Problem: This review is like what?
OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive

Review:First, an explanation: Despite my headline, I'm giving this film only 8 stars because overall this is NOT one of the best films ever made. All the criticisms registered here have valid points. Also, be warned that to enjoy the script you really need to appreciate Neil Simon's brilliance with finding the wit within real human banter. He does have a distinctively New York ear for dialogue -- especially dry, Jewish, love-suffused sarcasm -- and if you have trouble accepting sarcasm as an expression of love, then you might have trouble accepting the optimism at the heart of this movie.

So much for warnings. Here's my main point: Walter Matthau is flat-out perfect, even beyond perfect, in this movie. I have never seen him funnier, or more touching for that matter -- because at the same time that he shows us the hilariousness of this character who refuses to give up his Big Star self-image or insufferable attitudes even as his coherence is in decline, he also shows us the more vulnerable, maybe even heartbreakingly scared person inside the grouch. And he only barely shows us that sad part -- it's just enough to really get to you if you happen to be coping with your own father's or husband's mental decline right now (I mention this as a warning), but artistically, it's just enough pathos to give this character the most authentically deep roots I'm seen in possibly any film performance. This is beyond Method acting -- Matthau's performance is exquisite as character work and a pure delight as comic delivery. This is a masterpiece of comic acting.

About Richard Benjamin: I personally find his acting annoying in general, and his work in this movie is no exception -- although he has some fine moments here. ("Chicken is funny...." is one of them.) So if you like him, you should like him here, and if you don't this movie won't change your mind.

About the 1976 Oscars...I agree that Matthau was unfortunate to be up against Nicholson in "Cuckoo's Nest" that year. It was a killer year for leading-actor competition; if only there were separate Oscars for comedy and drama, then I think the Best Actor Oscars would have gone to Al Pacino for "Dog Day Afternoon" and to Walter Matthau for "The Sunshine Boys" -- not to dis Jack's fine work as McMurphy, but I think that Pacino and Matthau were each CLEARLY more masterful and astoundingly effective and downright legendary in their performances than Nicholson was that year. Also, I believe that Burns got the Supporting Actor Oscar more for sentimental reasons than for the quality of his performance -- I mean, he was good in this movie, but not THAT good. (Burns's fine-as-ever but unexceptional-in-itself return to show biz beat Brad Dourif's truly brilliant debut in "Cuckoo's Nest," not to mention Chris Sarandon's stunning debut in "Dog Day Afternoon" -- which I think proves my theory.)

Oscar theories aside, here's my bottom line review: If you like Matthau's comic acting, then see this movie and savor his powerhouse tirades and wonderful grandmother-inspired gestures, fleeting facial expressions and seemingly unscripted asides. (But if you're currently dealing with the pain of watching an old person lose his grip, then be warned that this movie might either be the comic relief you need or a dose of reality too painful to watch right now.)
+++++++++
A: positive

Problem: This review is like what?
OPTIONS:
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Review:I am a youth pastor's wife and we took some youth to see this film. We then spent an hour trying to explain it to them. They didn't get it and I didn't enjoy it. It is based on a concept that has run through all three of the major religions of the world (the Bible Code, the Torah Code and the Code in the Koran) and is so questionable as to be laughable. This is not a step forward for Christians in the arts, it is a step forward for those who believe we check our brains at the door.
+++++++++
A: negative

Problem: This review is like what?
OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive

Review:Hines and Goforth, the perpetrators of this crime, begin on the wrong foot first step, by assuming that Wells wrote Gothic horror and that all of his lines are meant to be taken seriously. That simply isn't true. Wells was very much an inheritor of the Enlightenment, and his main concern was that Victorian self-satisfaction might leave the British unprepared for the world the new technology could produce - both the good and the bad.

Two terrible consequences follow - the protagonist is portrayed as a wimpy screamer (I was reminded of Fay Wray in the original King Kong), rather than a man struggling to live out the ironies of an unbelievable catastrophe; and the dialog reeks of 'Victorianisms' uttered seriously that Welles clearly meant to be taken tongue in cheek.

All of this looks suspiciously like Ed Wood with an enormous budget to waste on CGI effects - which by the way are so poorly accomplished, the Warner Bros. cartoon factory of the 1940s could have done a better job. (Gobs of spattered blood looked like red balloons, I expected them to float away any minute.) Think The Yellow Submarine as done by the old EC Comics.

Worse yet is the loss of theme, which robs the film of any reason to exist. Although the makers of this film return the story to its Victorian era, they utterly miss the uncanny way Wells' story predicted many of the horrors of the First World War - a fact not unnoticed by Wells himself, who, after the war, reworked the theme in The Shape of Things to Come.

Without any theme, all we have here are a lot of people running around getting blasted into cartoon balloons, when they're not trying out for a high school production of a drunken student's rewrite of Macbeth.

Really, this is the worst, most senseless piece of drivel I have suffered through since a friend talked me into seeing the Eastern European cartoon "Fantastic Planet" thirty years ago. That film was so pretentiously dull, my friend and I and two total strangers gave up ridiculing it about half-way through, and sat near the screen playing cards, using the movie as light by which to see the cards - its only usefulness, as far as any of us could tell.

But I already have electric lighting in my apartment, so I didn't need this put-down of Wells for anything.

Do not avoid this film - steal every copy you can (don't pay a cent) and burn each and every one of them. God in his wisdom created us just for this purpose.
+++++++++
A: negative

Problem: This review is like what?
OPTIONS:
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- positive

Review:Knights was just a beginning of a series, a pilot, one might say. The plot (I really shouldn't call it that, there wasn't any plot) wasn't logical at all and there were many mistakes, like [warning, I'm summarizing the plot]:

In the beginning of the movie someone said that there was only a couple of those cyborgs (the bad guys) but after the climax, Nea found out that there were many many more left of them. And it was told that cyborgs were hard to kill, but after a month's training, Nea could kill them with a single blow.

The movie was just pure kicking. I wasn't surprised at all, when I found out that the leading star was a kick boxer.

There was ONE positive thing in the whole movie: it really gave a great deal of laughter when watching it and talking about it with my friends. I recommend watching it, if you are in need of laughter.
+++++++++
A:
negative