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Reviews
Caffeine (2006)
Dull as ditch water
I'm still trying to work out how and indeed why this film was ever made. When will filmmakers understand that scripts featuring a variety of characters and hopefully a number of unifying themes are really difficult to pull off? Caffeine doesn't even come close to getting it right. To make matters worse as a comedy it is woefully unfunny to the point of painful.
In a nutshell, we're given access to a day in the 'zany' lives of the patrons and staff of the Black Cat Cafe. It's the usual stuff, someone's boyfriend has been cheating on them, someone's grandmother has gone doolally, someone else is waiting for a call from their agent, someone is on the blind date from hell when her ex turns up, someone else is revealed to be a transvestite. Someone turns out to be gay. Each story line plays out like a small sketch and appears to belong to a different film entirely as nothing seems to bind them together. Characters are so undeveloped it's impossible to work up anything approaching sympathy for them and their situations. Indeed characters like Tom the waiter don't even appear to have a back story. The fact it's set in London is incidental as apart from regular glimpses of the odd double decker bus and black cab, it could be anywhere. Even Rachel the owner of the cafe sounds northern.
Casting Katherine Heigel and Mena Suvari as Brits seems an odd decision as neither one had box office when this film was released and their attempts at the accent is woeful to say the least. Surely as London is known to be a cosmopolitan city it would have made more sense for them to be Americans? Sadly the basic idea is strong and in other hands Caffeine could have ended up being and entertaining and thought provoking rather than dull as ditch water.
Project Greenlight (2001)
Bad directors, bad end film, bad choice
Okay, after a supposedly rigorous selection process we end up with what is repeatedly referred to as a fantastic script by a talented writer and a team of two 'very capable' directors. A very different scenario to the previous series where writer Pete Jones who had never directed before was given the helm. The result was the appalling 'Stolen Summer' which made about a dollar fifty at the box office. This time things were supposed to be very different.
Unfortunately right from the start it becomes glaringly obvious that our two talented and experienced directors are nothing of the kind. At one point, one of them asks if they really need a production designer and wouldn't it be better to just tell the prop master what they want? Things get worse when they upset the leading DP candidate by accusing him of talking over them. As a result, he wisely makes the decision to pull himself out of the running. Through six weeks of preproduction,they sit quietly in script meetings leaving producers,Chris Moore and Jeff Balis come up with ways in which the script could be improved.
After a meeting with Sharon Lawrence, where they sit staring off into space, their casting director,Joseph describes them as mutes and admits that as an actor, he would have serious concerns about working with them.
Once on set they suddenly discover an interest in the script and begin rewriting scenes the night before shooting upsetting both the writer, who they deliberately exclude from the process, and the the producers. Their lack of preparation leads to them falling behind schedule and alienates their actors when it becomes clear they have no idea what it is they want. Watching the writer, Erica Beeney cringe every time they give their actors directions that run contrary to the intentions of the script and story is painful to say the least.
In truth, I don't blame the directors , even though they are intensely unlikeable characters. It was the job of the producers to put the project into the hands of the very best candidates and they patently failed to do so. I can only guess that the reason these two were picked is because it was decided that having two directors would make for more entertaining television.
At the beginning of each episode, we are told that the intention of the project is to identify talented individuals and help them to launch their careers but in the case of Kyle Rankin, Efram Potelle and Pete Jones this clearly has not been the case. Like 'Stolen Summer', 'The Battle of Shaker Heights' went on to gross about two dollars fifty before sinking without trace. Although Pete Jones has managed to sell an idea to the Farrelly brothers, none of the directors have persuaded anyone to let them anywhere near a film set.
Not surprisingly after the third series, Chris Moore declared Project Greenlight to over and then took himself off to become a director. To be honest it should never have begun.
The Hungry Bachelors Club (1999)
Muddled, confused mess
I have to agree with some of the other comments and even go a step further.
Nothing about this film worked, absolutely nothing. Delmar our central character makes the decision to become a surrogate mother in order to earn enough money to buy a restaurant but along the way fall for a wise ex-jailbird. At the same time her friend Hortense is trying to get her lawyer boyfriend to finally marry her. She also happens to be sleeping with Marlon who is desperately in love with her. Then there's Delmar's brother Jethro who gets involved with a former coke addict, Missy who reveals she was sexually abused by her adopted father. On the sidelines we also have the eccentricmother who has an assortment of equally odd friends, one of whom dies on the couch at the beginning of the film. So far so good but after introducing these characters and story lines addressing life, death, grief and love in the first half, the film simply loses direction.
