With a current user rating of 8.3 and with ten - yes, 10 - ratings of 100 from the critics, I feel crazy not liking this movie. Critic Richard Roeper writes that "I can't imagine anyone who loves movies not loving THIS movie."
I wanted to leave the theater and do something else after 45 minutes. No one else felt this?
When flipping through a friend's screen writing book recently, I read that the most important thing a movie has to do is have a main character that the audience sympathizes with, a main character that the audience roots for. Even in a complex case - such as the protagonist of August Wilson's wonderful play "Fences", whom we both detest and sympathize with - the audience must be drawn into actually caring about the main character.
This film didn't have a protagonist (that's not a fault - Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" doesn't either), but still I could not have cared less about any character in this film. What was very strange, and a little unsettling, to me was that I felt this immediately, within the first five minutes of the film.
Another thing you'll learn from screen writing books is that amateur screenwriters use too much dialogue. This movie is a classic case in amateurish, dialogue-heavy scenes. Constant, ceaseless dialogue really bogged down the film for me. This film didn't have a single bone of subtlety in its entire body. Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue.
I saw in one of the trailers that this is a comedy - really!? I chuckled twice, and one of the occasions was in the film's first 30 seconds. There were several jokes that not a single person in the movie theater laughed at.
So, in summary, I guess I'm the only person in the world who didn't care for this one. Contrary to Mr. Roeper's assertion at the beginning of this review, I love movies but I strongly disliked this one. My favorite movie is Stanley Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon" - so maybe that explains it.
jacobnunnally.blogspot.com
I wanted to leave the theater and do something else after 45 minutes. No one else felt this?
When flipping through a friend's screen writing book recently, I read that the most important thing a movie has to do is have a main character that the audience sympathizes with, a main character that the audience roots for. Even in a complex case - such as the protagonist of August Wilson's wonderful play "Fences", whom we both detest and sympathize with - the audience must be drawn into actually caring about the main character.
This film didn't have a protagonist (that's not a fault - Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" doesn't either), but still I could not have cared less about any character in this film. What was very strange, and a little unsettling, to me was that I felt this immediately, within the first five minutes of the film.
Another thing you'll learn from screen writing books is that amateur screenwriters use too much dialogue. This movie is a classic case in amateurish, dialogue-heavy scenes. Constant, ceaseless dialogue really bogged down the film for me. This film didn't have a single bone of subtlety in its entire body. Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue.
I saw in one of the trailers that this is a comedy - really!? I chuckled twice, and one of the occasions was in the film's first 30 seconds. There were several jokes that not a single person in the movie theater laughed at.
So, in summary, I guess I'm the only person in the world who didn't care for this one. Contrary to Mr. Roeper's assertion at the beginning of this review, I love movies but I strongly disliked this one. My favorite movie is Stanley Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon" - so maybe that explains it.
jacobnunnally.blogspot.com