Reviews

Am I missing something? This is at best a quiet, juvenile love story to be submitted as a senior project at USC. Murray does a good job given the weak script. Johansen's "smile-of-embarrassed-joy" was used endlessly, but she's OK. Nice ironic shots of Tokyo. Repeated and irritating continuity problems in many scenes. The hype on this bad boy was Weinsteinian in intensity, so the only answer to explain the excitement and award nominations on this yawn seems to be the C-word -- Coppola. The old man made many serious turkeys in his career. His daughter at least is making an acceptable start.

5 out of 10.

I just took my son to the opening day afternoon matinee right after school. We had primo seats, a big honker of popcorn, and lots of anticipation. Our favorite movies are Used Cars, Hot Shots Deux, and Airplane, so we were barely able to sit in our seats as the endless previews were shown. Then the movie came on.....

Though there were some good gags and in-jokes there (and most of them you see in the trailers), the movie was very tame, and did not have the zippy editing and pace of the above-mentioned classics. Some of the gags fell flat but continued painfully along. The Queen Latifah "I'm going to prophesize this pan right up your..." that is shown in the previews is not even included (my son noticed that). The movie seemed to stumble along. Even Leslie Nielsen was way off his game. Anyone who did not see Sixth Sense, 8 Mile, Ring, or Signs had better bring a pillow, because they won't get enough of it to keep them awake. An older woman near us appeared quite unamused and bewildered by the whole thing.

A very disappointed 6 out of 10.

This movie cannot be on the Top 250. The camera angles are from '50's television, the sets look as if they were just painted by the high school thespians, the pace is slow and uneven, the dialog is pretentiously portentous and melodramatic to the point of laughter, and the sex in it is so strange and awkward as to make one think the writer/director is titillating himself. In short... awful. I've never understood Hollywood's utter fascination with David Lynch. AMATEURISH at best.

A bunch of terrific performances lost in an awful script. The writer/director outdid himself, repeatedly eliciting some of the best acting you'll see with each of these wonderful actors. However, he's one of the 'edgy' Hollywood writers these days who shows how in touch he is with reality and the people he routinely degrades by the number of times he can use the f-word in any situation, even if used by children, older people, etc.. Complete character disconnect. And forget continuity or arc. Since this dwells on depression, sadness, and hopelessnes, of course this is one of the top 250 movies of all time, along with Pulp Fiction and its like. Hollywood's current love affair with degraded plots doesn't excuse poor storytelling and precious gimmicks, esp. the preposterous finale (no, "it doesn't happen" -- only in Hollyweird). This movie is over three hours of pretentiousness that you could have better spent helping out at the homeless shelter.

Golly, everyone is falling all over themselves about this one. Why, please? It's silly violent, nihilistic, pointless. And every character has the same way of talking -- talking about clever things in that pseudo-way that only Quentin could possibly dream up. Ooooooh, the talent! Pass.

Lord, not defending the Commies in China, but this movie had all the subtlety of a moving van. When you get Hollywood wackos pushing their own causes, as is our star, you get hackneyed bludgeoning such as this. AVOID!

Some occasionally clever banter and excellent (!) special effects -- that's about it. Billy Bob Thornton was the best part of the cast. And then there's Bruckheimer and his patented schlock-machine: highly predictable story, corny, manipulative scenes trivializing trust, love, and bravery, ear-splitting noise, frenetic pace, assinine jingoism, music straight out of "The Rock". His music-video/GE-ad look is seen in "Flashdance", "Top Gun" (an abominable movie), and "The Rock" (good actors acting saved that one). Loud eye-candy.