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rickchriss
Reviews
The Silver Chair (1990)
About what you would expect in a cheap production
C.S. Lewis's masterpiece certainly deserves better than this. This production occupies a narrow range beginning at quite poor and topping out at lower mediocre.
Let's begin with the acting. The principal lead characters, Eustace Scrubb and Jill Pole ("Scrub and Pole" might have been a bluegrass banjo duo, which probably would have been more entertaining than the acting), were portrayed woodenly, as if these children hadn't quite internalized their acting class lessons. Puddleglum, the third lead, is somewhat better, but that's probably because his character calls for odd behavior, always inherently more entertaining. The rest of the acting is more or less passable but certainly nothing to excite even a small town acting awards committee.
The animation is really amateurish, including the entirely fake-looking Aslan and his up-and-down-only mouth movement. The owls in flight are nearly embarrassing, the animation is so poor. The special effects are another sorry area. A number of these take place over a "green-screen," with the adjustment not well done so that the shimmering around the edges of the actors so positioned is often quite pronounced. That this production was shot on video tape, with the stark and artificial look it has, might have saved money, but it didn't improve the production any.
The music is particularly poor. It almost seemed as if whoever did this wrote a score without viewing the video. There is not much linkage between the two, and the nature and quality of the score isn't very good in any case. The sets are better, many being pretty well done. Locations are nice, too. Costuming ranges from pretty good to bizarre.
Perhaps strangest and most amateurish is the lagging nature of the dialogue, as if the director was trying to stretch out the production length another 20 percent. There is nearly always too much time between elements of dialogue. It gives the whole production a really phony-sounding quality.
It is disappointing to see a BBC production, particularly of an English classic, this poorly done. The highest possible use for the video tape masters of this effort would be to use them to kindle a fire in a land fill.
Gone with the Wind (1939)
One of the very few nearly flawless motion pictures
As much a period piece as this is, "Gone with the Wind" nevertheless is so good as to be nearly without parallel. In fact, of all the movies I have seen based on books I have read--and there are quite a few--this is the only one that is better than the novel. Margaret Mitchell's book is very good, but the move is without doubt stunning.
Anyone who wants to get an accurate feel for what antebellum plantation life was like in the South needs to see this movie. The depictions are often stereotyped and overdrawn--part of the charm of this epic and entirely necessary in context--but what one takes away will be as accurate a grasp as anyone could hope for in the time the movie takes to play.
Pride and Prejudice (1995)
One of the truly great movies of all time
This is so great in every respect--casting, acting, costumes, staging, script, music, sets and set decoration, locations, direction, camera work, and everything else--that there really isn't much aside from very minor issues that can be said against it. (In fact, the number of "goofs" noted elsewhere on this site is astonishingly small for a 300-minute production.) This comment refers to the later edit, which adds 20 or so minutes and blends the six episodes into a nearly seamless motion picture, and not to the original six-episode version. The original was very good; the "movie" version is unsurpassed.
Faithfulness to the letter and spirit of Jane Austen's masterpiece--one of the greatest of all English novels--contributes heavily to this movie's near flawlessness. It is difficult to imagine how anyone could have abridged her work more skillfully. Even those few touches not taken from the book--for example, the opening sequence, undeniably valuable in dramatically setting up the rest of the movie--are essential additions in this transfer of novel to motion picture; without doubt, they would be applauded by Jane Austen.
The 2005 Keira Knightley movie, although possibly a passable motion picture on its own merits, was an entirely unworthy representation of the novel whose name it bears. Rather than to embarrass all involved in the production, it should have been called something more in keeping with its gravity and aesthetics, perhaps "Piles of Pig Manure." To those who have expressed negative opinions about this 1995 BBC masterwork, all I can say is this: Not all bad taste involves taste buds.