Reviews

The most interesting thing about "Idiocracy" is not the premise ("people frozen in a pod and not re-animated until way past their sell-by-date", also known as the Grand Red Dwarf Rip-Off), nor is it the acting (forgettable at best, grating at worst. The only guy I actually liked was the fat dude in President Camacho's cabinet who laughs in an endearingly stupid way.) It's not the special effects (ye gods! Are we back to the Planet of the Apes, non-Wahlberg Edition?) or the conclusion (more predictable than the oldest joke in Captain Predictable's Deja-Vu Revue). No, what keeps me (mildly) interested is that I can't figure out if the movie is intentionally dumb.

Because, brother, it's dumb. Hoo-boy, is it dumb. If Jim Carrey hadn't grown up and become mediocre, this would have his name all over it. But at the same time, it's making a statement about how dumb things are becoming. So, there's that question: is the movie intentionally dumb, to a point where it's not at all obvious that it's intentional? Is it trying to guide us into a false sense of arrogant security as we say "man, that movie about the dumbing down of the world sure could have been done more intelligently". Is the director laughing at us behind our backs? Or is he, and the movie, just plain dumb?

Sometimes it only takes one film to move a director into my personal pantheon of great directors. It doesn't happen too often, but I can't think of a better way to hit the fast track than by presenting this film to me. Everything about this film is just astonishingly memorable. The world it portrays is not only original and chilling, but also utterly perfectly realized, with an incredible level of detail in the environment and camera-work which simply defies belief.

The story is simple, yet monumental; tiny, yet enormous.

This is a rare sort of movie. And a huge feather in the cap of Mr. Cuáron. I'll be keeping an eye out for you, mister...

One day, a board of movie studio executives were gathered around a big, big table. One of them burst out: "Guess what! I just signed a deal to make the Sleepy Hollow story into a movie!"

• "Get out!", said the others, "that cool story with the headless knight?"

• "The very same", the first one said, "and guess who will be writing the screenplay? Andrew Kevin Walker!"

• "No way!", the others shouted, "the guy who wrote Se7en and 8MM? That guy is a true master of the dark and the suspenseful! He'll make that story into the true underbelly of sleaze and grit it deserves! WOW!"

• "Wait a second", said one of the others, even though he was as excited as the rest, "won't the story lose the essential storybook feel if a realist like Walker is writing the screenplay?"

• "Never fear!", proclaimed the first, "because to direct this movie, I have none other than... Tim Burton! Complete with Johnny Depp and Danny Elfman, as always!"

• "Fantastic!", screamed one of the others, knocking his chair over backwards in excitement, "That's simply perfect! Burton's off-beat style will complement the story and Walker's gritty take on the story and make this the movie of the year!"

• "The decade!", screamed another.

• "The century!", shrieked a third.

• "Marvellous!", they cried. "Splendid! Wonderful! How did you do it?"

But one of the others, a reedy little man with spectacles, said: "I don't think it will be that good after all."

• "Not that good?", exclaimed the others, furiously, "weren't you listening? Burton! Walker! Depp!"

• "Furthermore", the reedy man carried on, "I think the end result will be disappointingly tame. There will be no sparkle, the actors will look like they don't really care about anything, and the whole thing will feel like a made-for-TV movie with a special effects budget."

• "Ridiculous!", hissed one.

• "Preposterous!!", seethed another.

But the reedy man was absolutely right.

Let me get this off my chest: this movie is NOT perfect. It starts off with a lot of stuff that seems more at home in a pretentious film school project than a Charlie Kaufman flick. I didn't know it was the great Kaufman who had written the script, and for the first 15 minutes or so, I sat there wondering if the writer and director were George Lucas' kids or something, given a bunch of money to make a big-name vanity movie, a la "The Brown Bunny".

Well, if I were to watch the movie again now, I'd understand that vague beginning, because the film really IS beautifully crafted, heartwarming and true to the concepts of love. But it takes a while to get that. Compared to the other Kaufman flicks I've seen (Human Nature, Being John Malkovich) it fails in that respect: it doesn't convince me that the wackiness is worth it from the get-go. I could have turned this movie off in annoyance that the movie was trying to hide Elijah Wood from me so ineptly (when in fact, I DIDN'T know what the movie was trying to hide after all). I would have missed a good movie experience.

Alright, so first things first: the "Batman" movie franchise only had one way to go, and that was up. After the painfully dreadful last one with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze, even filming a post-it note reading "Batman Rocks!!!" for two hours and sending the videotape into national theater release would have been seen as an improvement.

