In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
One example is below.
Q: 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 )
A: N
Rationale: The phrases used in the review convey a negative sentiment (e.g. "presents it in a very bad package").
Q: if you 're going to make a two - hour hollywood in - joke , why bother releasing it to the general public ? if you 're going to create a film that will appeal primarily to big - name actors and people who know woody allen , then why waste the time of the rest of us peons by playing it in theaters ?
while watching celebrity , i realized that allen had only marginal interest in creating a story about real people .
what he really wanted to do was continue on his recent kick of conceited self - deprecation .
celebrity is yet another film in which allen tells a story about himself , living in a world that he 's familiar with , dealing with people like the ones he actually knows .
allen recruited poor kenneth branagh to bumble through this picture , in an imitation of allen so perfect that it almost made me like the film more .
branagh plays lee simon , a journalist - turned - screenwriter who divorces his wife , robin ( judy davis ) , shacks up with some hot women ( famke janssen , charlize theron , winona ryder ) , and goes about trying to get big stars ( melanie griffith , leonardo dicaprio ) to read his script about an armored car robbery .
the usual elements of recent allen films are all here , including the sexual insecurity of the main character , lots of self - loathing women , and a tiring continuum of episodes that are only loosely related to one another . unless you work in the film industry or know woody allen personally ,
it 's not likely that you 'll find a whole lot of interest in celebrity . aside from all the in - jokes , the story falls far short of compelling , and the characters are all empty and lifeless .
branagh proves once again that he 's a superb performer , nailing his imitation of allen flawlessly .
the problem is that he 's the same character allen always plays , a character who 's getting more than a little dull to watch
.
i mean , come on
, how many times have you seen this guy ?
-- he hates his work , and he ca n't be satisfied by any one woman , and , at the end of the movie , nothing has been solved .
he brings all of his problems upon himself ( crashing his car because he 's receiving fellatio , and other such stunts ) , so it 's pretty hard to care about him .
in addition , is n't allen capable of creating characters who are n't just like him ?
i know he is , but he did n't do it in celebrity .
the vacant emotional attachment with the main character is not recaptured in the supporting performances .
davis , playing the same woman with low self - esteem that she played in deconstructing harry , has a few touching moments , but ends up the same despicable celebrity - type that fills the rest of the movie .
some of the actresses are saved because of their beauty -- theron and ryder , especially -- but they 're not likable people .
only famke janssen , as a book editor interested in simon 's new novel , has any life .
the men in the picture do n't do much better -- joe mantegna is pretty dull as the man who remarries robin , while dicaprio , as a christian slater / johnny depp - type spoiled young actor , is funny but disengaging .
what 's really insulting about celebrity is how dull and standard its " themes " are .
allen seems to think that he 's making an insightful movie about the way " normal " people look at celebrities .
the main problem with this is that the character with whom we 're supposed to identify , simon , is not a " normal " guy --
he 's just as entrenched in the hollywood image as the rest of the characters .
the other problem is that the image we get of these celebrities is no more enlightening than the view the media gives us --
none of them register as realistic , interesting characters ; they mostly just function as set pieces for boring dialogue .
in addition , allen decides he needs a scene in which the theme is expressed explicitly ( robin , in this scene , says something like , " it 's interesting to see the way we all look at the people we celebrate ! " ) .
celebrity is arguably allen 's biggest misfire to date .
it does have a few good scenes -- theron 's super - orgasmic model character is kind of funny , and the last scene might have been moving had the rest of the film shown us a character or two .
but celebrity is a failure at the core , unless allen 's point was to make a self - indulgent movie about himself and his friends .
if he wanted to make his audience feel like they were on the outside of a big joke , then he succeeded in that .
i , for one , do n't enjoy feeling like an outsider .
A:
N