In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.

a film that means well , but is too pushy in promoting its belabored point and too sentimental to be compelling as a drama .
it 's jeroen krabb ?
's melodrama about a community of jews in antwerp in 1972 who ca n't forget their bitter past .
the heroine is an attractive , carefree , nonreligious 20-year - old , chaja ( fraser ) , who wants to forget her jewish roots by getting involved in student demonstrations , screwing a student rebel leader , and living with her gentile friends away from her nagging mother
( s ? gebrecht ) and her self - absorbed , eccentric father ( schell ) .
her parents are survivors of the holocaust concentration camps , and her home life is filled with angst .
her mother is in denial about the past always busying herself by cooking soup and baking cakes and complaining about everything , while her father is more openly loving but has recently been absorbed in searching for two suitcases filled with mementos , a family album , silverware , and his old violin .
he buried them in a garden during the war while fleeing the nazis , but ca n't locate them now due to all the changes in the city .
out of frustration after quitting her job as a dishwasher and facing eviction from her apartment , she reluctantly accepts a job as a nanny with an hasidic couple that an old man in her parents ' apartment building , mr .
apfelschnitt ( topol ) , tells her about .
the hasidics are ultra - orthodox : they do n't go to the cinema or watch tv , adhere to strict dress codes , and strictly observe their religious laws .
chaja is at first put off by the way they expect her to follow their rules , but soon finds the wife , mrs .
kalman ( rossellini ) , to be kind and she becomes attached to one of her 5 children , a 4-year - old named simcha ( monty ) who does n't talk .
the stern mr .
kalman ( krabb ? ) is not friendly to her and considers her to be a whore because of the way she dresses .
to hammer home the point of how anti - semitism has n't gone away
there 's a barrage of overdone and uninvolving scenes with a sneering concierge ( bradley ) , who keeps making nasty remarks about jews and tries to make things inconvenient for them by preventing the jewish family from using the elevator .
the film is done in by its ham - fisted script as the story , adapted from carl friedman 's book " the shovel and the loom , " goes from one false note to another until it gets lost in all the goo of its sentimentality .
it starts off telling chaja 's story of how she 's a lost jewess trying to find her identity , then to her nanny role as she loves a mute child stuck in an insulated environment , and then it makes it a story about the lingering effects of the bitter past that ca n't be forgotten .
the effort seemed heavy - handed , as the film kept delivering too many obvious messages that it ponderously kept delivering through the stock characters .
the supporting cast consists of all wooden characters who give their roles a cartoonish flavoring
: chaja 's parents are given no human shades , while the janitor villain was a particularly annoying role that was one - dimensional and falsely acted .
the only ones who fought through the script and showed some feelings were fraser , whose effervescent face was expressive of both the trying times she was going through and the joys she felt -- but most admirably showing how she could be so mistaken as to think that she could forget her roots ; while rossellini gave a warm performance of a woman suffering in silence , but is strong in accepting her faith .
topol 's reassuring performance as the wise man who says all the right things to fraser , acts as the true voice of the filmmaker in explaining all the sufferings with common sense .
the film brazenly uses little simcha to get across its agenda of pointing out how the patriarchal world can be cruel when it ca n't love : it starts out by showing how under chaja 's loving care he 's taken to the duck pond and soon starts jabbering away , beginning by saying ' quack , quack ' and then going on to ask the four questions during a passover seder .
but by showing how the boy is so terrified of his strict father that he wets his pants in his presence , refuses to speak because of his stern dad , and eventually becomes the victim of a tragic accident , the film thereby exploits the boy 's sufferings and his story just becomes tiresome and not sincerely done
.
i felt i did n't just see a movie , but i attended a lecture for the whole 100 minutes of this serious but unappetizing story .
it was the kind of movie that you hoped would somehow end soon , as it seemed to be in the habit of rehashing its same viewpoint unnecessarily -- the message it keeps sending was already received .
in the last shot where father and daughter are hopelessly digging for the lost luggage , one has the impression that no one in the film learned anything about themselves or the past .
that seems strange , since i thought that was what this film was supposed to be about . unless i was mistaken and the film 's real aim was to make us cry over simcha .
N

