worker mary steenburgen has to take powder ( first and middle names ?
gold bond ) to a state home , where we find out he 's a different from the other kids .
actually , we find out he 's different when we first see him , because he 's the most pale individual we 've ever seen and moreover he has no body hair whatsoever .
when powder is born in the opening minutes of the movie , the father takes one look at him and says " he 's not my son . " obviously .
all i want to know is where the pillsbury dough boy was nine months ago .
so the white - faced freak leaves his neverland ranch for the state home and faces the ridicule of other kids .
that is , until they try to haze him during his first cafeteria lunch by making him " wear " his spoon ( " you can either wear it on your nose or up your ass .
" decisions , decisions . . . )
and he uses telepathic powers to draw all the silverware in the room into a giant pile in the middle of the table .
so if his father is the pillsbury dough boy , his mother must be sissy spacek 's carrie character .
and you have to factor in two more things from the subsequent scenes , as we find out powder
has some sort of
super - intelligence ( " your i .
q .
test went straight off the chart ! " ) and attracts electrical power .
this first shows up as powder visits the world of high school ( if he 's such a genius already , why would he need a high school education ? ) and sits through a demonstration in jeff goldblum 's science class .
goldblum plugs in a " jacob 's ladder " device that shows current running up two wires and immediately the current flows across the room and into powder 's chest .
but goldblum just stands there for about thirty seconds watching , instead of just unplugging the damn thing .
i guess he was too busy contemplating why he was appearing in his third bad movie in a row
( following hideaway and nine months ) .
that 's about all i saw before the big fight began and , let me tell you , that was twice as interesting as the movie itself .
but like i said , i saw enough to know this would be one of those terrible melodramas about the isolation of people who have superior abilities and how hard it is for those people to assimilate themselves into mainstream civilization .
none of these movies ever handle the subject properly , instead introducing the feeble beauty and the beast copout of having a beautiful woman fall in love with the guy 's personality , overlooking his personal appearance .
i already had the female character picked out ( the girl who was sitting next to him in the back of the room during the electrocution scene ) , but i guess i 'll never know for sure what happened .
from noraruth@aol .
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copyright 1996 andrew hicks / fatboy productions .
N

john boorman 's " zardoz
" is a goofy cinematic debacle so fundamentally misconceived and laughably executed that it takes on a bizarre enjoyment quality all its own .
not since the rampant bumblings of one edward d. wood
jr .
has a movie been so silly and so serious at the same time .
of course , wood 's career can be explained by two things : he had no money
and he had no talent .
boorman , on the other hand , can not court such excuses to explain " zardoz " ( or his follow - up film , the equally awful " exorcist ii : the heretic " ) . boorman obviously had a sizable budget , a matinee idol movie star ( sean connery ) in the lead role , and although you would n't know it from this film , boorman does indeed have talent .
this is the man who made the slick modern masterpiece " deliverance " ( 1972 ) , as well as the autobiographical world war ii drama " hope and glory " ( 1987 ) , the slightly over - conceived arthurian epic " excalibur " ( 1981 ) and the father - son jungle adventure " the emerald forest " ( 1985 ) .
his films all show that boorman is never lacking in imagination , but sometimes that comes at the cost of coherence and taste .
if boorman is anything , he 's ambitious , and when he succeeds , it 's in grand fashion .
unfortunately , the bigger they are , the harder they fall , and when boorman falls , the resounding impact can be heard for miles around .
" zardoz " is meant to takes its place among the grandest of mystical movies , an obsession of boorman 's .
his screenplay tries to elicit the same mythological connotations of the arthurian legends or even
" the wizard of oz , " a book which figures into the movie 's plot .
but , despite all this reaching , the resulting movie is more unintentionally funny than intentionally enigmatical or compelling .
the events take place in the distant year 2293 , but there is little of the typical futuristic movie - ness to be found .
in fact , things seems to have moved backwards , with people riding horses , shooting old - style guns , and living in large victorian mansions .
it 's more middle ages than space age .
the world of " zardoz " is divided into two distinct hemispheres : the outlands , where all the poor , pathetic people live , and the vortex , where a select group of wealthy intellectuals live in comfort and everlasting life .
these immortals never grow old , they never engage in sexual activity , they possess psychological powers , and they live in a sort of quasi - utopian marxist society where everyone is equal , and everyone contributes equally to the society .
however , if one breaks the rules , that person is punished by being aged so many years .
if someone breaks the rules enough , he or she is aged to the point of senility , and imprisoned to an eternal existence in a geriatric home with others aged criminals .
one of the immortals , arthur frayn ( niall buggy ) ,
a squirmy man with a mustache and goatee tattooed on his face , is charged with keeping order in the outlands and forcing the residents to farm so the immortals can be fed .
like " the wizard of oz , " he adopts a god - like status among the people by flying in to their part of the world in a giant stone carved like a menacing head .
( this flying head is one of the movie 's opening images , and it 's a dead giveaway of the lunacy to come . )
calling himself zardoz , frayn gathers a bunch of outlanders and makes them into a group called the exterminators , whose purpose is to kill most of the other outlanders so they ca n't procreate and take up more resources .
from inside his giant , stone head , zardoz bellows seriously laugh - inducting statements like , " the gun is good .
the penis is evil .
"
that line alone is worth the movie 's cult following .
one day , an exterminator named zed ( sean connery ) , sneaks into zardoz 's flying stone , pushes frayn out , and goes back to the vortex .
once there , the immortals label him a " brutal " and study him like a lab rat , taking great , perverse care in exploring his sexuality , which is a mystery to them .
they seem especially interested in his ability to gain an erection , and there is one downright hilarious sequence where a bunch of scantily - clad female scientists show zed erotic footage on a video screen in an attempt to determine what gets him worked up .
i say " hilarious " because that is exactly what " zardoz " is .
it is obvious that boorman did not intend it to be so ; he made this film with the straightest of faces , although i have a hard time believing that as production moved forward , he did n't get even the slightest inkling of how patently ridiculous it was becoming .
just looking at connery is enough to give one the giggles - he spends most of the film running around in a red loin cloth that resembles a diaper , a mane of hair braided halfway down his back , a wyatt earp - style handlebar mustache , and a pair of thigh - high patent leather boots that would look more appropriate on a cheap hollywood hooker .
boorman made the film right after the critical and financial success of " deliverance , " which is the only reason i can imagine a studio
would green - light this effort .
he attracted some rich talent on both sides of the camera , including cinematographer geoffrey unsworth ( " 2001 " ) , whose striking visuals are about the only good thing in " zardoz " besides the inadvertent humor .
sean connery had made his last james bond film in 1971 , and perhaps he was looking for a change in pace .
he got exactly that in " zardoz ,
" and it 's a wonder it did n't end his career .
i 'm sure boorman intended for this movie to make some grand statements .
is it a treatise about the infallibility of eternal life ?
is it a condemnation of those who consider growing old to be a bad thing ?
or is it a social statement ,
something about the inherent negativity of class distinctions and the violence it creates ?
karl marx might like it if he were more like timothy leary .
come to think of it
, maybe boorman made it as an extended lsd trip .
people high on illicit substances are the only ones i can imagine enjoying this asinine silliness as anything more than a completely unintentional comedy .
N