Reviews

This movie - and the situation it chronicles - forces us to consider

to what extent we can expect an even playing field - literally - when we watch sports. The athletes say, "Every one else was doing it."

When fans watch NASCAR races, I hope they understand that it's a team sport. The people who built the car, the people who maintain it, the guys who change the tires, the spotters and others contribute as much or more to the win as does the driver. However, when we see an individual athlete - biker, runner, skier, etc. - compete, do we see that the "best man" wins or the performer with the best doctor, the best chemist and research department and the cleverest lawyer to get around the system, as one of the interviewees in this movie suggests.

Should we accept that performance enhancements are now a part of sports, athletes and their supporters will continue to find ways to counter efforts to limit them and accept that? The destructive qualities of steroids - including their potential for violent behavior and the process Armstrong admitted using raise doubt. The drug Amstrong took and the use of blood transfusions to short-cut the body's process for communicating and responding to muscle fatigue surely must be physically destructive. However, I have long had questions about the long-term effects of professional football tackles, questions now being answered, at least in terms of head injuries. Players and fans continue to accept this.

This movie may be more interesting to people who are not cycling fans but is a good exploration of a range of observers and participants.

This would have been an OK if lightweight movie, if it had not claimed to be telling the Biblical story. The writers took a story that could have personal lessons and added a anachronistic civics lesson. Rather than being a story of a individual struggling with the life thrust upon her who is then faced with a leap of faith, we have an aspiring freedom fighter. Instead of a not too bright, debauched older king we have a "hottie" looking for love. Instead of a petty villain looking for self looking for power, we have a mad avenger. Oddly enough, the movie begins facing front on one of the more difficult commands of the Bible, the command that the Jews kill all residents of the Promised Land, including noncombatants down to the infants and unborn. It makes the threat of the same fate for the Jews living in Persia seem ironic at best.

Forcing the story into the romance novel genre, creates problems. If not a rule, a guideline often followed in romances is that the heroine never has sex with anyone she doesn't love, but, if she does, she doesn't enjoy it. Hence the transformation of a king who probably killed his wife because she didn't desire to be ogled by a bunch of drunks to a romance novel hero.

The political story (except for the line that the Greeks believed all men were created equal) might have worked if it had not been so alien to the original story.

Perhaps someday someone with make a movie worthy of this story.

Like to book on which it was based, this movie does'nt follow the usual plot lines. Adventure movie fans would say it's about nothing, but it really sucks you in. Clooney is, as many other reviewers have said, excellent. It's amazing how much he can convey in even small facial gestures.

I read the book before I saw the movie. The movie does simplify and telegraph the plot somewhat compared to the book and alters the focus away from the family to the larger land sale arc. However, it did seem to be a good dramatization. The movie - including the sets that were very nice but cluttered - kept the book's picture of real people - married people who shout at each other, children who screw up.

One disappointment was the band at Cousin Hugh's bar. In the book, the ukulele club - old men - meet at the bar to play. In the movie, it just looks like an ordinary house band in a small club.

• Spoiler Alert- In the movie, Matt's wife has actively campaigned with his cousins for the bid that would enrich her lover. This wasn't in the movie. Actually, she's not that nice a lady in the book, before that. I sort of like the way the book ended, with Scotty saying her mother was under her fingernails, referring to her ashes, and her father drawing a lesson from that. I guess it was too outre even for this movie.

I realize this was a movie, but the idea that a counselor would continue to see a patient who was in a relationship with her son is so unethical I could not enjoy what few pleasures there were in this movie.

I reduced my rating when I considered the "ick factor" of a mother discussing her son's penis with his lover.

The best thing about the movie was the song at the end, "I Wish You Love," by Rachel Yamagata.

SPOILER ALERT I will say I did appreciate the movie's refusal to go with the love conquers all ending. I don't like sad movies, but why no one makes movies with that exquisite pain of lost love like "The Way We Were."

Both Tim Reid and Steve Harvey were in situation comedies that were much better than the usual run, Frank's Place for Reid and this show for Harvey. I loved this show, especially the relationship Harvey's character had with his mother-in-law. With the commitment to mediocrity of U.S. entertainment industry, this one only lasted 19 episodes and never returned.

The Steve Harvey Show, with its broad humor and characterizations bordering on the broad JJ Evans(Good Times: "Dyn-o-mite!") level, lasted six years originally and forever in syndication.

One of the good things about a bad thing, our fragmented media world, is that quality material can look for discerning people instead of a mass audience.

I have long told people who wanted to understand the Vietnam War to read Graham Greene's book. I was surprised by the synopsis calling this a book about a love triangle. At the risk of obscuring the power of this movie, I have to say it is a book about the futility of colonialism illustrated by a love triangle.

As we try to do a better job of leaving Iraq than we did of Vietnam (and certainly a better job of leaving than of entering), this movie can remind us of the hell created by good intentions.