If the writer had only selected one or two characters and allowed us to follow their stories maybe things would have been fine but equal screen time is given to all with the result that no one story or character is fully developed. For instance, why does Delmar think she will be able to hand over her child in exchange for money, especially when the prospective parents are a creepy bigoted lawyer and his semi alcoholic and depressed wife? Why is Hortense so desperate to marry a man who is a jerk and clearly doesn't love her? How is it Missy manages to kick her coke habit overnight? Is Jethro regularly drawn to women with overwhelming problems, or is Missy the exception? Has Delmar and Jethro's mother always been on the eccentric side, or is it a more recent development? Why is Jethro so keen on Cadillacs that he has one in the middle of his living room? Why did Moses spend years in prison for stealing a car, a relatively minor crime? How does Delmar manage to end up giving birth to Moses' baby when there is no suggestion that they ever had sex?
These questions are posed in the screenplay but sadly are never answered. I can only assume they were answered in the original novel and that is why the writer felt the need to include it all in the script. Big mistake. Losing several subplots especially the Hortense and Marlon story, which adds nothing to the overall film, would have tightened things considerably and allowed more time to develop the Delmar, Jethro and Moses characters who are clearly more central to the plot and underlying themes than anyone else.
Add to that the most pedestrian directing style seen outside of the average soap opera and the result is a huge missed opportunity for all, including Jorja Fox who does her best to rise above the material. I'm not surprised that this appears to have been the director's last film as this effort shows no evidence of a visual style or ability to tell a moving and intelligent story.
Festival (2005)
Misses by about a mile
I really wanted to like this film for a couple of reasons 1. Annie Griifin did a fine job with the Book Club and 2. It's British. Sadly neither reason proved strong enough for me to be able to overlook Festival's many flaws.
I can only guess that Griffin's original aim was to write a movie where comedy and tragedy were so closely linked that it was difficult to see where one ended and the other began and what better backdrop that the Edinburgh Festival which every year attracts acts from all four corners of the world, who come to entertain and supposedly change their lives? Definitely a strong starting point for a funny, touching and thought provoking movie, unfortunately this ain't it.
For one thing we are asked to focus on far too many characters, assorted comics, bizarre actors and various hangers on who each have a story to tell but no time in which to tell it. As a result they never become anything other than one dimensional characters and unpleasant ones at that. Who is Faith, the actress behind the one woman show about Dorothy Wordsworth? Why has she chosen to do this? Why has she brought it to Edinburgh, what is she hoping to achieve? We never find out. Is Brother Mark a real priest. Why does Petra put up with Sean? Is she in love with his or just too apathetic to do anything else with her life? What's with the Canadian trio whose show touches the audience but who are presented to us as buffoons. And what about the depressed mother who abandons her child in what is presented to us as some sort of happy and romantic love story. Ditto the Perrier Awards which seem to be tacked on as an afterthought or just an excuse to introduce a bunch of stereotypical arty journalists spewing line upon line of bitchy clichés. Lots of questions but no answers and as a result the film added up to little more than an unholy mess.
And then the sex scenes. One commentator actually applauded these graphic and let's be honest gratuitous scenes decalring them to be "real" Well maybe he has been fisted many times on the floor of a puppet shop by a bald punk, I would hazard a guess and say that many of us have not. Guess that means movies like 'Deepthroat' should be regarded as social documentaries rather than porno junk.
I could go on to talk about the nonsensical punch up at the end but what would be the point? Suffice it to say that if this is the way that the UK Film Council is spending it's money then it's no wonder British film industry is in such dire straits.
