input: It Could Have Been A Marvelous Story Based On The Ancient Races Of Cat People, but it wasn't.

This work could have been just that; marvelous and replete with mythological references which kept my fascination fueled. The lead characters (Charles Brady played by Brian Krause; and his mother Mary, played by Alice Krige) were shallowly done, had no depth of personality and were hardly likable or drawing. Not even Madchen Amick (who played Tanya Robertson)'s character fit into that description.

However, as I've said many times before, when you adapt a Stephen King novel for TV, you simply must take into account the fact that his books aren't written for TV, and his screenplay talent sadly lacks the fire and depth he exhibits as a novelist.

This is another botched attempt to take the magick of Stephen King writing, whether that is of his novels or an original screenplay. To simply cut and paste his work onto the small screen. His novels get completely bastardized in the process and all you end up creating is a nice movie; nothing less but certainly nothing more. His screenplays are hit and miss. Unfortunately, this screenplay translation was a miss.

Sorry, Sorry, Sorry movie.

This movie gets a 1.0/10 from...

the Fiend :.

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input: Jean Seberg had not one iota of acting talent. Like all her films, 'Bonjour tristesse' suffers not at all from her looks (though she is perhaps the first of those modern women whom Tom Wolfe gleefully, accurately describes as "boys with breasts": publicists, of course, use the word "gamine") but suffers grievously from Seberg's dull, monotonous, killing voice. In all her films when had to play anger, Seberg played it with grossly audible, distracting, gasping panting between her monotonously droned verbalizations. Oy.

Preminger's adaptation of Francoise Sagan's breathlessly juvenile, fantasy soap opera plot is noteworthy only for his lush cinematography - but then that's difficult to funk on the photogenic French Riviera, and perhaps for his apt, but certainly not groundbreaking, employment of black & white for the present day scenes from which Seberg's monotone narration delivers us to the flashed-back-to color past.

Juliette Greco has a brief moment, as a nightclub chanteuse in the black & white spotlight, delivering in smoky Dietrichesque voice the bleak existentialist lyric of the title song. This moment is nowadays, in retrospect, more than a wee bit drole. Except, of course, if you're French - particularly if you're a French "68-er" longing for the glorious days of the barricades roundabout the Sorbonne - and your kids riot to retain the lifelong sinecures which have blighted and emasculated France's economy: then you still believe in Sartre and Foucault and all such arcane, irrelevant theorists.

David Niven has the hardest role, having to play with sufficient gusto an aging hedonist who's yet to grasp that life isn't all about Sagan's teenybopper notions of a hip, cool, swingin', "mon copain!" Papa. Deborah Kerr delivers her usual, consummately professional presence, convincingly playing the woman who suffers undeservedly Seberg's spiteful teenaged snot-nose jealousy (fulfilling Sagan's shallow teen fantasy of the Classical theme of "there can be only one Queen Bee in the hive"); in fact, to Kerr belongs this film's sole great and memorable on-screen moment.

The dialogue is unnatural - I agree with an earlier reviewer who said that it sounds to be "badly translated" from French; combine the unnatural scripting with Seberg's incomparably dull, unendurable monotone and you can save that Valium for another night. Atop all that the ineptly synched post-production voice dubbing is, almost throughout, obvious and thus much more than irksome: this is especially true of the dubbing for Mylene Demongeot because it spoils her otherwise very pleasing dumb blonde performance.

Hunky Geoffrey Horne gets the short end of the stick here - a very good looking young man who also suffered from a less-than-lovely, uncinematic voice which, when paired with Seberg's drone, yields unconvincing scenes of puppy love. (Horne was, shall we say, merely adequate in 'Bridge On the River Kwai,' perhaps because his end was held up by those great cinema pros William Holden and Jack Hawkins instead of being unsupported by the regrettably ungifted Seberg).

In sum 'Bonjour tristesse' is pretty to look at but it's shallow, immature soap: thin gruel with suds.

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input: I should have known I was in trouble with Casper Van Diem as the lead character. Words cannot describe, nor do they do justice to just how terrible this movie was. But please allow me to try to describe it: Horrible acting, terrible dialog, corny situations and through it all you get the feeling that you are being force-fed the beliefs and propeganda from the Trinity Broadcasting Network. Its a weak attempt at trying to show Hollywood that a movie can be entertaining and have a deep, religious message attached to it. They failed miserably. It was clearly the worst movie I have seen in a long time.

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input: Acting was weak, but in a horror flick, I can live with that if the story is good. It wasn't. The initial event was an clumsy and obvious ploy to exploit most people's adoration of kids. OK, fine. Fast forward to the "place in the country" where they will recover emotionally. I like the revelation of the ghosts. OK, cool--this will be a supernatural kinda horror story, with rotting things partly in our world partly in...where ever. Then the action starts pulling like a three headed dog in a flurry of cats and birds--Is there an evil force trying to attack them directly? Is there an evil force trying to attack them INdirectly--make people do awful things they wouldn't really do? Oh, wait, no, maybe the whole REGION is some kind of psychic echo chamber where ambient discord can reverberate into murder? OK, hold on--maybe it's really just one little mentally tangled "Delbert"-style redneck boy who misses his Mommy and is on some kind of spree like a K-Tel Norman Bates knock off? Oh, yeah--extra points off: the only Black character seems to be the grandson of an "Our Gang" pullman porter. The actor plays it as straight as he can given the crummy dialogue, but the fact is, his purpose is "Y'all done betta get outa heah, Boss!" At least they wrote him smart enough to GTF outta there. The bit with the little girl being silenced and pulled away was definitely creepy, as was the chick in the shower. Those were just two of quite a few really delicious tidbits in this movie. The problem is that they are combined in disharmonious ways, like a bite of steak, a bite of chocolate and a bite of a Gummi bear. Each is great on it's own, but mixed up? Bleah! Such potential. Wasted.

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negative