input: Douglas Sirk directs this over-acted drama about the unhappy affluent. Kyle Hadley(Robert Stack)and Mitch Wayne(Rock Hudson) are boyhood friends with different looks on life. Kyle is the womanizing son of an oil tycoon; Mitch works for the Hadley Oil Company. Both fall in love with the same woman, Lucy Moore; but it is Kyle that has the means to wow her off her feet and marry her. Sister Marylee(Dorothy Malone)seems to be the town's nymphomaniac and carrying a torch for Mitch, who always seems to be the one to clean up the Hadley's messes. Ambitious with pretension; a little over the top, but the stars make it a movie to see. I was most impressed with Malone. Rounding out the cast: Robert Keith, Edward Platt, John Lurch and Robert J. Wilke.

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pos/neg ans: positive

input: Steven Seagal....how could you be a part of such an awful film? I rented this movie because your movies usually have been pretty clean. I have lost a lot of respect for you being in an awful movie such as this one. Very, very poor taste! I am embarrassed that I even rented this movie. Steven, if you keep acting in movies like this one, I believe that your career is over. My husband and I have enjoyed watching many of your movies because you always can "get the bad guy" with a few hand maneuvers and make it clean...and also the language is pretty clean in your movies...but this one is something else. I will think twice before I rent another movie of yours.

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: This movie stinks! You will want back the two-plus hours it takes to get through it. Sliding Doors, w/ Gwyenth Paltrow and directed by Peter Howit, did what Melinda & Melinda tries to do much much MUCH better. That movie was clever, witty, and well-acted. I cared about what happened to both Gwyenths -- or rather the characters she played -- and the performances by supporting cast were fantastic.

Where as Melinda & Melinda is tiresome, the dialogue is contrived and I could have cared less about any of these people -- least of all Melinda. One Melinda is so dysfunctional -- her first glass of wine is at 10 a.m. -- and so melodramatic she is laughable, and not in the comedic sense. The 2nd Melinda is fine, but forgettable.

Woody Allen's previous ensemble movies worked because, I'm guessing, he spent time on the screenplay and the actors were talented. One piece of trivia for this movie is that he wrote this screenplay in two months: you can tell. And while Chloe Sevigny is talented -- those around her are not, not enough to be a whole presence. The movie ends up being Chloe Sevigny and a bunch of other people you know you've seen in other movies but can't quite remember which ones.

Sad, very sad.

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: Mel Torme and Victor Borge, in their younger years, serve to make this film interesting - and especially viewing a young Sinatra, on the sunny side of 30, and definitely conveying that this was his "yes, I'm a popular singer, but hardly an actor yet" stage. Michele Morgan is an annoying, inane presence, and Jack Haley is an actor whose appeal has always been totally lost on me. Leon Erroll is silly, as always, but overall pretty funny. 7 stars of a potential 10 is about the right "grade," because with the combination of its positive aspects, along with the lack of much of a story, and a silly one at that, and the fore-mentioned annoyances - it is overall average at best. Most of the fascination is from the viewing of the three entertainment icons in their early years.

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pos/neg ans:
positive