Reviews

I saw this movie last Saturday and was pretty excited because I had read all the raving reviews and heard what a masterpiece it was. Then, when I actually watched it, I was like...what's the big deal about this movie?

The bad things:

It was WAY too long. There's nothing wrong with long movies, but only if the story is engaging and interesting. Amadeus was just slow and boring. In my opinion, there was no reason for this film to be 3 hours long. No matter how impressive and extravagant costumes and backdrops are, it does not make a movie exciting. This is a problem I've seen in quite a few big-budget films. About two hours into the film, I got very, very sleepy and I could barely keep my eyes open (okay, this might have been because I was watching the movie at 11pm).

The good things:

F. Murray Abraham and Tom Hulce both did a good job. I didn't see a single flaw in their performances. The brief scenes of the insane asylum were effectively disturbing. The costumes, scenery, style, etc, all seemed to be intact. Giving Amadeus that quirky laugh was...a fun idea, I must admit.

So the bottom line is, I won't watch this movie again but I'm glad I saw it once. And 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' was a much better film by Milos Forman.

If George Stevens' goal was to make the most boring, slow, uninteresting, and dreadful western ever, then he absolutely succeeded. I'm a fan of classic movies so I decided to give this "timeless classic" a watch. It was one of the worst movies I had ever seen. Sure, the cinematography is gorgeous but that doesn't make it a great movie. It seems Stevens tried to use extra stunning backgrounds to make up for the fact that he did not have a good story nor good characters. The dialogue is bland and incredibly corny...like when Jean Arthur sees her husband take out a gun and screams, "NOOO!!! You can't kill him!! That's so wrong!!" Plus I noticed quite a few continuity errors, which is not uncommon in movies but still.

I honestly can't think of a single thing I like about this movie. I looked up a few clips on YouTube so I could browse the comments and see what other people thought of it. I was shocked that so many people loved it. One person mentioned having watched the movie "over a hundred times". Geez, I could barely sit through this movie once, let alone watch it a hundred times. I think the only way somebody could enjoy this movie is if they really love home-on-the- range scenery or have a crush on Alan Ladd or something. I'm not sorry I watched the movie though; it teaches a good lesson. The lesson is that a true masterpiece lies in the eyes of the beholder. While I despise this disaster of filmmaking, it has nonetheless been awarded the "greatest western ever made". But in my mind, this only proves that the audience had extremely poor taste in films.