But this really IS a good Batman movie. This time, we're not seeing a comic book superhero movie. We're gently guided through a solid plot that culminates in the birth of Batman, at which point we're prepared to suspend our disbelief and say "alright, so I guess Batman could really exist after all". Even the bad guy is semi-plausible (even though he, obviously, plans a wacky batman-style supervillainy stunt which would be far-fetched in any other movie).

Another thing is that the movie feels very much like an action-adventure from the mid-80's. Nolan's decision to use as little CGI as possible really shines through and melds with his relatively old-school camera style nicely to create a film which at most times feels like a forgotten classic from the days of the "indiana jones" movies.

Definitely worth a viewing!

This is one of those movies that leave you scratching your head. Where exactly did it go wrong? After all, we have a solid high-concept idea ("what if Peter Pan grew up?"), we have a director with a stellar track record used to making both action-adventures and children's movies, we have a magnificent cast (keep a look-out for a young Gwyneth Paltrow and a bearded Glenn Close in the scorpion box!), we have great-looking sets, good costumes, a big budget... so how did it all end up feeling a bit too much like the crappy kid's theater production in the beginning of the movie? The whole movie has this matinée feel to it. Dustin Hoffman is phoning it in, Robin Williams is doing that "oh I can improvise better lines than scriptwriters can write for me any day!"-shtick which really gets on your nerves after watching a few of his movies, Spielberg's feel on the direction is evident but in no way heartfelt... oh, and Julia Roberts' performance as Tinkerbell is so out-of-place and ridiculous that I remember finding it off even when I saw this movie for the first time as a young boy.

"Hook" proves that sometimes, all the right elements needed to make an unforgettable classic sometimes turn into... well, something like "Hook" instead. Luckily, the converse also happens, when an unknown director and a small budget suddenly, out of the blue, makes a masterpiece of cinema. I like those movies a lot more.

I like small films. This one is a tiny film. Everything from the setting (small, small town) to the plot (girl loves girl in small, small town) to the graininess of the video and the natural light and "whatever we hand at hand"-props, this runs the risk of looking like a real amateur productions. Instead, Moodyson manages to make it look like someone with a camcorder just filmed the real-life story happening around him.

Elin performs the fickle, restless teen brilliantly, Agnes does some wonderful face acting (although she is a little too radiant to convince me that he's the frumpy nerd she's made out to be), but my medal of honor goes to the parents.

For once, we are treated to movie moms and dads who are neither ridiculously idolized and always saying the right thing, nor grotesque "meet the fokkers"-esquire parodies of embarrassment or cruelty. These parents want to do what's right for their kids, but they don't always know what to do, what to say or how to say it. They miss all the Hollywood moments of saying something a team of scriptwriters have been tweaking for a month for maximal tearjerker effect. They try their best, that's all, just like real-life parents. And that's refreshing to me.

A nice flick. Watch it if you feel like a bit of light euro-culture with subtitles.

pages of pages of user comments here have already'sung this fantastic film's praises. The ultra-memorable Parris Island sequence featuring Gunnery Sgt. Hartman (whom, I would wager, no-one -- at least no adult male - can ever forget seeing. That's how memorably mean he really is) - Pvt. Pyle's descent, the final scenes with the sniper, etc.etc. It's simply a sublime movie, and no-one questions it.

No, what I'd like to add is that this movie looks and feels simply spectacular. Stanley Kubrick's patented long takes, slow zooms and steadicam work, which permeate such wonders as "A Clockwork Orange" and "The Shining", are in full effect here, as well. The outdoor Vietnam sets are huge, foreboding and 100% real (they were sites in England set for demolition, but put to astoundingly good use as burned-out Vietnamese cities). This really shows how visceral a movie can be - and with not a single CGI shot in the entire movie! That's the coup de grace of this film, which will keep it looking more and more impressive for every passing year. A remake of "Full Metal Jacket" would feature copious computer graphics, and it would look a lot worse. The genius of this film is that it feels so real because it is.

This is a must-see film. So see it. At least three times over the course of your life.

How many movies do you know where the movie takes place entirely inside ONE location, and where there are two stories taking place, interdependent but almost totally cut off from one another as well? The robbers and the mom and daughter have very few means of communicating, yet the story rests on their interplay. It's a very tough job to stretch a story like that into an hour and a half.

It almost manages to do it. Sure, it gets pretty contrived at times, and the characters tend to go a little off from time to time to suit the labyrinthine plot, but all in all, it works.