On a different level - see this movie for the spine tingling scene of Caine and a sentry spending the night in a lookout.

Our heroine is, we are told, such a wonderful writer she thinks she should write for the holy grail for nonfiction writers, The New Yorker, but her lack of concern for or interest in language is so obvious it is commented on by a person who has only known her a few days. "Awesome." The person she claims to love is working tirelessly to open restaurant, his dream and one of the most difficult businesses to succeed in. What does our heroine do? Does she do as much as you can to help him, especially as she wasn't doing anything about her own dreams?

Our heroine travels to an area where thousands of people pay thousands of dollars to tour its vineyards, and she is offered a free, private tour of its vineyards. What does she do? Our heroine finds a 50 year old letter. She knows nothing about the situation, both at the time the letter was written or in the present, yet she writes full of advice. So glad I don't know anyone that arrogant.

My friend with whom I saw the movie said to me, "I don't know when I have disliked a heroine more."

What I liked: Tuscan countryside, Vanessa Redgrave, Franco Nero, the Tuscan countryside, the passion of the fiancé, the Tuscan countryside.

I was first going to say, wait, rent the DVD and watch it with the sound off. A better idea would be to get a travelogue of Tuscany.

Maybe it wasn't that good as a whole, but the second episode, which was the first one I say, was so memorable I still remember it today. I became a fan of Dick Francis. I would recommend it if you are interested in horse racing and mysteries.

The cockney slang of the sidekick, Chico Barnes, is a lot more amusing to those of us who have never been close to hearing London's Bow Bells, but the leads are attractive and the shows were interesting.

Sid Halley was one of Francis' more interesting characters, and the show actually minimizes some of the difficulties with his hand. Interestingly, electronic hands of the sort used in the stories are apparently less functional for the user than the sort invented after World War II.

The best part of the movie was the slow pan up and by some very lovely trees at the end.

I love Emma Thompson and usually like Dustin Hoffman, but this was a downer.

The initial scenes with Hoffman were just painful. I'm not sure if they were supposed to be funny or sad; I just cringed for him and the filmmakers.

I also had problems with the characters of the leads. Thompson's character is so shy she asks her friends not to leave her alone in a bar with a guy, but spends the day, evening and night with a guy she doesn't know who follows her around like a stalker.

I would have enjoyed seeing Emma build a relationship with the guy in the bar, a guy a few years younger than her. Instead we have another movie with a female lead and a guy 20 years older than she.

I wish there was a 0 option to measure this movie. The movie is emptier than the lives it attempts to portray. More hypocritical than the hypocritical characters. More shallow than the shallow characters. Bitchier than the bitchy characters. More mercenary than the mercenary ones.

Any movie that announces it is by the makers of American Beauty or like American Beauty is one to avoid.

I really believe that critically acclaimed movies like this one are more pernicious than more honest violent slasher movies.

I'd say it is a wonderful way to judge new acquaintances - if they like this movie avoid them.

Everything about this movies except Andie McDowell and her character was a 10. All the other characters were flawed, but likable. Carrie was unendurable.

I wonder how many people overcame their dismay at the end of this movie by realizing that Charles marries Fiona after Carrie dumps him. On the other hand, this may not be supposed to be a "happy ever after movie," since commitment-phobic Charles marries emotionally dead Carrie and so remains "uncommitted." McDowell may be cut some slack for her wooden performance because of a lack of preparation and perhaps the people responsible for this movie realized her behavior was that of a high functioning person with autism.

This is a romantic comedy, so it's really a fairy tale, but an unconventional one. Cinderella, rather than living in the ashes, lives in an overdecorated castle in the suburbs with a good looking husband who's no prince. She does find her prince, but he's not that handsome. Instead of a castle, at least initially, she gets a tiny walk-up in Manhattan.

Pfeifer, Stockwell and Ruehl lead a cast of fully realized, if a little over-the-top, characters.

Demme reaches the highest level of movie-making in my mind. He creates a world I want to move into - a Manhattan neighborhood and street life teeming with life and community.

I wish IMDb linked to reviewers' other comments. I'd like to know what other movies the people who panned this one hate. I am always looking for a lot of laughs and for nice places in which to "live" at least for an hour or so.

The success of this movie is a good measure of the state of Hollywood and specifically romantic comedy this summer.

Actually I was amused by the concept and the early montage of weddings was fun, but when the real body of the plot began it became truly painful to watch as it became as mean-spirited as the wedding toast "Claire" begins to make.

When the man slips on the banana peel it's only funny if he leaps up unhurt, if he has earned the punishment or if the humor is otherwise balanced with caring. The only people who earned their punishment in this movie were the leads and the rival for Claire's affection (After all, he was working to care for the environment and house the homeless. How evil can you be!). Jeremy's hell night might have been amusing if his torturers hadn't been so pathetic.

You're better off staying home with some classic comedies. Or better yet, go to a wedding or other celebration of family and love.