Change Your Image
rsk-5
Reviews
The Pirates of Penzance (1994)
Moronic
This insolent revision is cringe-inducing. Even its actors seem to think so; they cascade waves of sweat. It can't be just the hot lights.
The humour is a combination of Jackie Gleason/Art Carney and Sergeant Bilco. (Sorry if those mystify U.K. and Aussie readers. Just think "amateur," "1950s," and "awful, simply awful.") For example, to have the daughters played by fat girls (who at first I thought were drag queens) wearing plastic sunglasses, impersonating the Chordettes – where to begin? And, as another commenter has suggested, the idea that G & S need to be improved by having the Major General pull a punch of flowers out of his ass, give them to his daughter, and then urge her to wash her hands – well, once again, words fail.
There's a fairly colossal arrogance when the credits say "additional lyrics by
", in the apparent belief that Gilbert's were insufficient.
Yet it gets two stars from me. One is for the rubber man playing the sergeant; why isn't he splashed all over Hollywood, Broadway and the West End? He's a good singer as well as an epic physical comic. The second star is for the "Come, friends, who plough the sea" business. It's something else that G & S would have repudiated in horror, and it doesn't belong here (it belongs in a Dame Edna sketch), but if one removes the context, it's very clever.
Nobody's Fool (1994)
this movie's a great trailer ... for the book
Great chemistry, if you can believe it, between Newman and Tandy. (Not romantic.) But that's about it. Maybe I'm not the first to gripe that a 550-page book can't be turned into a 2-hour movie with everything intact. Notably, the female characters, who in the book are richly developed and major players, are nearly invisible here. (Even Tandy, playing the retired 8th-grade teacher who knows a little bit about everybody in town, is superficial -- reduced to the stereotypical wise old lady.) No mention of the Newman character's girlfriend; so little mention of his wife that her role isn't even credited. No Mrs. Gruber, sallying forth. No Rub's wife, who shoplifted enough from Woolworth to decorate an entire home. No Joyce, girlfriend of The Bank (Tandy's son). Hattie's funeral comes out of nowhere in the movie (it must baffle anyone who hasn't read the book).
Not to be a snob. On the contrary -- I almost never read novels, and never-ever read them just before seeing the movie. So perhaps this is a ho-hum complaint that wiser people have learned to deal with.
Shark Tale (2004)
I liked this movie a lot, too!
This flick is a hoot. Yes, a predictable story line. So what? It's exhilarating to watch De Niro and Scorsese gently spoof themselves for an hour and a half. Smith and Jolie come close to the top, too. But none of it goes over, and nothing lasts too long.
I suspect certain red states will be apoplectic over the eventual tolerance shown toward the gentle shark who prefers to dress up like a dolphin; too bad.
That's all I have to say.
But IMDb insists that comments be at least ten lines long.
So ignore these last three sentences; sorry.