TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
PROBLEM: much ado about nothing .
ah , how sweet the irony !
it 's accepted wisdom in some circles - among english literature nuts , mainly - that whenever a critic knocks shakespeare they are only doing so through ignorance .
he just does n't " understand " shakespeare , you will hear them say .
the bard 's work is apparently beyond criticism .
what a load of old cobblers .
if these arbiters of public taste think kenneth branaugh 's film of shakespeare 's " comedy " much ado about nothing is comedy in any modern sense of the word
, it 's time to get a life .
get monty python .
get woody allen .
get john waters .
whatever .
just get a real taste of some clever , witty , risky comedy . and banish this nonsense
to where it belongs .
drama and tragedy was shakespeare 's strength .
to my sensibilities - and i 'm no stick in the mud - much ado about nothing resonates with no spark whatsoever .
no kidding : this film ranks among the most embarrassing two hours i have ever spent in a cinema in my 20 years of movie going .
the only thing that stopped me walking out was loyalty to my lady friend , as this was our day out
and i had n't seen her in ages .
but boy , does she owe me one !
i wo n't spend too much time on the plot .
basically , we follow the trials and tribulations of two would - be couples - one young , the other older .
there 's some dark treachery amongst all this , but everyone is so awfully jolly that you 'd hardly know it .
mind you , there 's nothing wrong with the basic story .
good romantic comedies based on similar premises abound .
nothing wrong with most of the cast , either .
branaugh , emma thompson and denzel washington are all talented performers .
the problem is the script , or more accurately , shakespeare 's original text .
light comedy should n't be complex .
yet wrapped in elizabethan english , the dialogue becomes difficult to comprehend .
for this alone it will be a problem for modern audiences unschooled in shakespeare and in search of nothing more than a good , undemanding laugh .
the only laughs to escape my belly were brought on by the gloriously inept performance of keanu reeves , the actor once again miscast as a jealous half - brother or something .
but when dissected and understood , what it all boils down to is that this stuff is just so goddamn lame .
this is comedy so clean and nice and corny and so devoid of danger that it leaves this viewer
totally cold .
ho , ho ,
ho ,
boy likes girl !
ho ,
ho ,
ho , men are such klutzes !
ho ,
ho ,
ho ,
she 's so awfully clumsy !
oh please !
there 's wit in here somewhere , i 'm told .
i call it pretentious
.
something lightweight striving to be something sophisticated through clever wordplay .
in the end , it 's cringeworthy .
watching some of the cinema patrons around me collapse with laughter made much ado about nothing a very weird movie going experience .
comedy ?
bah , humbug !

SOLUTION: N

PROBLEM: bad .
bad .
bad .
that one word seems to pretty much sums up beyond the valley of the dolls .
if that summary is n't enough for you , how about t&a , t&a , t&a ?
still have n't got the point ?
other than director russ meyer 's predilection for casting attractive large breasted women who ultimately expose the afore - mentioned anatomical areas , there is really only one other reason to recommend even taking a look at this movie .
that is the fact that it was co - written by famed film critic roger ebert , who also was responsible for the screenplay .
after watching this movie you will never be able to sit through another one of his reviews where he gives a movie a thumbs down for bad writing with a straight face .
this movie stinks out loud .
quite frankly , this movie deserves a .
but there are parts of it that are so bad they are almost funny .
so i 'm giving it a .
and maybe that is too generous .
right from the opening credits , i knew that i had a class - a bomb on my hands .
not only are the way the credits actually shot distracting , but the first scene you see includes a big breasted young woman being chased by a guy in a nazi uniform .
i had absolutely no idea why the hell that was happening ( it does get explained later ) and as soon as the first scene is over , we cut to a completely unrelated scene .
to be honest , as i sat through this movie mesmerized by just how incredibly awful it was
, i actually forgot about the seemingly out of place opening until it popped up again later in the film .
with the quality of the writing during the rest of the film , it would n't have surprised me if the opening had never been explained .
so what is this movie about ?
you ask .
like it really matters .
ok , here goes .
this all - girl band headed by kelly macnamara ( dolly reed ) and her friends go to hollywood to try to gain a foothold in the music industry .
once there , they do manage to find success ( due as much to their hooters as anything else ?
it sure was n't for their brutally bad singing voices ) , and the movie chronicles how their lives change for the worse as the pressures of fame get to them .
everything from big egos , to booze and drugs to free flowing sex sends them on a downward spiral .
there are a couple of other idiotic subplots thrown in for good measure , but the fame is the one that pretty much sums up this thing .
> from a creative standpoint
there is nothing redeeming here .
other than the above - mentioned obsession with big knockers that russ meyer seemed to have .
the dialogue is so incredibly bad that it literally is funny in parts .
mr .
ebert has generously thrown in helpings of " hey man " , " dig " and my all time favorite -- " this is my happening , and it freaks me out " .
now i ask you , with lines like that how can you go wrong ?
ebert had tried to inject as many big words as possible into the dialogue .
maybe he thought it would make the movie seem smarter .
i do n't know , but all the big words in the world would n't be able to disguise the bad writing and even worse acting .
but the wretched dialogue goes along well with the wretched quality of everything else in this movie .
i 've seen home movies directed better than meyer managed with this turkey .
in fact , there is one scene -- the one in which they are in a van driving to hollywood to make their fortunes -- during which i really had to question if meyer or his editors had just suffered serious head injuries .
add to the directing and writing the music in this movie .
i almost got up to check my sound system to see if it was broken , there was such a pile of crap emanating from the speakers .
then we have the cast .
first lets start david gurian who played harris , the manager of the band .
this has got to be the goofiest looking guy that has ever set foot in front of a motion picture camera .
sadly , his acting does n't come close to making up for his looks . if you have been following along up to this point , this should n't surprise you .
meyer 's stable of well endowed girls also have the benefit of being fairly attractive to go along with their other assets .
dolly reed plays kelly , the leader of the band .
and no surprise here , she was cast for her cup size , not her talents .
and yes , she does loose the shirt a few times and display her impressive talents .
sadly , her ass is almost as large as her chest .
hey , it a sexist movie , so i 'm writing a sexist review .
then we have former playboy playmate cynthia myers in a fairly small role as casey , one of the other band members .
this goes along with the rest of the idiotic thinking in the movie .
meyer casts a gorgeous playmate with a rack to kill for and who obviously has no acting talent at all , but her nude scenes are the biggest disappointment of all .
sure russ , now is the time to get artsy and throw in some well placed shadows .
on the up side , she does have a fun lesbo scene .
i sound like i 'm writing a review in a porn magazine .
but hey , i 'll admit it ; the only reason that i actually managed to sit through this damn movie was to catch a look at cynthia myers naked . and since
that was a huge disappointment , i pretty much wasted two hours of my life on this turkey .
the only thing that i can say about this movie is that you should stay away from it .
unless of course you want to feel good about yourself by knowing that even a pulitzer prize winning film critic like roger ebert has screwed up at least once in his life too .
and if you are thinking of checking it out for the double d 's -- you are better off just downloading nude cynthia myers
pictures off the internet .
this is a movie that should be avoided at all costs .
an even better idea might be to require video stores to place a warning on the box of beyond the valley of the dolls
-- beware : this movie is extremely hazardous to your common sense .
proceed with extreme caution .

