Reviews

The story of the Borgias, especially if certain of the most salacious rumors about them are actually true (questionable assumption though), is one of the very most dramatic and interesting stories in European history. But, at least through four episodes, this show has made it all seem a little boring.

I have no doubt that as the story progresses, there is no way things won't become at least slightly more interesting, just because some much more controversial stuff is about to go down. But after watching the first four episodes, I have concluded that an error was made in choosing the writer or writers. Many of the lines are awkward and not believable. I find myself often asking, "Now, why would this character have said that?" and "How does this line advance the story?" and "What purpose did that line serve other than to waste time?"

It seems like the writing is uninspired. Much of it is what I would call "clunky." It's just kind of awkward, clumsy, tedious, and comes off like the work of people who are not experienced or adept at dramatic writing in the historical fiction genre. It's not unlike daytime soap opera quality writing.

I do not think there is much doubt that the man who became Pope Alexander VI was a morally-challenged but shrewd politician, bent on gaining and then retaining the kind of power that, at the time, only being pope could provide. Yet Jeremy Irons seems more often than not to portray him as a little on the hapless side. I wish he were portrayed more like a smart, wicked, power-hungry man, although perhaps with an arguably good overall purpose driving him, shrewdly manipulating things under the cover of the cloak provided by the office of the pope. When I think of Pope Alexander VI, I think of someone more like, I don't know, maybe somewhat like the godfather in The Godfather, except perhaps even more devious because he has obtained the office of pope and the protection that office provides. In many ways, Jeremy Irons' portrayal is the opposite of this.

And Jeremy Irons' continual saliva-sucking sounds--the sort you sometimes hear from folks that are getting used to their dentures--are really annoying.

I don't think he is a bad actor. I think he has been much better in other things, but mostly I fault the writer(s). I also think a lesser known actor should have been cast in this role. There is no point at which I believe I am watching Pope Alexander VI--I am always very aware that I am watching Jeremy Irons attempting to get through this bad script.

Most of the other actors are hampered by the awkward and amateurish writing as well. Although I have nevertheless enjoyed the performances of Joanne Shalley as Vannozza, the mother of Giovanni, Cesare, and Lucrezia; and Colm Feore as Cardinal Rovere.

It makes me a little sad that this is the series that got made, because there was a lot of potential for a really good drama to be made out of the story of the Borgias. Essentially, this is, for the most part, boring, awkward, and bad, at least through the first four episodes. Yet there is some potential for this to get better--I think that if the writing team gets some help in the future this could easily improve.

The inevitable comparisons to The Tudors are made by people, because that show too was on Showtime, but for that series, I considered the writing, for the most part, masterful, and the part of King Henry VIII played and cast superbly. I wish that were the case here. So far, it definitely is not.

I recently attended a free screening of this film.

This story was really clichéd and very derivative of about a million others. There also wasn't enough to the story--it was pretty bland. It was hard to tell which owl was on which side during the fighting scenes. It was also hard to tell exactly what was being done to whom during the fighting scenes.

It came off kind of like a movie designed for children, honestly. But it's probably a little too violent or otherwise disturbing for very small children.

Except as noted above, the animation was pretty cool and interesting, but I enjoyed the visual aspect of 300 much more. It wasn't awful or boring, but it's not a film to which I can give more than a 4/10.

I thought this movie was an acceptable way to pass some time, but overall was nothing terribly special. The few action scenes were pretty interesting and creative though--it was the parts in between that I didn't really enjoy much. If the entire movie was as good as the action sequences, it definitely would've received a 6 or 7 from me.

I don't think Ben Affleck is an especially good actor, and I thought he wasn't especially good in this. I didn't believe in his character much-- he didn't really seem like a bad guy to me. I didn't think there was much chemistry between him and his character's love interest. I didn't think Jon Hamm was all that good either--he didn't really seem like an FBI guy to me. I thought Jeremy Renner stole the show. Chris Cooper was excellent, as usual, but had only a small role. I thought Rebecca Hall was pretty good.

Certain portions of the plot were a little silly, but I don't want to spoil anything. Overall, I guess if you're really big on crime movies, you should probably see this just for the crime parts, because they are pretty cool. As a whole, however, this isn't particularly good or particularly bad.

This is a pretty good film, about several experiments in the field of social psychology and several real-world stories that demonstrate the extent to which most humans will blindly obey authority figures, or, more generally, either fail to refrain from doing something bad or fail to help someone in trouble when they believe the responsibility is diffused amongst others. For the most part, it's pretty compelling stuff that really everyone should know about.

However, the extent to which the psychologists interviewed in this film appear to blindly believe so firmly in the Kitty Genovese story as reported in The New York Times is somewhat reminiscent of the blind obedience to authority phenomenon criticized in the film.

If you are interested in what really happened the night Kitty Genovese died, as opposed to the myth, take 9 minutes and listen: http://www.onthemedia.org/episodes/2009/03/27/segments/127346 (several people did call the police that night, probably only one or two of the alleged spectators actually had any idea what was happening other than that some woman was screaming, the number 38 appears to have basically been just made up by a journalist, etc.)

The makers of this film would've done better to leave this particular story out of their otherwise very good film.

I had never heard of Slavoj Zizek before I saw this film. He is a Slovenian philosophy professor. He has written many books and obviously he wouldn't keep getting published unless people were buying them. He seems to be a Marxist of some sort, and has a photograph of the only dictator arguably worse than Hitler on the wall of his apartment, Joseph Stalin. He seems more concerned with nonpolitical philosophy though, generally speaking.

This film did nothing to make me interested in reading his books or in him. It is a random mishmash of clips of Zizek talking in various places in small soundbites about a wide variety of matters. Insofar as philosophy is concerned, and I consider myself a philosopher, there was nothing of any philosophical interest to me in this film. Much of what he says in this film seemed to me to be either trivial (obviously true) or incoherent.

