TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
PROBLEM: dear god , this is a fantastically bad film !
regardless of what i say about knock off , you ca n't grasp its awfulness from my words .
you have to see it and experience it for yourself .
here 's the kicker , though -- i suggest that you do so .
yes , this is a bad film -- easily one of the most incompetent films of the year --
but it has a certain misguided charm that makes it a unique kind of disaster to endure
.
in fact , i enjoyed myself for most of its brief running time , despite the dreadful acting and a completely incomprehensible story
.
do n't get me wrong : i 'm not excusing knock off .
it reaches an unacceptable level of badness ; it 's so incoherent that i wonder if it was hacked up worse than the avengers was .
it also features some truly terrible performances from lela rochon , michael wong , paul sorvino , and -- of course -- jean - claude van damme .
it does , however , have the entertaining presence of rob schneider , and the excessively inventive and pretentious direction of tsui hark .
as i watched it , i occasionally wondered if it was aware of its own awfulness .
now , in retrospect , it seems clear that it was n't , but it 's still a fascinating kind of mess .
i do n't like writing plot descriptions ( it is , by far , the most boring part of writing a review ) , but , in this case , i 'm off the hook : there is no way i could write an accurate synopsis for knock off .
for the sake of comparison , i had no trouble understanding the usual suspects during my first viewing .
i paid closer attention to knock off , and the only thing i am able to say about it is that van damme plays a dude named ray , and is accused by the cia ( i think ) of selling
knock off products ( knock off products are , of course , products that look like name - brand materials but are generic and cheap ) .
i do n't know what any of this has to do with martial arts , but there are lots of martial arts in the film .
ray is good at martial arts , so when he has to beat up bad guys , there 's no problem .
rob schneider plays his sidekick , although i had no idea who he really was by the end of the film .
lela rochon is just some woman who accuses them of stuff , while paul sorvino is both the good guy and the bad guy at once !
in fact , every character goes through so many shifts from good to bad that the end provides absolutely no insight into what any of them really do .
in that order , knock off is completely incoherent and makes absolutely no sense .
but what a strange mess
it is .
it was written by stephen e .
de souza , who also wrote die hard and 48 hours .
can this be the same man ?
i do n't see how , unless , of course , huge chunks of the film have been removed for the sake of running time .
knock off seems to have an interesting premise ( as far as action films go ) , but there 's no semblance here .
for instance , van damme is introduced , and then seconds later he 's running a chariot race through the streets of hong kong .
why ?
who knows .
what are the implications of this ?
i have no idea .
most action films abandon depth in favor of action , and this is normally a problem .
knock off , however , is the first film that i would have preferred to see with all of the talky sequences cut .
the acting is embarrassingly bad :
rochon , in particular , delivers each of her lines with stiff and talentless insincerity .
sorvino , in addition , deserves better than this .
van damme is bad , but he 's charming in that bad way , and so i ca n't say that he 's hard to watch ( although i rarely understood what he was saying ) .
the only exception is rob schneider , who is actually quite funny a lot of the time .
tsui utilizes so many tricks that he makes john woo look tame by comparison .
they 're all pointless gimmicks
though , such as shots of the inner - workings of a knock off running shoe .
but his action scenes are never boring :
one particular piece inside of a fruit factory ( a fruit factory ? ) is well - choreographed .
lots of the scenes are pitched well to comedy , such as our heroes ' first encounter with the rochon character .
but did tsui know that his film is beyond ludicrous
?
i hope he did , for the alternative is a frightening thought .
knock off has the feel of a truly terrible exercise in camp mania .
if it were boring , i 'd give it zero stars .
but it 's not boring :
it 's loud and excessive and completely incoherent .
it 's also funny , even when it is n't meaning to be funny .
a bad film that succeeds as entertainment does n't deserve to be fully lambasted .
i recognize knock off for its irrefutable badness , but i ca n't deny it 's zany , useless charm .
oh , i know , they 're just action scenes looking desperately for a real story , but they 're fun action scenes amongst a crowd of laughably inane concepts .
it 's fun to admire
the awfulness of a film like this , but that does n't excuse the fact that it is , indeed , awful .

