DROWNING MONA (2000) **
So what we have here? A story about an eccentric and unbearable woman who everyone in the town has a strong desire to kill. One day she dies victim of a sabotage. Everyone becomes a suspect. Everyone is also eccentric. There is a marriage coming up and the police chief must find the killer before that. As you can see, the story is banal, but would be pretty interesting if it had fallen in the hands of the Coen brothers. Unfortunately, it didn't.
I may say at once that DROWNING MONA is not an awful movie. It is pretty bad, but somehow watchable "if you have nothing else to do". However, it could have been much, much better if they had good director and writer to turn the banal story into one delightful film. Nick Gomez (WHO????????????), the director, tries to make something odd and hilarious, but he never gets above the shamefully mediocre.
Oh, well! There is a very decent cast here. I usually don't like Bette Midler's kind of humor, but I can stand her at times. In DROWNING MONA, she is in the screen for not much time, but she repeats everything she uses to do. I said decent cast, didn't I? Neve Campbell was never great, because she always acts the same way, but she is nice and truly convinces. Danny DeVitto is always above the average and he is the best here. Jamie Lee Curtis is keeping on with her failed career (no, we still didn't forget VIRUS); she is surprisingly good here. There are other good supporting actors, but one delivers one of the worst performances of the year: Casey Affleck, Neve's fiancé.
If DROWNING MONA can't be great, it has everything to be an average film. There are some good moments, contrasting to very bad ones. The pacing is uneven, the soundtrack is peculiar not in a great way, the characters are bland but interesting, some situations are funny. It is average, watchable matinee film, right? No, because of the conclusion. It is so bad, so uninteresting, so idiotic, that makes the film even worse. The identity of the killer is so obvious, arbitrary, stupid, that we can't believe. I still thought there would be something else, but there wasn't. If the hits and misses are there, the end threw away all the mystery.
The final result of DROWNING MONA is not very positive. I'm being generous of giving it 2 stars, so maybe some day I change my rating. It went straight to video here in Brazil because of the box office flop in the US. If I had seen it on the movies, it would have been a disastrous experience.
So what we have here? A story about an eccentric and unbearable woman who everyone in the town has a strong desire to kill. One day she dies victim of a sabotage. Everyone becomes a suspect. Everyone is also eccentric. There is a marriage coming up and the police chief must find the killer before that. As you can see, the story is banal, but would be pretty interesting if it had fallen in the hands of the Coen brothers. Unfortunately, it didn't.
I may say at once that DROWNING MONA is not an awful movie. It is pretty bad, but somehow watchable "if you have nothing else to do". However, it could have been much, much better if they had good director and writer to turn the banal story into one delightful film. Nick Gomez (WHO????????????), the director, tries to make something odd and hilarious, but he never gets above the shamefully mediocre.
Oh, well! There is a very decent cast here. I usually don't like Bette Midler's kind of humor, but I can stand her at times. In DROWNING MONA, she is in the screen for not much time, but she repeats everything she uses to do. I said decent cast, didn't I? Neve Campbell was never great, because she always acts the same way, but she is nice and truly convinces. Danny DeVitto is always above the average and he is the best here. Jamie Lee Curtis is keeping on with her failed career (no, we still didn't forget VIRUS); she is surprisingly good here. There are other good supporting actors, but one delivers one of the worst performances of the year: Casey Affleck, Neve's fiancé.
If DROWNING MONA can't be great, it has everything to be an average film. There are some good moments, contrasting to very bad ones. The pacing is uneven, the soundtrack is peculiar not in a great way, the characters are bland but interesting, some situations are funny. It is average, watchable matinee film, right? No, because of the conclusion. It is so bad, so uninteresting, so idiotic, that makes the film even worse. The identity of the killer is so obvious, arbitrary, stupid, that we can't believe. I still thought there would be something else, but there wasn't. If the hits and misses are there, the end threw away all the mystery.
The final result of DROWNING MONA is not very positive. I'm being generous of giving it 2 stars, so maybe some day I change my rating. It went straight to video here in Brazil because of the box office flop in the US. If I had seen it on the movies, it would have been a disastrous experience.