Perhaps one might enjoy this film if one were at all familiar with his work, but I doubt it--why not just read more of his work rather than waste time watching this hodgepodge of soundbites? But if you aren't familiar with any of his work, like I was, there doesn't seem to be any reason to watch this.

Linda Fiorentino, the star of this film, put on one of the very worst performances I have ever witnessed in any large budget American film I have seen.

I also think Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Chris Rock, Salma Hayek, and Jason Lee were all pretty awful. Even Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith were no good in this one.

The script is just terrible. I'm a big Kevin Smith fan, but almost every line in this one is cringe-worthy, and especially those said by Linda Fiorentino.

The whole story is just a jumbled mess--it seemed very much made up on the fly as they went along.

And wow is it long. And boring. And not even a little funny.

This film seems to be trying to be a critique of organized religion on some level, and so, I want to make it clear that I am not saying negative things out of some loyalty to some religion. I'm not a religious nut--just the opposite. I'm completely nonreligious. Religion is the single strangest thing about humanity, to me.

I have no understanding of any positive thing that's been said about this film. It is one of the very few films I have given a 1 rating to. I can't believe one of my favorite directors made something this awful.

This is without a doubt the worst fantasy film I have ever seen.

There are at least five completely illogical things going on in this film, none of which I can discuss here without spoiling the film. These are not disbelief-suspension issues (i.e. I'm not talking about the fact that there are no such things as dragons, or magic)--all of these are stupidity issues. The plot makes no sense as a result, and the film is a miserable failure.

The lead actor, Peter MacNicol, appears to be a total cheeseball. Even if the movie made sense, it would be unwatchable because of him.

The special effects are nothing special. I am familiar with special effects of 1981, and they were nothing special by that year's standards either. By 2007 standards they are laughable.

The good reviews here are baffling. This is obviously a failure. Here is an example of a truly bad film. One of the few films to which I have given a 1 out of 10, but this one truly deserves it.

Do not waste your time or money with this. Any other fantasy film you can think of is probably much better than this one.

This film is a good example of really bad cinema.

William Peterson is the star of the film, but he is a really bad actor, and his performance here was particularly poor. One of his co-stars, John Pankow, who plays his partner in the film, is also not very good. Neither of them are in any way interesting. Both are completely wooden throughout. So, the casting alone would've prevented this film from getting any better than a rating of 4 or so.

The plot was very convoluted and boring and dumb. The car chase scene was long and boring. None of the fight scenes were real-looking. Every time a punch is thrown in this film, it looks completely fake. Every time someone is shot, it looks completely fake--like fake blood is being splattered. It's almost like a bad film school project.

The whole film is long and boring and makes no sense. It's as if the movie's makers wanted to make a movie with a long car chase, some fighting, some guns, and some nudity, and didn't really care about how stupid and senseless the story was or which second-rate actors played the lead roles.

I don't give it a 1 because Willem Dafoe is pretty good, as usual, but there wouldn't have been anything anyone could do to save this stinker with a cast and a screenplay and directing like this. Terrible. There are hundreds of much more interesting action films to see before resorting to sitting through something like this. This is pretty much on the level of a really bad TV show.

For some reason, just about every film with good big-budget production values that contains symbolism and metaphors seems to get a lot of good reviews here at IMDb, and I am starting to suspect that at least some of these reviews have been authored by folks that feel that symbolism and metaphor mixed with good big-budget production values automatically make a movie good. I suspect that it somehow makes people feel good about themselves when they understand a metaphor--makes them feel smarter perhaps--and so they give good reviews to the movie that is responsible for those feelings.

The film is mostly pretty to look at, which is why I didn't give it a 1. But that's all I can say for it.

It's pretty boring. And it's nearly 2.5 hours long. I don't know about you, but the only films I want to spend 2.5 hours seeing are ones that are very interesting and not boring.

It's got a couple of those clichéd plot-thickening devices Hollywood continually uses in its big dramas and action films that automatically, at least in my book, disqualify films from being good ones. These parts of the film ought to have most cinephiles groaning.

The star of the film Ben Whishaw does not give a particularly good performance, although, to be fair, with a boring character such as this who does not talk much, it's got to be tough.

The story is dominated by metaphor and, in the end, makes no sense whatsoever on a literal level. It's fine to use symbolism and metaphors in your films, but, in my view, most good films that involve symbolism also make sense on a literal level and can be enjoyed without thinking at all about any of their symbolic aspects. But if one were to view this film without an understanding of the concept of symbolism, it would be completely ridiculous.

Now, the above is not true for novels. The book seems to garner near-universal praise, and I don't doubt it is worthy of that. But, what happens often with stories like these is that all the symbolism that works well in the book is just silly when translated to the screen, and that's exactly what must have happened here.

In the end, the film version of that allegorical novel is just silly, and, unless you are the sort that thinks that any movie with good production values and some metaphors is a good one, you will probably not really enjoy this one. I am absolutely shocked that there are so many good reviews of this film here at IMDb.

I think it's insane to give a film a good review but to suggest that one need read the book version first, as some have done with regard to this film--if it isn't good unless you have read the book first, in my view, that just means it's not a good film.

There are good metaphorical movies and bad metaphorical movies, and this is a bad one.

The Darwin Awards are sarcastically given out in a publication of the same title to people who die in very stupid ways. One might think that this film would be primarily a graphical depiction of some of the actual deaths that show up in the publication, and since the publication can be quite entertaining, how could this film fail to be similarly entertaining?

But no.

First of all, if you go to www.darwinawards.com you will find most of the deaths featured in the film listed in the Urban Legends section--i.e. they did not actually happen. Yet the ONLY reason the publication is entertaining is that the deaths described are actually factual. So, the movie's title is totally misleading.

