Reviews

With all the obscenities and vulgarities not unexpected from a Eddie Murphy movie, this version of 'The Nutty Professor' insults its audience with a flurry of stupid jokes and cheap shots. I do not know why they even chose to do a re-make of the great Lewis movie of 1963. It is devoid of any sympathetic characters, clever writing, good acting, and human sentiment. Save your hard earned dollars and watch the 1963 version instead. It is sad that they had to make this trash to satisfy modern audiences. With the original version, Mr. Love's character was so suave and cool, and the professor character was a great counterbalance to his 'other side'. Here, Murphy's character has no redeeming qualities to evoke any sympathy from us; with so many potty scenes and dialogue throughout, no wonder.

I think this is one Jerry Lewis's best films. Not only is it incredibly funny, but it evokes compassion (Mr.Wooley's relationship with the young boy is touching, and will make you cry) from the audience without being too sentimental. The Japanese setting is beautiful and exotic, and Miss Kimi is lovely and charming. No wonder Mr.Wooley prefers her to the cold American Sergeant Pearson (Suzanne Pleshette)! When Mr.Wooley accidentally knocks a big Hollywood actress down an airplane staircase--that has to be one of the funniest scenes in any Lewis film. This is a great family movie, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants good comedy with a touch of tenderness in it. It ranks right up there with "The Nutty Professor"(1963).

This movie is so overrated. I literally fell asleep watching this so-called 'breakthrough western' and wasted my hard-earned money on the special edition DVD. It's like this: Hollywood takes a bit of history out of books and colors it by using the annoying actor Newman and Redford to portray the two outlaws, and engages the two characters on a fictional romp through North and South America. It seems Hollywood is always trying to look for anything with a tad of historical interest to put on the big screen, and 'Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid'was all fluffed up to make an unremarkable event 'exciting'. But the truth is this film has so many drawn out, silent moments (that stretch tiredly throughout two and a half hours) it ends up being boring without being entertaining. The reason it was a 'breakthrough' movie in the late 60's is because it tried to win our hearts by portraying Butch and Sundance as two sympathetic,anti-hero characters. In reality, however, they were just ordinary crooks. The anti-conservative bent of the late 60's and early 70's raises its ugly head in this movie. I wonder what people were eating and drinking in those days, but it seems they were all fed with this kind of Hollywood trash. Too bad big Logan didn't do away with scrawny little Butch in the so-called 'famous' knife fight scene. That would have ended the slow pace of the movie and made my day.

This is perhaps the most overrated of all martial arts films. It is so "Hollywood" it comes out as nothing more than "Charlie Chan" meets "James Bond", except Chan acknowledged and played on his humor and James Bond (with Sean Connery) had class and suavity. Bruce Lee showed to us he can't act, and neither can his co-stars: Saxon,Kelly,etc. The bad acting in this movie is really hard to watch. They hired B-grade actors to give this Hong Kong film a Hollywood feel and look,and succeeded with a grade C movie. Aside from the skillful fighting (which is so stylized and contrived anyways),the plot is silly and the situations are implausible. The level of violence in the movie is excessive--perhaps this accounts, sadly, for the film's enduring popularity. In most of his films, Lee always comes off looking like a kung-fu fighter with a severe psychopath problem. Was that always his intention, to look like a nut?? He actually makes Norman Bates look normal! 'Overkill with delight' is customary. Certainly, it is a film that should not be seen by children, despite the unbelievable 'PG' rating on some DVD versions. As a parent, I would not even allow a 15 year-old kid to watch this movie. No I am not a prude, but I dislike the glorification of violence and sex. And when you combine that with implausibility, third-rate acting, and a silly plot,the result is a movie that ranks,at most, at the top of the heap with all those other cheap martial arts films of the 70s. When people say that this movie broke new ground,the reality is that it broke new ground only because it was a tad better than other sensational chop-socketty movies. For me,"The Chinese Connection" was the best Lee film, not this one.

When her husband insults a neighbor and is nearly 'emasculated', a peasant woman goes to great lengths to secure justice. Many people in the West may not understand why this woman is so determined to right such a 'minor' wrong. In Chinese culture, an assault on another man's "honor" is not viewed as a 'minor' thing; having children is very important and carries a greater social significance than it does in the West. It is expected of every man, and having a son, especially, to work in the fields for the good of the family and carry on the family name, has been worshipped as a Confucian ethic for centuries. China is still very much a paternalistic society (despite Communist reform),and the 'one child' policy has only reinforced the old Chinese adage that "if you bear a girl,bear a beautiful one, if you bear a son, bear an intelligent one." So understandably,from the viewpoint of Qiu Ju,not only does her husband suffer but her entire family name and honor suffers too, when the man is attacked in a 'sacred place', his gonads. The village chief, the fellow who delivered the disabling kick,has also been dishonored by the husband's insult about "having hens" and not boys. By kicking the offending man in the balls, the village chief wanted to save his face, hence the stalemate. But for Qiu Ju, and certainly in Chinese eyes, the greater wrong is the assault on her husband's reproductive organs. A delightful movie, so well acted with quite a few funny moments surrounding a serious issue. Zhang Yimou is one fine director.