David Fincher is adept at claustrophobic feels in his movies, so he was a natural choice. The fancy camera moves are a little "lookit meee!" and have aged a little (moviegoers nowadays are too adept at spotting CGI, and it's a little too easy to see it here), but I like David Fincher before this movie and I still do.

Amadeus is in no way the perfect Mozart/Salieri biopic. It takes tremendous liberties with the truth, but that's no matter: it's entertaining and inspiring beyond belief. Mozart's natural musical acumen which Salieri envies so much is portrayed beautifully, and I almost felt myself becoming better at appreciating the highest ideals of music through his descriptions. The scene in which Salieri and Mozart work on getting the Requiem down on paper is the highlight of this side of the film: hearing and understanding the separate layers before hearing them altogether is a goose-bumpingly great experience.

And F. Murray Abraham is an astonishing presence in the film. At one point, a rather poor actor playing a doorman comes to the door as Salieri is giving a lesson. The doorman delivers his line flatly, but Abraham's acting, in comparison to that, is incredibly nuanced, natural-looking, well-performed and believable. That's when I discovered that he won that Best Actor Oscar for a very,very good reason indeed.

The real Emily Rose, a German girl named Annaliese Michel, had a story which on the surface is similar to the Emily Rose in the movie, but the details are pretty far off. Significantly, the court case ended very differently in real life than in the movie. The movie's depiction of the exorcism is full of mystical spiritual ghosty happenings which have no basis in fact. So, in other words, this is a pretty darn loose dramatization of the true story on which it is based.

Having said that, it's not all bad. The film does, for the most part, go out of its way not to make it's mind up for the audience. A skeptical explanation is provided for every supernatural one, and the two viewpoints are given reasonably fair and balanced treatment. If you're convinced of either the saintliness or the psychosis of Emily, you're not going to be swayed. That's a good thing, but it seems to forget this idea for the exorcism scene, where no rational questions, explanations or debunkings are asked or given for the wild story told in court. That's a shame, because aside from this fault, it's actually a lot less sensationalistic than it could have been.

In conclusion: meh. It's a movie.

OK, let's get the obvious comments out of the way: "Groundhog Day" bladibladi "Memento" blablabla "The Misadventures of Death And Phug" blabla. Yes, this movie is about a person with no memory, repeating the same day over and over again. This has been done before, but it's not a cliché - and anyway, the angle of this movie is a lot different than those three, so let's just give all that a rest.

In actual fact, I found the concept of this movie interesting - a real twist on the old love story fare. Man With Fear Of Commitment Finds Woman With No Memory - it's a fun little jigsaw. And, for all intents and purposes, the skeleton of this movie works fine.

But. BUT! This is where I get annoyed. This movie is crammed full of pointless and annoying cheap gags. I don't know if it's just me, but I am not particularly appreciative of super-intelligent cutesy animals who understand everything said to them in plain English and respond with a suitable adorable sound/flipper gesture. Animals don't act like this. They never have, they never will. It p***es me off. Also, the movie just HAD to tack on some meaningless gross-out moments via the horny and androgynous Slavic assistant and (hold on to your hats and glasses) somebody getting showered from head to foot in walrus puke. Ah, the subtlety. And will somebody shut the old Hawaiian guy up, who has no function in the movie other than saying "hilarious" cuss words?

I think the writer of the original screenplay is pretty horrified at how his movie was represented. I would have been.

How on earth was this achieved? This movie had an incredibly lush set, and one of the greatest sets for scary spookiness I can imagine. A case in point: the indoors merry-go-round with mirrors is the perfect setting for oodles of spook. Just seeing it for the first time in the movie made my skin crawl with anticipation of the great chills to be offered. Hell, just the jingly clown music made my spine turn cold. We are introduced to characters with a slightly forced depth, especially Theo, but at least these are three-dimensional, interesting figures. The stage is set.

And so, it begins. And this is where the true miracle of the screen comes. This movie is completely and utterly UNfrightening. In a set like that. I just don't get it. It's a miracle. Give a monkey a camcorder and stick it in that set, and it would shoot a more suspenseful movie than this. How is it possible to create such a bland, boring, unfrightening, laughable piece of trash with a set like that. It's a modern marvel. My hat is off.

There are a lot of different Hitchhiker's Guides out there. Aside from the book, there are TV series, radio shows, graphic novels, computer games, etc etc. One of the charms of Douglas Adams' way of working with these versions is to never to a straightforward adaptation. No two versions are exactly the same, the plot is always more or less different. So, it comes as no surprise that the long-awaited movie has a different plot to the rest, as well.