Second of all, the plot consists of an incredibly stupid, boring, and disjointed story about a guy (Joseph Fiennes) who happens to be interested in stupid deaths. Somehow Winona Ryder gets involved. They look into a couple stupid incidents. And there's no reason to care about the plot or any of the characters.

Third of all, the leads, Joseph Fiennes and Winona Ryder, are absolutely horrible and unbelievable. Winona Ryder, let's face it, isn't exactly one of our greatest actresses, but this is a really terrible performance even by her standards. Joseph Fiennes is even worse. And they are supposed to fall in love but there is never any chemistry at all between them.

Fourth of all, and probably most importantly, this is primarily intended to be a comedy, but none of the jokes are funny. They all fall flat. Many of the jokes are used about 4 or 5 times throughout the film, and they continue to fail to be funny. There is no point in this alleged comedy that could fairly be described as funny, or even slightly amusing. Joseph Fiennes seems particularly bad at trying to be funny. But the primary problem is the script.

This is definitely one of the worst films I have ever seen, and I am not one of those folks that goes around saying "this is the worst film ever" so don't confuse me with one of those folks. I am here to do a public service, to warn you that, almost no matter who you are, unless you are a small child, perhaps, and/or of substandard intelligence, and preferably both, you will not like this film, and you will wish you had used the time doing just about anything else.

Terrible.

I found this film to be really boring, dumb, and bad.

It's billed as a crime film, and despite the fact that a crime occurs in the opening minutes, it's actually primarily not a crime film and is more a film about the father-daughter relationship between Meg Ryan and Sean Connery.

But the crime aspect of the story was dumb, and just what the crime was about was never explained. The crime aspect of the story was clearly just an excuse to have a fight scene in a bar, a car chase scene or two, and some shoot 'em up scenes. It's not at all interesting. There's really no kind of whodunnit stuff if that's the kind of thing you're looking for. None of the criminals' characters are developed at all, if that's the kind of thing you're looking for.

The other non-crime aspects of the story were really what this movie was about, and they were incredibly cheesy. This is basically an incredibly boring and bad cheesefest interspliced with some pointless car chases, fist fights, and shoot 'em up action.

I thought it was poorly cast and badly directed, but, in all fairness, it seems as though it would have been impossible to have made a good film out of this horrid screenplay. The story is just dumb and boring.

Mark Harmon was terrible and is not at all believable as a police officer. Meg Ryan was even worse. Some of her cutesy expressions where she tries to seem like a lost puppy are likely to cause cringing. Meg Ryan appears to be posing for the camera most of the time. Even Sean Connery was a little off at times.

This is truly an example of bad cinema. There are plenty of films that I do not like but can see how various other types of people might well enjoy them. But I can't for the life of me figure out how anyone could see anything of value in this film.

Do yourself a favor and skip this one. There is no need for anyone to see this as far as I can tell. There are at least 1,000 other films that you haven't seen yet that are better than this one, and chances are that seeing almost any other film would be a better use of your time.

I would describe myself as an ultraliberal. I am certainly no fan of McDonald's. I never eat there, and I don't own any stock. The fact that a company like McDonald's exists makes me cringe.

Honestly, I feel this documentary was poorly made, and that most reasonable people who are truly interested in the famous McLibel trial would be better off reading about the McLibel trial than wasting time viewing this film. I feel that many viewers of this film feel that society would be a better place if more people watch this film and as a result are giving this unjustifiably good reviews. In truth, this is a really bad documentary. Even though it is less than 90 minutes long, it is extremely boring and frustratingly uninformative.

I feel the McLibel case made the McDonald's Corporation look pretty silly. I really wanted an informative documentary that was going to present the facts surrounding the trial and the events leading up to the trial, possibly make me laugh, and explain what exactly it is about British law that made this sort of lawsuit seem viable to the McDonald's lawyers. Instead, I was presented, for the most part, with an uninformed and naive, one-sided, boring rant against the McDonald's Corporation for its business practices, primarily from the point of view two unlikeable, self-righteous, and naive characters.

My first main complaint is that the title is a bit misleading. This is more a polemic against the McDonald's Corporation and its business practices than it is a documentary about the McLibel case per se. If the parts that weren't actually about the trial were cut out, I'd estimate this film would've been maybe about 30 minutes long. And there is hardly anything here about the pro-plaintiff British libel laws that made this kind of suit seem feasible for McDonald's to pursue in the first place (but only in the UK)--which really would have been the most interesting subject to talk about, in my view.

It is as if the filmmaker wanted some excuse to make a film to educate us all about how bad McDonald's is and viewed the McLibel trial as a perfect excuse. As if any reasonable viewer doesn't already know that McDonald's food tends to be unhealthy, or that McDonald's workers get paid very low wages, or that millions of chickens are slaughtered to make Chicken McNuggets! Who doesn't know this? Well, if you didn't already know it, you will have definitely learned it by the time this film is done, because it will have been repeatedly beaten into your brain, unless, of course, you fall asleep first.

My second main complaint is that the two principle characters, the defendants in the McLibel case, come off as self-righteous and just kind of silly, naive, twittering dingbats. For example, they and some other characters that talk in the film repeatedly express dismay at the notion that a multinational corporation such as McDonald's actually cares only about profits and not really about its workers or its consumers as people (except to the extent caring about us translates into profits of course). But these complaints are naive. You can't complain that vociferously about a multinational corporation wanting to maximize profits--their shareholders could sue them if they do anything less--the complaint needs to be directed more at the relevant law that allows and encourages this kind of corporate behavior, the people that support these laws, and, to some extent, at the consumers that support McDonald's and the workers that won't unionize and that accept such low wages. It's one thing to state the facts about McDonald's dispassionately and let the viewer decide for him- or herself whether to support McDonald's with his/her wallet, or to state the facts dispassionately and then go on to explain not only the situation the workers and consumers find themselves in relative to McDonald's, but also the situation that the McDonald's Corporation finds itself in relative to its stockholders, but it's another thing to one-sidedly skewer the McDonald's Corporation for the entire situation when the workers themselves, the consumers themselves, and the legal systems controlling the countries in which McDonald's operates and the people controlling those legal systems all share the blame.

