Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here: The biggest National Lampoon hit remains "Animal House", and rightly so. It was funny, raucous and good-natured.

The exact opposite of every other National Lampoon film. Including "Class Reunion".

PLEASE do not be fooled by the inclusion of Stephen Furst ("Flounder") from "Animal House". Or by the fact that John Hughes wrote this jumbled mess. This reunion is about as hilarious as root canal and twice as painful.

One star, and that's being generous. Then again, I always thought most of my old classmates were demons, vampires and serial killers, too.

Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here: Franco Rossi's 1985 six-hour Italian mini-series of Quo Vadis is a very curious beast, creating an absolutely convincing ancient Roman world shot in matter of fact fashion (very few long shots, no big cityscapes), but playing the drama down so much in favour of allusions to classical literature and history that the story constantly gets lost in the background.

The shifting structure (much of episode one is played out via voice over letters) and lack of narrative urgency makes the full six-hour version simultaneously demanding and undemanding, and certainly far too often uninvolving, but it has something going for it. The two main strengths are the characterisation of Petronius (a thankfully dubbed Frederic Forrest, whose own voice would almost certainly flatten his dialogue) as a man whose spent so long looking for an astute angle to survive court life that he's become incapable of experiencing emotion, and Klaus Maria Brandauer's unique take on Nero as a wannabe actor whose every move and action is calculated on how his 'audience' will receive it. Elsewhere, Max Von Sydow briefly appears in a few episodes, being rewarded with the show's most impressive and genuinely moving scene here he encounters a child as he attempts to leave Rome. It's the kind of thing the show could do with more of, but it seems all too often to flatten every potentially emotional, inspiring or exciting moment under it's relentlessly low-key direction.

Unfortunately Francesco Quinn makes a staggeringly anonymous hero, blending in with the walls and coming over less as a Roman officer than that quiet, slightly gormless but inoffensive guy who works in the same office as you who never says much at office parties - you know, the one who you think is called Dave or something like that. The budgetary limitations are very visible once its Meet the Lions time for the Christians and Ursus battle with the bull is so determinedly low key that it just passes over you before the show just abruptly loses interest and suddenly ends.

Not a trip I can particularly recommend, I'm afraid, but if you do embark on it it's one not entirely without its small rewards.

Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here: This is a truly wretched little film. Admittedly the original (un)holy trinity was governed by the law of diminishing returns with the third, "The Final Conflict" degenerating into a ridiculous sub-plot about half-way through the film apparently merely to provide the requisite needlessly convoluted deaths that had by now become the whole raison d'etre for the "Omen" series. But then to foist this jumped-up TV movie (beware purchasers of the Omen box set on DVD - don't be fooled by the widescreen ratio of the transfer, this was and is strictly small-screen stuff) on the back of a series of generally fine demonic chillers was unforgivable, particularly, endorsed as it was, by the exec.producer and producer of the first three movies Mace Neufeld and Harvey Bernhard. I'd give-away the plot if there was any, besides the usual death scenes (hopelessly toned down for TV sensibilities) and some of the worst acting I've seen. All involved in this project down to the catering people should be ashamed this travesty ever made it to the screen, let alone masquerading under the Omen name. If one person is convinced by my review to avoid this mess, I'll feel better for it.

Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here:
I have this film out of the library right now and I haven't finished watching it. It is so bad I am in disbelief. Audrey Hepburn had totally lost her talent by then, although she'd pretty much finished with it in 'Robin and Marian.' This is the worst thing about this appallingly stupid film. It's really only of interest because it was her last feature film and because of the Dorothy Stratten appearance just prior to her homicide.

There is nothing but idiocy between Gazzara and his cronies. Little signals and little bows and nods to real screwball comedy of which this is the faintest, palest shadow.

Who could believe that there are even some of the same Manhattan environs that Hepburn inhabited so magically and even mythically in 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' twenty years earlier? The soundtrack of old Sinatra songs and the Gershwin song from which the title is taken is too loud and obvious--you sure don't have to wait for the credits to find out that something was subtly woven into the cine-musique of the picture to know when the songs blasted out at you.

'Reverting to type' means going back up as well as going back down, I guess. In this case, Audrey Hepburn's chic European lady is all you see of someone who was formerly occasionally an actress and always a star. Here she has even lost her talent as a star. If someone whose talent was continuing to grow in the period, like Ann-Margret, had played the role, there would have been some life in it, even given the unbelievably bad material and Mongoloid-level situations.

Hepburn was a great person, of course, greater than most movie stars ever dreamed of being, and she was once one of the most charming and beautiful of film actors. After this dreadful performance, she went on to make an atrocious TV movie with Robert Wagner called 'Love Among Thieves.' In 'They all Laughed' it is as though she were still playing an ingenue in her 50's. Even much vainer and obviously less intelligent actresses who insisted upon doing this like Lana Turner were infinitely more effective than is Hepburn. Turner took acting seriously even when she was bad. Hepburn doesn't take it seriously at all, couldn't be bothered with it; even her hair and clothes look tacky. Her last really good work was in 'Two for the Road,' perhaps her most perfect, if possibly not her best in many ways.

And that girl who plays the country singer is just sickening. John Ritter is horrible, there is simply nothing to recommend this film except to see Dorothy Stratten, who was truly pretty. Otherwise, critic David Thomson's oft-used phrase 'losing his/her talent' never has made more sense.

Ben Gazarra had lost all sex appeal by then, and so we have 2 films with Gazarra and Hepburn--who could ask for anything less? Sandra Dee's last, pitiful film 'Lost,' from 2 years later, a low-budget nothing, had more to it than this. At least Ms. Dee spoke in her own voice; by 1981, Audrey Hepburn's accent just sounded silly; she'd go on to do the PBS 'Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn' and there her somewhat irritating accent works as she walks through English gardens with aristocrats or waxes effusively about 'what I like most is when flowers go back to nature!' as in naturalized daffodils, but in an actual fictional movie, she just sounds ridiculous.

To think that 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' was such a profound sort of light poetic thing with Audrey Hepburn one of the most beautiful women in the world--she was surely one of the most beautiful screen presences in 'My Fair Lady', matching Garbo in several things and Delphine Seyrig in 'Last Year at Marienbad.' And then this! And her final brief role as the angel 'Hap' in the Spielberg film 'Always' was just more of the lady stuff--corny, witless and stifling.

I went to her memorial service at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, a beautiful service which included a boys' choir singing the Shaker hymn 'Simple Gifts.' The only thing not listed in the program was the sudden playing of Hepburn's singing 'Moon River' on the fire escape in 'Breakfast at Tiffany's,' and this brought much emotion and some real tears out in the congregation.

A great lady who was once a fine actress (as in 'The Nun's Story') and one of the greatest and most beautiful of film stars in many movies of the 50's and 60's who became a truly bad one--that's not all that common. And perhaps it is only a great human being who, in making such things as film performances trivial, nevertheless has the largeness of mind to want to have the flaws pointed out mercilessly--which all of her late film work contained in abundance. Most of the talk about Hepburn's miscasting is about 'My Fair Lady.' But the one that should have had the original actress in it was 'Wait Until Dark,' which had starred Lee Remick on Broadway. Never as celebrated as Hepburn, she was a better actress in many ways (Hepburn was completely incapable of playing anything really sordid), although Hepburn was at least adequate enough in that part. After that, all of her acting went downhill.