The problem is that being compelled by the fantastic tone and feel of the books, you're driven to the other versions, and I for one am always slightly disappointed. I think it's because the plot and performances of the characters are secondary to the concepts and wild ideas that Douglas Adams was so dahm adept at spewing forth at every opportunity. So anything performance- and plot-driven will always seem lacking to me.

Also, having seen, heard and read so many different versions of H2G2, the constant elements - Earth being wiped out by the vogons, vogon poetry, Magrathea, the ultimate answer being 42, the mice as commissioners of the Earth, the whale and the bowl of petunias etc. etc. - become old jokes. I've heard them so many times before that they're simply not fresh and interesting anymore. And that's a shame, because they ARE fresh and original. This movie is probably an acceptable introduction to the world of Hitchhiker's guide to a newbie, as long as he/she keeps in mind that the books are infinitely richer.

Forgive an old westerner for the iconoclasm of comparing a Chinese movie to a Japanese cultural phenomenon. I'm round-eyed, I can't help it. But this movie reminded me of the good old days, when I used to read "Dragonball" the Manga - before the same manga became overly stupid and boring and went too far with the whole "there's always a stronger enemy" thing. Back in the day, Dragonball was a quirky, funny, cartoony romp through martial arts. And so is this movie. It's a pleasure to watch. Just don't expect realism... the movie had a strange impact on me - it seemed predictable in retrospect, but it was nothing of the sort, while I was watching it. In fact, it effortlessly turned corners I didn't really see were there, all the while regularly introducing new interesting and colorful characters for our entertainment.

George Clooney can direct? And he's even really good at it? I remember watching the movie and being mainly impressed with the direction, which was fresh and visionary. Imagine my surprise when the words "Directed By George Clooney" popped up on the screen. I can't (couldn't) help but think of George Clooney as a vacuous screen hunk with as much talent or future as any one of the thousands of "boy band" singers... turns out he's to screen hunks what Justin Timberlake and Robbie Williams are to boy bands - genuinely talented people who just started their career that way.

The film in itself is well-performed and interesting and kept my attention, mainly because of that darn good direction.

Wow. I'm gonna keep my eye out for Mr. Clooney.

I was shown this movie at a friend's house without knowing ANYTHING about it. I mean NOTHING, to the extent of saying "Hey, Christian Slater is in this! Oh, and Val Kilmer!". I didn't know if it was good or terrible. Nothing. Zip. Nada. To me, this is the very best way to watch a movie.

Anyway, I was fascinated by it. What got me was the theme of this movie, which is thought-inspiring and original. Basically, that we humans, try all we want to be free-willed and intelligent, still act according to predictable patterns ingrained in our personalities. Both alone or in groups, it is in principle possible to predict and control the actions of humans.

The plot itself, although requiring a certain amount of suspension of disbelief, is original and fresh, and so is the writing. The characters are distinct and three-dimensional (they have to be in a story like this), and basically, the story works.

Especially since we, the audience, are also being profiled by the movie. We're trying to be clever and outwit the movie by saying "yeah, well, now this will happen" and constantly being outwitted ourselves.

Excellent, 10/10. An intelligent movie watcher's movie.

I was surprised at this movie. I was expecting a real exploitation flick, packed with heads in freezers, boiled skulls and necromance painted across the celluloid with a generous brush. It's nothing like that. It's a very quiet and introverted picture, focusing on the inner workings of Jeffrey Dahmer. It's very well shot, and the guy playing Jeffrey does a great job of it. The result is a lot more intense than the obvious splatterfest version would have been.

But, I must admit, I still found the movie lacking. It has tons of great characterization, but there is no narrative drive in the script. It's basically Jeffrey Dahmer taking guys back to his place and flashbacking a lot while waiting for the sedatives to kick in. It doesn't really begin, and it certainly doesn't end. As a character study, it's a fine example of how much you can flesh out your characters (obscure pun intended). As a movie, it doesn't cut it. All characters and no plot makes Jeff a dull boy....

It's nice to see that Jim Carrey is managing to grow somewhat as an actor. He's still got a long way to go to match, say, a Robin Williams, on the ol' "stand-up comedian to serious actor"-ladder. But at least he's moving upwards. (I'm looking at you, Chris Rock.)