My third main complaint is that the film is not well-organized. It's just kind of all over the place, and presented in a random haphazard manner.

My fourth and most important complaint is that the film is boring, thanks in no small part to the fact that the two main characters, the defendants in the McLibel case, are boring and unsympathetic characters.

The best documentaries are those that either neutrally present facts about events, or present the best of all sides of whatever issue is being discussed from the points of views of well-informed and intelligent people, and that do so in an interesting manner. That does not in any way describe this documentary. I give it a 2 out of 10, because there are actually some parts of this film here and there that do actually talk a bit about the trial, but, really, I feel that's a pretty generous rating.

If you want to be beaten over the head with an anti-McDonald's rant, see this film. If you want to learn about the McLibel trial, do yourself a favor and ignore the other reviewers and go read about it instead. It's a fascinating trial. This is a dumb film that tangentially touches on that fascinating trial to a small extent between rants about how evil McDonald's is.

This movie contained three parallel stories, or, really, two and a half, squeezed into barely 90 minutes, despite the fact that each one moved very, very slowly. So, none of these three stories were at all well-developed, and all of them were very boring. And none of the characters were well-developed enough for me to care about any of them. So there really wasn't much of any interest here to me.

This movie was kind of full of itself and its symbolism and its unusual and artsy parallel story structure which, I suppose, are supposed to make it seem like it's unique and "deep" to people who are into movies with unusual plot structures and allegedly profound life lessons.

In sum, it felt like pretentious artsy pseudo-philosophical BS that was not remotely entertaining, but was very boring.

And besides that, Hugh Jackman's over-dramatic histrionics are hard to watch, at least to me. Yikes.

I enjoyed Aronofsky's last film Requiem for a Dream, despite the fact that it too was full of life lessons, but after seeing The Fountain, well, I will be thinking more than twice before I see another film by Aronofsky. He seems like a young arrogant director who is full of himself and self-indulgent but who is not really all that interested in entertaining an audience and is more interested in teaching an audience about his vast wisdom.

There's a lot of excessively glowing positive reviews about this stinker here at IMDb, so, just so you don't think I'm bonkers, you can get some more bad reviews, readily accessible to everyone, for free, on the web, in USA Today, Philadelphia Inquirer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle, and Los Angeles Times, to name a few.

You'd be better off using the time to see some other movie that is actually entertaining to watch and not so full of pretentious BS.

The soundtrack is so annoying that I'm mainly just glad it's over. Wow. This has to be the most annoying soundtrack in a film ever. It's primarily this incredibly loud snare drum being pounded with paint brushes. It's a lot like 90 minutes of fingernails scraping against a chalkboard. A soundtrack is part of a movie, and, in this case, a large part of the movie. So, this movie is mostly annoying, and mostly because of the soundtrack.

As for the other aspects of the movie, while it appears that Ray Johnson, the subject of the film, was probably at least a somewhat interesting man, and possibly an interesting artist, I am inclined, for the most part, to adopt the position expressed in TheaterX's review entitled "How to Waste Your Money." This film just doesn't do a very good job of explaining what makes Ray Johnson interesting, and the film itself is mostly boring (except insofar as boredom is incompatible with being continually annoyed by an annoying soundtrack). All in all, this was a poorly done film.

I personally would've been interested to hear a psychiatrist's perspective on Ray Johnson, but there's nothing like that in the film. Not that this would have been necessarily the only way to make this film a good one--but it very well might have helped. The reason I say this is that Ray Johnson appears to have been more than just a little eccentric, and ended up committing suicide apparently without telling anyone why, so it's reasonable to suspect that there was an underlying brain disorder/disease that perhaps might explain the eccentricity, suicide, as well as, possibly, what some might call "excessive" creativity. That is just one thing which might have made the movie a little better.

One thing about this movie that was actually kind of disturbing is that it seems to be sort of taking the position, by allowing the view to be expressed by various associates of Ray Johnson to the near-exclusion of any other sort of view, that Ray Johnson's suicide was best viewed as just another piece of art by Ray Johnson--a piece of performance art. But that strikes me as a really silly and childish sort of rationalization, and it's really an unusual way to look at a suicide. By committing suicide the person becomes both a murderer as well as a murder victim all at the same time. I think exactly as highly of the idea of suicide-as-art as I think of the idea of murder-as-art. Suicide is, for the most part, just a mean thing to do to yourself and the people who like you. Art is, for the most part, a way of entertaining other people. The two things don't seem to have any kind of similarity, at least in my view. It's kind of a stupid way to look at suicide, and I really don't have much respect for anything said by anyone or anything who thinks this way about suicide, and that would include this film.

There really is way too much blathering in general from, as TheaterX puts it, "artsy-fartsy types," and for the most part it really doesn't help us get any closer to understanding Ray Johnson, even apart from this childish drivel about his suicide being his last work of art.

Ray Johnson may well be an interesting character, and I suspect most of the good reviews of this film here can be explained by people's enthusiasm about Ray Johnson himself and/or his art, rather than about this film per se. I'm not trying to say anything negative about Ray Johnson (other than to point out that he was, in fact, a murderer--he murdered himself). But this film is just bad.

But, really, I'd feel comfortable recommending that you not see this because of the soundtrack alone. I was so glad when this movie finally ended and I didn't have to hear that damn paint brush slamming that snare drum anymore. There has to be a book out there that does a much better and much less annoying job of documenting Ray Johnson's life and work for those who are interested.

