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: woody allen is one of the most successful artist - directors in hollywood , but he is becoming less and less reliable as a filmmaker
.
in his early years of film - making he mastered the simple comedy .
from there he went into a second phase and took risks experimenting with different approaches and styles .
some of these work better than others .
zelig and crimes and misdemeanors are the work of a creative and intelligent artist .
deconstructing harry goes to the other extreme and is a bizarre experiment demanding more of the viewer than it gives back .
harry block ( allen ) has in his life only two drives .
he wants to have sex with as many women as possible and when he makes a mess of his life and those of his lovers he wants to retreat into his writing .
the story of this static and highly unsympathetic character is told with a number of often clumsy stylistic experiments .
perhaps the most irritating device is to express the disjointedness of harry 's life by editing harry 's scenes putting in cuts in the middle as if to show missing time with something edited out .
as a writer , harry puts his friends into his books in the thinnest of disguises .
the film dramatizes incidents from these supposed books and cuts between his real story line and fragments from harry 's books with different actors playing the real and fictional people in harry 's life .
these fragments are frustrating in their lack of completion , but even more frustrating is the bringing of the characters out of the fragments into scenes with the real characters .
it is up to the viewer to keep track not just who is fictional and who is real but also to keep straight who is the fictional doppelganger of which real person .
if that sounds complicated , it is .
then as another device in one of the stories , an actor seems to have the peculiar property that he has gone out of focus and can only be seen in blurry image .
harry sees this as a metaphor for his own condition and himself goes blurry for a short time .
as if these touches did not create sufficient confusion , the story is told out of chronological order .
if allen were giving the audience a story that was worth decoding , any and all of these stylistic touches could be excusable .
but allen puts the audience through all of this to give us a portrait of harry block who is a selfish manipulator who is not worth the effort to understand
.
deconstructing harry is set at a time when harry 's old college , the one that expelled him when he attended it , wants now to honor him for a lifetime of writing achievement .
harry is searching among his friends to find one who will go with him .
just why someone who is so unwilling to commit to a relationship with anyone suddenly needs the support of someone else is unclear .
harry tries his current girl friend fay ( elizabeth shue ) only to find that she is about to marry harry 's old friend larry ( billy crystal ) .
block would like his son hilly ( eric lloyd ) to accompany him , but hilly 's mother , previously first harry 's psychiatrist and more recently his wife , refuses to let her son see his father .
another friend richard ( bob balaban ) would go but has health problems .
harry also considers bringing a prostitute cookie ( hazel goodman ) .
it is interesting that allen should introduce another likable prostitute so soon after mighty aphrodite , but cookie is considerably different -- black and a lot brighter than mira sorvino 's character in the previous film .
while the comedy sequences are never complete , a few are elaborate and some quite funny .
the centerpiece of the film is a journey into hell with allen playing a sort of orpheus rescuing fay from the clutches of the devil , who looks a lot like larry .
that story also is left uncompleted , perhaps to show harry 's unwillingness to commit even to telling a story .
the linchpin that was needed to tie together the stylistic quirks of this film was a central character who changes and who gives us something about which to care .
that character is patently not the one allen creates in harry block and not the characters around harry as seen through his acerbic eyes .
allen can do much better than deconstructing harry .
i rate it a 3 on the 0 to 10 scale and a -1 on the -4 to +4 scale .
Solution: N