SOLUTION: N

PROBLEM: talk about beating a dead horse !
when home alone was released in 1990 , it was a breath of fresh air , and the final box office tally indicated how much audiences appreciated a genuinely - funny family film .
the unexpectedly high gross guaranteed a sequel , so ,
two years later , we were subjected to home alone 2 , which might as well have been called clone alone for all of the originality it exhibited .
for john hughes , two home alone movies were n't enough ?
he began recycling the same kinds of villains and situations in almost every movie he was involved with , including a pathetic box office bomb called baby 's day out , last year 's live - action 101 dalmatians , and this year 's flubber .
now , inexplicably , hughes has exhumed not only these worn - out plot elements , but the " home alone " name as well . the result ?
1997 's worst sequel
( edging out speed 2 and batman and robin ) , home alone 3 . by changing the characters , hughes ( who wrote and co - produced the film ) , along with his co - conspirator , director raja gosnell , has attempted to inject new life into a series that is way past the point of cardiac arrest .
the new kid , alex pruitt , is played by alex d .
linz ( one fine day ) , and
the only thing he has going for him is terminal cuteness .
he 's not half as interesting as macaulay culkin once was .
the villains , pale copies of joe pesci and daniel stern , are even less engaging than the pair of idiots in flubber .
in home alone 3 , there are four of them ( olek krupa , david thornton , lenny von dohlen , and rya kihlstedt ) , but all that means is an opportunity for twice as many pratfalls .
this time , the kid is n't left home alone because his parents have gone on a trip .
instead , he has developed a bad case of chicken pox , so he ca n't go to school .
his dad ( kevin kilner ) is away on business and his mom ( haviland morris ) has to run errands , so , for the most part , he 's all by himself during the day .
through a series of coincidences too irritating to relate , a top secret u . s .
air force integrated circuit comes into his possession .
it 's wanted by a gang of four international crooks who intend to break into alex 's home to retrieve it .
the eight- year old , who is wise beyond his years , booby traps the house with all sorts of rube goldberg - type devices designed to humiliate and incapacitate the villains .
the movie 's climax takes place during a raging snowstorm ?
only none of the falling flakes looks remotely believable .
previously , the most counterfeit - looking snow effects i can remember were in star
trek iii .
these are far worse .
in fact , the production values are so shoddy that there are some scenes in the midst of this near - blizzard when a shining sun can be seen .
if it 's a wonderful life could generate real- looking snow back in the 1940s , why ca n't home alone 3 , which has a significantly larger budget and ' 90s technology at its disposal ?
there has been an ongoing debate regarding the appropriateness of live - action cartoon violence for young children .
home alone 3 will add fuel to the fire .
it 's one thing to see wyle e . coyote flattened by a 10 ton acme weight , but quite another to watch a running lawn mower fall on
lenny von dohlen .
adults and even older children will recognize that this is obviously fake and intended to be humorous , but what about five and six - year olds ?
the level of violence in home alone 3 is extreme ?
many of alex 's schemes are nasty enough to kill .
but , because this is a " family film , " no one dies , despite being electrocuted , falling thirty feet , and getting smacked on the head by a barbell .
not only is home alone 3 unnecessary , but it 's offensive .
it 's an exercise in tediousness , and there is n't a genuine laugh to be found from the beginning to the end ( unless , by some strange quirk of fate , you have missed every 1990s movie associated with john hughes , and thus have n't seen this stuff before ) .
i ca n't imagine anyone with a reasonable attention span being more than momentarily distracted by this pointless adventure .
maybe that 's why the only ones laughing at the screening i attended were still in their thumb - sucking years .

SOLUTION: N

PROBLEM: when i first heard that kevin costner was making a movie called " the postman ,
" i thought , " an american version of ' il postino ? '
starring costner ?
god help us !
" when i found out that it was not a remake of " postino " but an postapocalyptic epic , i thought ,
" ' landworld ? '
please , god , make him stop !
" as it turns out ,
"
the postman " is a much better film than i had expected .
despite being set in 2013 , the movie is , at heart , a western : a band of thugs terrorizes peaceful villagers ; a wandering hero opposes the bandits and inspires others to fight back .
the setting , however , allows that familiar plot to take on greater significance : american society has collapsed due to plagues and wars , and survivors live behind barracades in isolated villages .
the struggle of a dead society to be reborn has a grand quality and deserves the epic scale costner grants it .
costner 's nameless character , a wandering actor , rides in from the vast wasteland and is soon shanghaied into the service of general bethlehem ( will patton ) , a former copy - machine salesman turned bandit king .
our hero escapes and discovers the body of a dead postman .
taking the uniform and bag of mail , he passes himself off as a representative of " the restored united states .
"
he is shocked at the hope that he inspires in the people he meets .
one young disciple , ford lincoln mercury ( larenz tate ) , organizes a full - scale postal service .
ford spreads the postman 's message of hope until bethlehem finds that the once - meek villagers are beginning to resist his rule .
as war breaks out between bethlehem 's army and the postal workers , costner 's character steps into the legend he created and goes from self - centered loner to leader of the revolution .
his lie of the restored united states becomes a self - fulfilling prophecy .
" postman " is an odd blend of a bleak setting and a message of wide - eyed optimism ( sort of " sergio leone meets frank capra " ) , but its treatment of hope and renewal is compelling .
what could have been another knock - off of " the road warrior " ( like " waterworld " was ) surprises the viewer with a sensitively told story of nobility emerging from rubble .
tate is the stand - out in the movie 's large cast .
ford lincoln mercury ( self - named ) is the polar opposite of o - dog , tate 's character in his debut film , " menace ii society " ( 1993 ) , and tate makes ford 's innocent belief in hope as convincing as o - dog 's cynicism and brutality .
his performance sells the movie .
interestingly , as tate moves from his usual street - smart roles to youthful optimism , the soft - eyed patton , who usually plays nice guys , proves a disarming villain .
olivia williams makes her film debut as the postman 's love interest , abby .
when they first meet , abby asks him to father her child because her husband is sterile .
predictably , the husband is soon eliminated by the bandits , and abby is thrown back into the company of the hero .
however , their relationship develops slowly as the emotional conflicts of both characters are explored
( she , torn by grief , guilt , and anger ; he , resisting his destiny ) .
"
the postman " is costner 's best work thus far .
perhaps that alone gives us hope for the future . . .

SOLUTION:
P