I really enjoy the series, and I have seen every single episode and all but a couple of them were enjoyable for me, but this entire movie made me chuckle a total of twice, and never once really made me laugh hard, honestly.

I feel this film was put together poorly, and seemed hastily thrown together, and yet, at times, too scripted and not as improvisational in nature as the TV show usually seems. The TV show is put together really well, but this movie is poor by comparison. I did not enjoy the film. I would rather have not watched it.

I know the show is very silly, but I found the premise of the movie to be too silly. I think the premise of the film made the whole thing kind of difficult to get many laughs out of. I really feel that it would've been much better had they had the crew stay in Reno, as they invariably do in the TV show, rather than having them travel to some other city. It also would've been better had they shot it more like a fake reality show, like the TV show is. The fake reality show context helps to set up much of the humor. It's difficult to understand why this movie was made the way it was.

The rarely-funny Patton Oswalt was the worst part, in my view. Even Oswalt is good in his few brief appearances in the TV show--one of the few contexts in which he is ever funny--but in this film he was horrid.

Not even Paul Reubens could manage to be funny in the film, but in the TV show he's amazing.

I feel bad for the crew because they are really pretty funny people that really know how to do comedy who just got caught up in a bad project.

I want to begin by saying that I believe in evolution, and that I do not worship supernatural beings.

This is not a non-entertaining film, and I don't know of a better one about the teaching-intelligent-design-in-schools issue. However, ultimately, it's a disappointing, sometimes mildly amusing, hypocritical, smug documentary that is nevertheless not totally devoid of value about an important subject.

This film comes off as arrogantly insulting those who believe in intelligent design ("ID") itself, and it fails to get across the most important point that, even if you are pro-ID, while your views are arguably worthy of respect as a philosophical matter, you can't reasonably believe that your ID philosophy ought to be taught in science class.

Whether you believe in ID or don't, when it comes to whether ID should be taught in science class, it is clearly unreasonable to think that it ought to be, because science is a completely different way of looking at the world than that implied by ID. Teaching ID in science class would be a lot like teaching Kant's ethics or Russian literature in science class--it obviously doesn't belong there. The film really doesn't develop this idea enough, or, hardly at all actually, and devotes much too much time to trying to debate the truth or falsity of ID itself, which, in my view, is either (a) something that reasonable minds can and do differ upon or (b) completely incoherent babble, ultimately, on both sides of the debate.

I find it incredibly arrogant to presume to know that the universe was designed by a deity, just as I find it incredibly arrogant to presume to know that it wasn't. How would YOU know, unless you were a deity yourself? It might seem implausible to you that there's a deity behind all this, and it does in fact seem implausible to me that there's a deity behind all this, but I can assure you that it seems at least as implausible to many people that there isn't.

There are many reasonable people in the world who believe in ID but do not want it to be taught in science class. And this film is more about criticizing and insulting those who believe in ID itself than it is about criticizing those who not only believe in ID but also believe that it should be taught in science classes.

There are some positives though. This film does do a couple of interesting things. It briefly talks about an organization called the Discovery Institute which is a well-funded group which promotes the teaching of intelligent design in science classes, and it contrasts it with the relative lack of organization on the opposition-to-ID-in-schools. It criticizes the anti-ID camp for not doing what the pro-ID-in-schools camp is doing, i.e. for not really getting organized, not engaging in politicking, not being charming when in the public eye, insulting the other side and acting as though the subject is not worthy of debate rather than respecting its dignity and engaging in reasonable debate, and for not really explaining to the public its position and exactly why it's a bad idea to "teach" ID in science class.

It also explains a little about the legal and political history of the recent ID-in-schools phenomenon, and that's interesting stuff.

But the film lacks depth. I would have enjoyed hearing more about the subjects that I just discussed in the "positives" part of my review.

But the most glaring problem is its hypocrisy. It is guilty of exactly what it criticizes the anti-ID camp for, specifically: (1) not really explaining exactly why it's ridiculous for ID to be taught in science class, and (2) arrogantly insulting the pro-ID side rather than respecting its dignity and engaging in reasonable debate. At the very least, it should have reserved its insults and criticisms for those who not only believe in ID but who are also of the crazy view that ID ought to be taught in our science classes. There's nothing especially crazy about merely believing in ID. I don't, but most people actually do, and most of those people are not crazy.

For example, as far as (2) goes, the film basically calls the pro-ID camp a bunch of "dodos" in the first 5 minutes. The film's entire tone is one that basically kind of treats the pro-ID camp like it's just stupid and that you are stupid if you think it's anything other than obvious that the pro-ID camp is stupid. It is unlikely to turn on any pro-IDers for this reason alone. And that is really unfortunate. It would have been much more effective to grant that there is possibly some value to the ID viewpoint, but nevertheless that there is absolutely no value to the view that ID ought to be part of science classes.

As far as (1) goes, even though it seems pretty obvious to me why ID shouldn't be taught in science class, the film doesn't do much to explain why it's so obvious. It just spends almost all of its time childishly attacking people for merely believing that the universe was created by an intelligent designer. It seems to be of the viewpoint that somehow the standard position for a pro-ID person to take is that ID ought to be taught in science class, when in reality this is just an incredibly radical and idiotic position that most pro-IDers cannot possibly subscribe to.

There is some value to seeing this, but it is ultimately a pretty childish documentary that will insult the very people it claims to most want to influence--the pro-ID camp.

If you are an aspiring documentary-maker, and want a good example of how to go about making a documentary that fails to prove its point, and skips over more interesting territory in favor of boring and irrelevant territory, this is the movie for you.

I think a lot of the good reviews here can be explained by its choice of subject matter alone. I too am interested in the subject, and that's exactly why I thought this film was mostly just pretty frustrating.

