There are two big problems with the movie.
The easier problem to remedy is the pacing. There's just too much time spent on material that adds nothing to the plot or the ambiance. 90 minutes might have been a good length, but 120 minutes is way too long.
The larger problem is that the final twist is so stupid it destroys the rest of the experience. A satisfactory twist in a movie consists of three parts:
Something that doesn't follow these rules is not a twist, it's a gimmick, the sort of BS that leaves you swearing that you'll never again waste your time watching a movie by that particular director and screenwriter.
This movie delivers a completely satisfactory twist in the first act, leaving one to expect that the second act will be resolved just as satisfactorily. But no such luck --- the second act ends with a gimmick. Unexpected yes, but barely plausible, and utterly inorganic to the story.
The play (from what I read on Wikipedia) seems to have done a substantially better job of making the ending feel natural. So we have the not too unusual story of movie makers (the director? the producers? the financiers?) too stupid to understand what was actually valuable in the property they chose to adapt and insisting on "improving" it. Oh well, what can you do? The stupid will always be with us.
The easier problem to remedy is the pacing. There's just too much time spent on material that adds nothing to the plot or the ambiance. 90 minutes might have been a good length, but 120 minutes is way too long.
The larger problem is that the final twist is so stupid it destroys the rest of the experience. A satisfactory twist in a movie consists of three parts:
- the twist is unexpected
- the twist makes sense/plausibility within the movie universe (ie no magic deus ex machina, no lucky coincidences)
- the twist is organic to the storyline. Once it happens, we review the previous material in our minds and see that, yes, it makes even more sense within the light of the twist.
Something that doesn't follow these rules is not a twist, it's a gimmick, the sort of BS that leaves you swearing that you'll never again waste your time watching a movie by that particular director and screenwriter.
This movie delivers a completely satisfactory twist in the first act, leaving one to expect that the second act will be resolved just as satisfactorily. But no such luck --- the second act ends with a gimmick. Unexpected yes, but barely plausible, and utterly inorganic to the story.
The play (from what I read on Wikipedia) seems to have done a substantially better job of making the ending feel natural. So we have the not too unusual story of movie makers (the director? the producers? the financiers?) too stupid to understand what was actually valuable in the property they chose to adapt and insisting on "improving" it. Oh well, what can you do? The stupid will always be with us.