Gregory's Two Girls (1999)
A real disappointment
First of all my heartfelt commiserations to anyone who bought a cinema ticket in the hope of seeing a film in the same mould as the fantastic Gregory's Girl and Local Hero but ended up leaving the theatre feeling disappointed and vaguely cheated. While it's true that sequels are usually, bar a few notable exceptions, a mistake and exist merely to provide studio executives with an opportunity to cash in on the success of a previous film by offering us either a thinly disguised retread of the original story or a plot line so far removed from the intentions of the original that the resulting film makes no sense. In the case of Gregory's Two Girls, Bill Forsyth has the dubious honour of managing to commit both sins - on the one hand revisiting the plot of Gregory's Girl, while at the same time serving up a frankly incredible and moronic storyline involving Scottish arms dealers. Schoolboy Gregory is now a teacher at the same school where at the tender age of sixteen, he harboured a hopeless passion for the football playing Dorothy. Although now thirty five, Gregory still harbours a hopeless passion but now for the football playing Frances, also sixteen, despite the fact that music teacher, Bel has made it clear that she is attracted to him. His passion for Frances and his desire to impress her lead to his involvement in a scheme to expose a local arms dealer who also happens to be an old schoolfriend. There's no point in going any further as the rest of the story is forgettable and the ending makes no real sense at all. The main problem lies with the character of Gregory himself, in that there is no sign of the endearing and charming sixteen year old Gregory who actively and comically pursues Dorothy convinced that he would eventually win her over. At thirty five, Gregory is presented to us as a rather sad and friendless creature whose life is neither active nor comic. Outside of work his time is spent watching videos of Noam Chomsky and reading magazines about international injustices. As his friends and family from the previous film have seemingly vanished, save two pointless scenes with his younger sister, who no longer offers him advice or seems at all interested in his life, we are left confused about what it is Gregory really wants, who he is and why he is the way he is. Why for example is he friendless? Why does he never see his father, who is clearly still alive? Why has he returned to teach at the school he once attended? Why is he so interested in Noam Chomsky and injustice? Why has he become so apathetic? Why is he attracted to Frances? Why isn't he attracted to Bel until the last twenty minutes of the film? What in heaven's name do Bel or Frances see in him as he is neither drop dead gorgeous or even interesting? Why does he continue to try and impress Frances even after he and Bel have become an item and when their association threatens to completely disrupt his life? Are we really to believe that a Scottish arms dealer openly selling weapons of torture to oppressive regimes could manage to evade media scrutiny but fall foul of a couple of school-kids? Does Gregory really think that dumping a handful of computers into the sea will change anything? To make matters worse, actor John Gordon Sinclair attempts to rehash his performance as the adolescent Gregory right down to the facial expressions and awkward body language. Unfortunately on a thirty five year old it just comes across as odd and vaguely creepy. On top of that, it's hard to feel any sympathy for, or empathy with a teacher who has erotic dreams involving sex with one of their uniform wearing pupils while they both lie on a pile of gym mats. Rather than being amusing it simply smacks of paedophilia. It's hard to know what was going through Bill Forsyth's head when he wrote this script or why he thought fans of the original film would embrace a story so completely lacking in the charm, wit and warmth that turned the first movie into a classic. I can only assume that the plan was to craft a film about a man who was refusing to grow up and commit to adult life and perhaps whose happiest memory was of being sixteen and pursuing the best looking girl in the school but who by degrees is forced to accept that a life lived in the past is no life at all.That at least could have been the basis of a film which was thematically interesting and intelligent. As it is Gregory's Two Girls adds up 116 wasted and pointless minutes saying nothing and signifying even less. Gregory's Girl was responsible for launching Bill Forsyth's career, here's hoping that Gregory's Two Girls won't be responsible for sinking it.
The Wedding Date (2005)
Pedestrian and very, very obvious
Okay, here's the plot in a nutshell - Neurotic woman pays escort/prostitute $6,000 to accompany her to her half sister's wedding where the ex-fiancé who dumped her some years early will perform as best man. Neurotic woman wants to make ex-fiancé jealous and perhaps regret dumping her and take her back? The question mark is there because this bit of the plot is not at all clear. After some pretty but rather endless pre-wedding party scenes, we discover that ex fiancé dumped neurotic woman because he was secretly sleeping with her half sister, who he still loves. Neurotic woman finds this out because the ex-fiancé decides, for some inexplicable reason, that after all these years she has a right to know, even though half sister has made it clear to him that the relationship is over. But neurotic woman isn't angry with ex boyfriend or half sister, or indeed best friend who knew about the relationship all along, no her fury is reserved for escort/prostitute on the grounds that based on their three day relationship, which has consisted of a few conversations and one shag, he should have felt obligated to tell her what was going on. The resulting argument halts their growing romance in it's tracks and causes escort/prostitute to book a flight back to the US. Suffice it to say everything works out in the end but in the most obvious, pedestrian and humourless way imaginable.
Note the absence of names here as they are as forgettable as this film. Neurotic woman and escort/prostitute's meaningless conversations tell us virtually nothing about the characters and their motivations, never mind failing to address some pretty important questions such as why do neurotic woman and her her half sister have American accents when they were raised in the UK? Why is neurotic woman wasting $6,000 in this way, was there no male friend who could have accompanied her for free? Neurotic woman is an intelligent, groomed and attractive woman, do she really want to win back the man who humiliated her? Is she that much of a moron? Why does she get over her scruples so easily and embrace the idea of paying for sex? Why isn't she at all worried about having sex with a male prostitute, after all he could be riddled with all the STDs known to man. And why would such an educated and supposedly insightful man choose prostitution as a career? Being a male prostitute is no less degrading for a man than it is for a woman, yet he seems remarkably comfortable with it. And what is it about this particular client which makes him act unprofessionally? She's cute and all that and in need of help but the same must have been true of his other clients. To compound matters, neurotic woman and escort/prostitute appear to have nothing at all in common save a healthy dose of lust, yet we are expected to believe that this couple fall in love in the space of three days and presumably plan to spend the rest of their lives together.