It really didn't explain very well what the NC-17 problem was, exactly. It was really obsessed with doing some stupid investigation to find out the names of the individuals who do the ratings for MPAA, where they lived, and who their children were. That, plus a few chopped up interviews with movie directors whining about their movies getting slapped with NC-17s, and that was most of the content of the film. Stupid.

It spent about one minute, maybe, on the main part of the NC-17 problem, which is that many movie theaters and certain DVD stores won't touch a movie with an NC-17 rating, or, I guess, one that just isn't rated at all, which makes your producer not like you much if you get one of those ratings. But mainly all it does is just point out that this problem exists.

Why, exactly, are businesses that show movies and sell DVDs treating adults like infants? And why do they have so much power over the movie studios? That's mainly all I'm interested in knowing about when it comes to the NC-17 issue. This movie doesn't seem to talk about the reasons at all. It just notes the problem and moves on, as if that's just as much a part of inexorable unalterable reality as the sky being blue, as if that's just as reasonable as laws against murder.

It's easy to see why an independent movie is more likely to get slapped with an NC-17 rating, y'know, because the MPAA is really just the arm of the big movie studios, but this film just kind of makes a bare accusation about the MPAA discriminating against independent films, and doesn't really provide much evidence for this. I have no doubt it's true--but it would have been interesting to see some actual evidence.

The movie argues that the MPAA is more likely to slap an NC-17 on a movie that has gay sex in it, or that has intense orgasms in it, or sex scenes involving views of actual sexual fluids, but it didn't provide much good evidence of this, which really kind of leaves you wondering whether the MPAA is really all that discriminatory against these kinds of movies.

I left the film wondering if the MPAA was really all that bad, just in general. I am not saying the MPAA isn't bad, and for all I know, the MPAA is Satan incarnate, but I can't tell just from watching this movie. Clearly the movie was trying to argue that the MPAA is in fact Satan incarnate, but it was doing a very poor job of backing up its argument.

I can see why directors would prefer if the MPAA used actual hard-and-fast rules or guidelines, spelled out in advance, about what gets you in NC-17 territory, or if you were allowed to base an argument in your MPAA appeal on precedent ("this movie got an R and it had worse stuff than mine" arguments, which apparently are just not allowed by the MPAA in its appellate process for who knows why), but the movie didn't really even spend much time talking about this kind of thing. Instead, the filmmaker seemed obsessed with actually tracking down the names of the individual MPAA employees and their children.

I think it was really frustrating and poorly done. It's an interesting subject that there really should be a good movie about, so it's really too bad that this is the movie that got made. I hope someone else comes along and does a better movie about this one day.

This movie is absolutely horrible. Everyone is cast wrong. The acting is poor. I hate all of the characters in this film. The script is completely stupid, and every single portion of the dialogue is terrible.

Every single part of every aspect of this film is cheesy and stupid and bad. If IMDb used a -10 to 10 scale, this film would be well worthy of a perfect -10.

Of all the hours I've wasted in my life, the hour or so I spent in the theater viewing most of this is the time I most want back. Please do not see this. Please do not show this to your children. Let's all try to forget this unforgettably horrible film, and just hope that in the future it is somehow obliterated from existence. This is very clearly Spielberg's worst film. It is probably one of the worst big films ever made by such a famous Hollywood director--so bad that there is no humor to be found in how bad it is. One just feels sorry for Spielberg messing up his rep with this piece of garbage.

Audiences were leaving the theater in droves midway through it, where I saw it. I am certainly not the only one. Try seeing it again, if you genuinely still feel there was any merit to this. I dare you.

As with many truly horrible films, its only value is as a litmus test. If you know anyone who claims to have enjoyed this film, it is probably very safe to completely ignore all other reviews by the same person.

I am a Terry Gilliam fan. My favorite by him is Brazil, and my second-favorite by him was 12 Monkeys.

For about an hour of this film, it was mostly a pleasant way to pass some time. But I ended up hating this film, and here are the three most important reasons why:

(1) There are 2 clichéd plot-extending sub-plot-creating devices in this film that are just obviously and clumsily inserted into the overall plot. Either of these could ruin a movie. Both combined made me angry at Terry Gilliam.

(2) Jonathan Pryce's French accent is horrid. No one talks like that. It sounds like that Pepe Le Pew (the old cartoon skunk). If meant to be funny, it just is not funny. However you look at it, it's really annoying. Every scene in this film that included Jonathan Pryce's character is ruined because of it. It pretty much ruins the whole film, especially combined with (1).

(3) Heath Ledger was not believable. Given all the other things that went wrong with this film, I'm inclined to blame this on the directing.

Terry Gilliam is entitled to make a bad one, sure. But this is no ordinary bad film. This one insulted my intelligence, used cheap and obvious clichéd plot tricks, and had really bad accents coming out of some of its primary characters. This one made me angry. And Gilliam has been dropped a couple of notches on my all-time favorite director's list because of that. Had this just been another bad movie, he would not have dropped those couple of notches.

The story itself could have perhaps been done well. It just wasn't. Besides the glaring and obvious problems discussed above, there was almost no character-development in this film at the proper time with the exception of the character named Angelika (played well by Lena Headey). And the plot itself was just kind of, I dunno, I call plots like this "overcreative," I guess. The plot itself did not have enough development though for the viewer to really ever catch on to exactly the nature of the historical background we are in and what exactly is going on.

Now, Mr. Gilliam, I believe, has publicly stated that the Weinstein brothers (the co-executive producers) of this film were interfering with him, and of course I will never know how and to what extent they did, so it may well be the fault of the Weinsteins. If that's the case, I expect Terry Gilliam to disown this film at some point in the future.