when i ponder childhood memories past , one of the things that always springs immediately to mind is watching the " inspector gadget " tv show with my older brother .
truth be told , we were rabid fanatics ; our version of cowboys and indians was chasing each other around our coffee table to the theme tune , alternating who would get to be gadget and who would be stuck playing the part of dr .
claw , the inspector 's arch nemesis .
i was never a biggie on nostalgia , but you just ca n't help but have fond memories of something like that .
sometimes i even find myself up at 4 am watching re - runs of my favorite episodes , trying to recapture some of that sense of wonder i felt as a kid .
at the very least , i was expecting the new film version of the classic television series to have at least some kind of similar effect on me .
despite how horrid a film may be , the simple task of rekindling even a slight feeling of nostalgia is pretty tough to screw up .
so back i sat , with minimum expectations of what the movie would deliver ( let 's face it ; exactly how good can a live - action disney film really be ? ) .
i was wise enough to steer clear from the likes of mr .
magoo and george of the jungle ( two previous disney adaptations ) ,
and i wish to god that i had been sharp enough to skip gadget as well
.
rarely has a movie left me with such an utter feeling of emptiness .
as everyone else was getting up to exit the screening room after the movie had completed its assault on mankind , i was left sitting there , absolutely speechless and totally dumbfounded at what i had just seen
.
can something this awful
truly exist in such an evolved world ?
right from the beginning , i knew i was in trouble .
in the opening scenes , each character is introduced as if their sole purpose is to just be , to simply serve as real - life duplicates of their cartoon clones .
when referring to them , people almost yell in fear that the audience will not catch on as to who a certain character is supposed to be ( " oh , hi penny !
is brain with you ? " ) . creating one - dimensional replicas is one thing ; having mere names take the place of them is quite another .
the " plot " , shall we call it , stays fairly in tune with the original series .
matthew broderick stars as john brown ( how creative is that ? ) , a security guard who is horribly injured by a pack of ruthless businessmen headed by scolex ( why , rupert everett ,
for the love of god
why ? ? ? ! ! !
) , who himself is transformed into claw by an unfortunate chain of events .
brown is then rescued and used as a prototype for a new law - enforcement technology wherein he 's joined with various machine parts and some nifty gadgets to form ( drumroll , please ) . . .
inspector gadget !
> from here on out
, the movie becomes a hodgepodge of stupid dialog and confusing situations
( although , to be fair , my confusion could have been caused by the virtual concussion the film was inflicting upon my fragile mind ) .
there 's something about an evil gadget taking over the city ( his first crime must have been swiping matt dillon 's dentures from there 's something about mary ) and it all ends with ( what else ? )
a bunch of post - credit nonsense and a cameo by don adams himself .
to be honest , i was n't much paying attention to these " treats " .
i was just glad that it was over .
N

robin williams , this time without a beard , returns to drama in this sloppy , sickly sweet fantasy with few redeeming features apart from the incredible effects .
he plays chris nielsen , who meets annie ( annabella sciora ) and promptly marries her .
they have two great kids , who sadly die in a car crash .
just when it could n't get any worse , chris gets killed in a car crash , and goes to heaven where he meets his guide albert ( gooding jnr . )
annie ca n't take the grief anymore , and kills herself .
( all sounding like good fun so far ? )
the ' penalty ' for suicide is to go to hell , and chris goes on a mission to try and rescue her using the help of the traveller ( max von sydow . )
based on a novel by twilight zone writer richard matheson , what dreams may come is clunky , manufactured material doused with a extra load of sugar .
this is the worse spielberg film spielberg never made .
everything is wrong about this movie : the performances are forced , and the audiences fail to relate to any of the characters .
williams puts on a convincing upset face , but that 's all it is : a face .
there 's no emotion behind it .
sciora 's performance is lazy , and bogs down the whole film .
she may look pretty , but she ca n't act .
max von sydow is o .
k as the traveller , if nothing special .
cuba gooding jnr , thankfully , adds some bounce to his performance , and is certainly the best performer in the film .
it 's a shame that his character is so flat and 2-d , and offers no room for improvement .
all the performers have to work with a soppy script
, that tries it 's best to get some emotion going , but never takes off the ground .
there are _ some _ scenes which could be real heartwarmers , but the faceless characters do n't help to get anything out of the performers .
while films like e .
t used great actors , music and direction to pull of a masterful heart - tugging scene , what dreams may come is haphazard , expecting the emotion to come out of the scene automatically .
instead , it 's all rather boring
.
sure , the music is pretty ( by michael kamen ) and the cinematography is n't bad ( by eduardo serra ) but there 's something lacking .
the script does n't help , filled with hopeless romantic clich ?
s , and dud speeches
.
richard matheson can write some awesome science fiction stories , sadly this novel would look embarrassed in a bargain bin , let alone being converted into a $ 70 million vehicle for robin williams . despite being set in heaven , what dreams may come is mightily depressing .
the film rushes a happy ending , but everything before this is very , very sad and black , which just adds to make the ending even more hopeless and stupid
.
but there 's one redeeming feature about this failure of a movie : the special effects .
heaven and hell are truly incredible places , and the actors fit perfectly with the virtual sets .
but despite this , what dreams may come , proves to be nothing but the biggest disappointment of 1998 .
instead of raising questions about existence , it raises boredom .
sadly , i recommend you give this film a miss .
better luck next time , robin .
a david wilcock review ?
1998
"
you know , for kids
" - norville barnes
N