SOLUTION: N

PROBLEM: blatantly borrowing elements from 1993 's " like water for chocolate " and 1991 's " the butcher 's wife , " " simply irresistible " attempts to be a whimsical romantic comedy but , more often than not , comes off as laughable , leaving you to wonder why rising star sarah michelle gellar ( t . v . 's " buffy , the vampire slayer " ) would choose such an obviously inept film project to waste her time on .
things get off to a bad start right from the onset as amanda ( sarah michelle gellar ) , a young woman who runs her late family 's struggling new york restaurant , runs into a mystery man who forces a bushel of crabs on her and then vansihes into thin air .
while out shopping , she also meets tom ( sean patrick flanery ) , a charming , handsome man , who happens to be planning a ritzy restaurant for the department store he works for , and later when he decides to drop by her dive , called southern cross , for lunch , she somehow makes a delicious crab dish for him , even though she is known to not be a very good chef .
suddenly , amanda finds her restaurant , on the edge of foreclosure , rejuvenate to life as customer begin to swarm for her food , which strangely causes everyone immediate jubilation when it hits their mouths .
are amanda and tom destined to be together ?
and is it not just because of the magical food , but because they really , truly like each other ?
and what exactly is going on with the food she is making ?
does it have anything to do with that pesky crab she got that sits on the shelf in the kitchen somehow assisting her in her food preparation ?
" simply irresistible " is a ridiculous and just plain goofy romantic fantasy that 's as flimsy as a slice of bologna .
it takes one joke --- that people who eat the food are taken aback by it in most unusual ways --- and recycles it over and over again until the film has reached an appropriate running time of 95 minutes .
add in a music montage every ten minutes
( these are actually the best scenes in the movie , which certainly tells you something about the film itself ) , and what you 've got is an utterly empty , if not necessarily boring , excursion .
the cast of " simply irresistible " is fairly good , but it is the supporting characters who are the most interesting .
patricia clarkson ( 1998 's " high art , " in which she played a drugged - out lesbian ) is a standout as tom 's colleague , and is thankfully given a few funny lines of dialogue .
also of note is larry gilliard jr .
, as amanda 's cooking assistant and buddy , who is allowed to create a seemingly full character out of only a handful of scenes .
of the main stars , sarah michelle gellar is fine , but really does often look like she 's struggling through the unmistakably clumsy material , and if sean patrick flanery plans on keeping a film career in the future , he has certainly got to pick better projects than this .
the bottom line is that " simply irresistible " is the exact opposite of its deprophesized title , and when the movie got to the point where the characters began to float in mid - air ( an unamusing plot device that was repeated in the stupid last scene ) , my mind checked out from the characters and the romance .
when i think about it in hindsight , i should have checked out in the very first scene , where the point of the action was for gellar to crawl under tables looking for a runaway mechanical crab .
now , that certainly is what i 'd call magical !

SOLUTION:
N