I might have recommended it for small kids, because the plot is non-boring enough for them, but there are a couple of scenes in this that could be extremely frightening and gory. If you're a parent, show this to your kids only if you'd also show them a slasher film like Saw or Friday the 13th or something like that.

Or show it to your kids if you want them to be traumatized. I don't care. The point is that this was definitely not intended for kids, so it can't use that excuse.

Bad stuff. If you're a Terry Gilliam fan, stay away. It will change your feelings about his movie-making prowess.

Spielberg had been on a bit of a roll before this stinker.

Wow, what a meaningless superficial effects-driven piece of crap. This is a plot-driven movie with a pretty stupid and simplistic and illogical plot. Just a bad film. Others have made these same points here. I will focus my review on the acting.

Dakota Fanning, who plays the little girl and who appears in most parts of this movie, is one of the most annoying things on this planet, with her constant screaming. She put in a really poor performance here. Thank God I did not see this in the theater--I would've had to leave to save my eardrums.

The guy who plays the son, Justin Chatwin, appears to also be a pretty bad actor. I will never understand how he got cast as Tom Cruise's son. He looks to be about Cruise's age, largely because he seems taller than Cruise.

Tom Cruise was actually pretty good though, I have to say, especially for him. Normally I find him to be a substandard actor, but he's pretty believable for some reason in this one.

Tim Robbins put on his usual terrible performance though. I do not know why Robbins ever gets any jobs. He's got to be one of the worst Hollywood actors in history. Wherever he appears, try as he might (and he does seem to try hard), you always know you're watching an actor named Tim Robbins try to play a role, and it never works (no not even in Shawshank Redemption, which is the most overrated movie ever--currently ranked #2 all-time here on IMDb which is totally absurd).

Just your normal old really bad sci-fi movie that happened to have cost a lot to make. Spielberg does make bad ones every now and then. This one is certainly not nearly as bad as HOOK. This one is probably not even in the worst thousand big expensive Hollywood movies. But it's still bad.

I love most of Spielberg's movies. I think of him like a home-run hitter, and this was one of his strike-outs.

However, if you are a big Tom Cruise fan for some reason, this is one of his best performances ever. Not enough to make this a decent movie, but he deserves some credit for being the lone bright spot in an otherwise horrid flick.

This lowbrow comedy is a near-total success. This film should cause plenty of laughter, and that is clearly its only aim. The performances by Norm MacDonald and Artie Lange were A+, basically playing the personas they established through their stand-up acts and TV appearances. This film is largely grounded on these two never-boring and often-funny characters, who each found a perfect vehicle for himself in this film.

Director Bob Saget clearly deserves a lot of credit for giving these two the freedom to basically just do their acts. Artie Lange and Norm MacDonald either helped write this script, or else they really took it and made it their own, and they are two pretty funny guys.

But there's more. There's Jack Warden's brilliant performance as the crusty old father, Don Rickles' classic scene with Artie Lange, an appropriately not-quite-over-the-top and enjoyable performance by Chevy Chase who appears in a few scenes without stealing them, and Chris Farley putting in a fine performance in this his final film. All are funny and entertaining in their own ways, but this is clearly Norm MacDonald's and Artie Lange's movie.

One quibble would be with Traylor Howard's uneven performance as the love interest. Probably not the greatest actress, but she's nice to look at.

This is one of the top 25 all-time classic lowbrow-style comedies, and one of the five best of the 90's. It has a pretty unique style in terms of its comedy, thanks largely to Norm MacDonald and Artie Lange. There is no way this film deserves less than an 8 from anyone. It's one thing to not like an entire genre, but this film is obviously a near-total success at what it set out to do--to make us laugh frequently.

As I write, this film has an average rating of 5.9, making this one of the more underrated films here, and another example of the ratings at IMDb meaning very little.

Although there are some snippets in this 4-part documentary hinting at the necessity for recreational drug law reform, these are not very well-developed, in contrast to the many snippets from those who feel that the drugs that happen to currently be illegal are a scourge for which the only imaginable solution is incarceration of even those who are guilty even of mere possession of such drugs.

Although this program, as a whole, leaves the viewer with the impression that the drug war is largely a futile exercise and a waste of money, and for that it deserves some praise, almost nothing in this documentary addresses the very real problems that total war against those who merely possess illegal drugs obviously causes and contributes to--very real problems that most drug warriors themselves would tell you, if asked, they think the drug war is designed to solve. For example, while many minutes are spent on the surge in violence associated with the rising popularity of crack cocaine in the 80's, at no point does this program even hint that the very laws designed to suppress crack cocaine make it impossible for drug sellers to enforce their contracts and business arrangements in courts of law, forcing them to resort to violence to stay in business. But instead of seeing the laws as an important cause of the violence, the drugs themselves seem to take the brunt of the blame. Inexplicably, alcohol prohibition, the violence that ensued, and the subsequent reversal of prohibition, is totally ignored by this program.

This program will help to perpetuate ridiculous stereotypes of drug users, and it is these that are the primary force in driving the very expensive and very problematic drug war. The possibility of incorporating drugs other than alcohol into a happy and successful life is not really touched on. Use of any drug in excess is probably going to cause personal problems, but not all users do their drugs in excess, just like not all alcohol users are alcoholics.

If you want a point of view from someone who believes that adults have a moral right not to be incarcerated and have their lives ruined by the criminal justice system just for using drugs that the government, for mostly very arbitrary political reasons rather than reasons based on sound social policy and legitimate science, has decided to totally prohibit, whose users it has decided to not-so-metaphorically wage war against, just forget about it. None of that is in here.

On the other hand, this is hardly in the category of anti-drug propaganda. It is mostly an interesting neutrally-presented history of drugs in 20th century United States like marijuana, LSD, heroin, cocaine, MDMA, and Oxycontin. But there is a significant element of various people's points of view with regard to drug laws, and most (but not all) of that is not very thoughtful or well-informed and slanted in favor of the drug warrior mentality, especially with respect to drugs other than marijuana.