The movie came in at a short 87 minutes which is always a sign that there was something not quite right with the script. My guess would be the scenes which set up the characters and attempted to address some of these questions ended up on the cutting room floor probably because they were even more tedious and boring than the scenes that ended up in the film. It's a shame that this was supposed to be Debra Messing's big film debut. She clearly has decent comic timing and talent and deserves better than this misconceived and by the numbers drivel.
Other reviewers on this site have hailed this movie as the funniest, warmest, most romantic they have ever seen. I can only advise those reviewers to take a trip to their nearest video store and rent copies of 'Sleepless in Seattle', 'When Harry Met Sally.' 'My Best Friends Wedding. 'Four Weddings and a Funeral,' 'Pretty Woman' 'Shakespeare in Love' and 'Ghost'. Take them home, watch them and do yourselves a favour and rewrite your reviews.
Project Greenlight (2001)
Bad directors, bad end film, bad choice
Okay, after a supposedly rigorous selection process we end up with what is repeatedly referred to as a fantastic script by a talented writer and a team of two 'very capable' directors. A very different scenario to the previous series where writer Pete Jones who had never directed before was given the helm. The result was the appalling 'Stolen Summer' which made about a dollar fifty at the box office. This time things were supposed to be very different.
Unfortunately right from the start it becomes glaringly obvious that our two talented and experienced directors are nothing of the kind. At one point, one of them asks if they really need a production designer and wouldn't it be better to just tell the prop master what they want? Things get worse when they upset the leading DP candidate by accusing him of talking over them. As a result, he wisely makes the decision to pull himself out of the running. Through six weeks of preproduction,they sit quietly in script meetings leaving producers,Chris Moore and Jeff Balis come up with ways in which the script could be improved.
After a meeting with Sharon Lawrence, where they sit staring off into space, their casting director,Joseph describes them as mutes and admits that as an actor, he would have serious concerns about working with them.
Once on set they suddenly discover an interest in the script and begin rewriting scenes the night before shooting upsetting both the writer, who they deliberately exclude from the process, and the the producers. Their lack of preparation leads to them falling behind schedule and alienates their actors when it becomes clear they have no idea what it is they want. Watching the writer, Erica Beeney cringe every time they give their actors directions that run contrary to the intentions of the script and story is painful to say the least.
In truth, I don't blame the directors , even though they are intensely unlikeable characters. It was the job of the producers to put the project into the hands of the very best candidates and they patently failed to do so. I can only guess that the reason these two were picked is because it was decided that having two directors would make for more entertaining television.
At the beginning of each episode, we are told that the intention of the project is to identify talented individuals and help them to launch their careers but in the case of Kyle Rankin, Efram Potelle and Pete Jones this clearly has not been the case. Like 'Stolen Summer', 'The Battle of Shaker Heights' went on to gross about two dollars fifty before sinking without trace. Although Pete Jones has managed to sell an idea to the Farrelly brothers, none of the directors have persuaded anyone to let them anywhere near a film set.
Not surprisingly after the third series, Chris Moore declared Project Greenlight to over and then took himself off to become a director. To be honest it should never have begun.
Stolen Summer (2002)
After School Special? Stolen Summer Should Be So Lucky!
I can only assume that previous positive reviews for Stolen Summer were written by the director himself or members of his family because believe me this movie went beyond awful. The subject matter, a Catholic kid trying to convert Jews to Christianity in order to give them a fighting chance of getting into Heaven was offensive enough but the sheer ineptitude of the script, the banality of the dialogue and the sugary sweet ending beggared belief. Hampered by Pete Jones' near non existent direction the two child leads flounder in their attempts to bring their characters to life, at times displaying the kind of acting normally reserved for the average kindergarten Christmas play. Aiden Quinn, Bonnie Hunt and Kevin Pollack manfully struggle to bring some sort of class to the proceedings but this is clearly a ship beyond saving. During the Project Greenlight series Matt Damon voiced fears that the film could end up as the kind of feature normally reserved for the after school special slot. Stolen Summer should be so lucky.
Project Greenlight was supposedly set up to give aspiring screenwriters and directors hitherto ignored by Hollywood, a helping hand up the career ladder. Instead it proved that any system which successfully prevents the likes of Pete Jones from selling scripts and making movies couldn't possibly be faulted. Avoid at all costs.