input: Robin Williams does his best to combine comedy and pathos, but comes off a bit shrill. Donald Moffat is too one-note as his father-in-law. Jeff Bridges is excellent though as the quarterback, and Holly Palance and Pamela Reed are marvelous, carrying the film through most of its rough spots. It fills time nicely, but is little more than that.

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pos/neg ans: positive

input: Okay.. this wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen, but I had heard lots of good things about it and I was sorely disappointed. I could see where the film makers were coming from and that they were trying to express the fact that the two sides in this battle weren't a whole lot different from one another, that the individuals were getting lost in the fighting, etc, etc. (well, that's my presumption, anyway =^_^=)

At any rate.. the movie kind of bored me. I've watched a lot of really long movies, but this one just seemed to drag on and on and on.. basically because I just couldn't bring myself to care for any of the characters. I just kept thinking.. who cares??? I also found the acting to be rather dead pan and the dialogue strained. I understand that this was the 1800s and all, but most of the conversations just seemed rather unnatural. No one seemed to have any emotion throughout most of the film except during melodramatic events.

The "romance" in the story didn't seem to be supported by anything other than "I'm a guy and you're a girl", which I don't consider much of a romance, and yet I felt I was being steered to the belief that these people were in love. Oh well.. I guess it's the whole "all this horror around us, we have each other to cling to" type thing, or whatever. I was also hoping for some sort of dynamic between the two best friends (who both initially seemed to have an interest in the girl) but that was just sort of dropped. Maybe avoiding a cliche love triangle. I don't know.

Oh well.. Daniel Holt was about the only character I really truly liked. And Sue Lee was all right. I didn't exactly dislike Jake, but he seemed a bit too... spineless, I guess. Jack Bull I did not care for at all. And I'm pretty sure you're *supposed* to hate just about everyone else, with the exception of the poor normal people who just get mowed down left and right. It was pretty graphic and had that whole "the horrors of war" thing down, but I've seen plenty of other movies with the same theme, done better. (I enjoyed The Patriot a lot, for instance, even if it was a bit emotionally manipulative) But, as I've already stated, I'm a cynic. What can I say? :)

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: Having just seen this on TMC, it's fresh in my mind. It's obvious that while the stooges are featured stars, they don't really run the show. First, they're broken into 2 groups - Moe, as "Shorty" and Larry and Curly as a pair of vagrants, so there's not a whole lot of full team work. The love story that fuels the plot is uninteresting, the two ladies are the only ones with any acting ability, there's another group of musical stooges that are unfunny, unless you consider their attempts at being funny to be sadly buffoonish. The music is tiresome, they drive cars to the ranch and then depend on horses, the dorky western wear is silly, and there's an awful lot of the movie with no stooges on camera. By the way, this is obviously after Curley's first stroke, and his reduced energy level is clear. Vernon Dent appears early on in an uncredited role. I loved everything these guys ever did, including all the non-Curley stuff, but this little dogie is pretty lousy.

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: Avoid the USA version. It is with added US footage and the worst dubbing you've ever heard probably done by New York amateurs. The dubbing is so bad that it sounds like Mystery Science Theater 3000. I think a black guy from the Bronx does Chiba's voice. I couldn't watch the entire film it was that bad. Instead of this Americanized version watch Chiba's other greats like The Streetfighter or Karate Warriors.

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pos/neg ans:
negative