The criminal justice system, along with its often harsh life-ruining penalties, is obviously not the only answer or the most appropriate answer to every single social problem, but unfortunately there's an epidemic in this nation of an as-yet unnamed disease whose primary symptoms are a lack of imagination with respect to social policy when it comes to certain drugs, a lack of compassion for fellow humans, a prejudice against people who use the drugs that are not governmentally-approved, perhaps a vested interest in the growth of the prison/policing industry, and a horrid apathy with regard to human dignity. It's morally wrong to kidnap or incarcerate people unless you have a very damn good reason for doing so, and the mere possession of an arbitrarily selected group of drugs is clearly not such a reason. This is really the primary issue when it comes to drugs, yet this program ignores it.

So, in sum, the parts of this program that neutrally present history without feeding stereotypes of drug users that are at the heart of the drug war mentality are pretty good and interesting and entertaining. But when it comes to presenting a rational non-radical point of view with regard to drug policy, and giving the viewer examples not only of people with drug problems but also the many people who successfully incorporate drugs into happy and successful lives, it's pretty disappointing.

I have to say that Ed Norton, Jr. is somewhat charismatic, but I have to assume he looks good or otherwise appeals to the ladies, because he rarely strikes me as a particularly great actor (although I have to admit that he was great and/or perfectly cast in The People vs. Larry Flynt). In other words, I rarely am dazzled by, stunned by or otherwise totally believing in the characters I have seen Ed Norton, Jr. play. He is the star of two of the most overrated films in history--Fight Club and American History X--both currently appearing in the top 50 here on IMDb.com. 50. The top 50 movies that have ever been made? Give me a break.

Don't get me wrong--like Fight Club, American History X is an entertaining and interesting film that is certainly worth a look. Not for a second was I bored during either, and I have given this one a positive rating (6 out of 10). My problem is mainly with Ed Norton, Jr.'s acting. As is usually the case with Norton vehicles, at no point was I unaware that I was watching Ed Norton, Jr., and I had a load of trouble believing in his fanatical racist character here.

Maybe Mr. Norton just seems like too much of a nice guy to me. I do not hate the guy. I like him. Maybe that's my problem. In this one in particular, he really came across to me, somehow, as a person who is passionately opposed to racism. I felt he had trouble totally committing to the role, I guess. Not in an obvious way that I can really detail, but that's how I actually felt. It did not feel real to me.

If you disagree with my point about Norton, you'll probably love this flick just like almost everyone that bothered to comment on it here. Besides the unfortunate casting of Norton as fanatical racist, it was pretty good.

But speaking of fanaticism, I would really appreciate a little less fanaticism regarding Ed Norton, Jr.'s work. Really. Ed Norton, Jr. plays a fanatical racist? What's next? Ed Norton, Jr. plays Adolph Hitler? Ed Norton, Jr. plays Satan? Whatever. I think Norton needs to be cast in roles that are not quite as evil as his role here. The same exact problem plagues Fight Club as well as The Score. Something about his face, and his voice--it leaves a sort-of-cherubic impression, at least to me. He needs to be cast in more sympathetic and/or heroic roles like he was in The People vs. Larry Flynt.

This is a great example of a plot-driven film whose plot is absolutely awful.

Jeff Goldblum is often an interesting actor, Bill Pullman can sometimes be very good, Randy Quaid is often funny, and Will Smith has a certain charisma, but none of them can save this steaming pile of you-know-what. I can't believe any of them agreed to do this script. They must have somehow got strong-armed into doing this.

Clearly the director shares a lot of the blame here. In a movie like this, the only good parts are the violent parts and the parts in which things get blown up, but some of the explosion scenes were very poorly done. For example, in one scene, from the trajectories of the cars that are ostensibly being blown down the street, it is clear that they are just being dropped into the screen from above.

It's hard to believe that anyone would agree to direct or act in a film based on this script.

Characters are killed without first being developed at all, resulting in the viewer not caring so much when they die. The story is stupid in about three different ways. There's no way to suspend disbelief because it's so stupid. At no point during my viewing of this was I unaware that I was watching a movie--and a very bad one. The script is cliché-ridden and childish, designed for an audience of children and mental invalids.

I had always thought of Vivica Fox as kind of pretty, but she is looking pretty ugly in this one.

Trust me, you can skip this one. Don't rent it, don't buy it, and don't waste time watching it. You'll never really know how much aggravation you'll save by skipping this one, but trust me it will be a substantial amount.

If you are a Crispin Glover fan, you must see this. If you are a Sean Penn fan, you must see this. If you are a movie fan in general, you must see this. If you have no idea who Crispin Glover is and you have no idea who Sean Penn is, this film will probably still have a lot of value, but the more work you've previously seen by Crispin or Sean, the better.

This movie is so funny, but it is also pure genius. There is nothing that I know of that resembles this film. It is its own genre. I doubt that anything like it will ever be made again. I cannot say anything more about exactly why without partially spoiling it, and some of the other reviews here have already done a good job at doing that.

In response to any of the reviewers here that gave it a bad review, I ask that you view the film again. In reality, there is no point at which this film could fairly be called "boring." This is possibly the funniest, most entertaining, and least boring film ever made. And it only gets better with age and repeated viewings. A timeless classic that, unfortunately, very few will be able to claim to have seen.

Beaver Trilogy is the brilliant work of director Trent Harris, also responsible for the amazing Rubin and Ed, which Crispin Glover also stars in.

Unfortunately, copies of this film are rare and hard to find. I managed to find a VHS version after some diligent searching though, and there are a couple of ways to find it that I know of. But I really wish someone would put this onto a DVD.