In this film, Jim Carrey is almost the straight man; the farcical elements happen AROUND him, not BECAUSE of him. Intriguingly, there IS a very Carrey-esquire moment, but it's not Jim Carrey acting - it's his arch-rival Evan Baxter, who gets to act like Jim Carrey (and, may I say, that was a very nice performance by Steve Carell, the Daily Show alumnus).

I like this movie because it's gutsy. It ventures into a controversial, spiky arena. I'm sure a lot of people are offended by the very thought that God is played by a black man, and that's just the beginning. It's an OK movie, but probably ultimately forgettable. A rung in the aforementioned ladder for Carrey and probably not much more.

Oh, please make the boredom go away! Yes, there are men with big muscles and/or nice hairstyles. Yes, they have cars that can go really really fast, and - hey, wow! - they have these red buttons on their steering wheel that makes their cars go even faster. Vrooom! Ok, so what's the plot of the movie? Well, there's a cop (with good hair)(and a fast car) who is supposed to infiltrate a gang of people (with big muscles) (and fast cars). And they drive around real fast and press their buttons. And in the end, the cop seems to forget what his job is and just drives his car fast.

Yeah, that's about it.

It's interesting to watch Ace Ventura, Jim Carrey's breakthrough flick, in 2003, after seeing him in a lot of other movies. It is very clear that Jim Carrey has learned a lot of acting during his movie career. Watching him in, say, "Bruce Almighty" shows us a Jim Carrey who pulls physical comedy and mugs for the camera once in a while, but he's primarily an actor. In "Ace Ventura", he's nothing of the sort: he is a stand-up, physical comedian on 35mm film.

The worst part is that it actually works. If Jim Carrey hadn't starred in this movie, it would most certainly have been condemned to be a bargain bin comedy, watched by almost nobody and forgotten by all of them. The story in itself is poorly written, tries to fit itself into a farcical version of a murder mystery framework, but the narrative is complex, overworked and deadeningly confusing. Jim Carrey manages to do a rare thing in cinema: he simultaneously drags the film's merits down and perks them up. This film ONLY works because Jim Carrey is kind enough to point out that this movie is SO dumb, even the main character can't take it seriously.

Budding screenwriters always discover a concrete rule in writing fiction: Act One can go so well, but Act Two is the blue-collar grunt work. In civilian language, this means that writing the beginning of a script for a movie is the easy part. Keeping it going through the middle is the tough bit.

This is exactly the problem for Very Bad Things. After the first 30 minutes, I thought: Hell, this is a pretty good movie! In Act One, we learn that Fish (Jon Favreau) is getting married to Laura (Cameron Diaz). We see that Laura is a real snobette and commandeers poor Fish around all the time. So, anyway, he goes off with four of his old male buddies on a stag night. The four others are well introduced: Christian Slater plays a sleazy, no-moral estate agent called Boyd, who has taken a few self-help courses and whos lines are nicely peppered with the formulaic 'pep-talk' from these courses. Daniel Stern, of 'Home Alone' fame, plays Adam Berkow, a weirdo, semi-stereotypical jew with major guilt syndrome. His brother Michael (Jeremy Piven) is the normal one of the two and has a great talk with Fish early in the movie about the horror and boredom of marriage. Remember, this is where the film is still good and entertaining. Finally, there's Moore (Leland Orser - yes, you did see him in Se7en) who doesn't really need to be there, narratively speaking. But never mind.

So, they go off on a bender in Vegas, complete with stripper. Michael, who is bored with his wife, decides to take her into the bathroom for a little rumpy-pumpy. This quickly becomes spiky-spiky, as he accidentally kills her! Yeek! They decide to bury the body in the desert, since no-one knows she's in that hotel room.

While they are trying to figure out what to do about this, a hotel security guard has been sent up to see what all the stag noise is. Unluckily, he sees the stripper's body, so Boyd - the amoral one and the one who convinces the others to bury the stripper - pops the guard off with a cork screw!

So, Act One draws to a close, and we are left with what could become a good movie: five guys, with whom you can either identify or sympathise, have gotten themselves into a very sticky situation. How are they going to handle this?

Well, as I say, when Act Two starts, the movie could go either way. Sadly, it seems that the writer burned off all his A-material in Act One, and from here on in the film just gets more and more silly. The first big flashing red light of 'writer-not-using-his-head'-syndrome comes when the security guard, who they killed and buried in the desert along with the stripper, getsan article in the newspaper and is referred to as 'a missing person'. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that guard SENT up to the room by Hotel Staff? And then, all of a sudden, after going into that room, he doesn't show up down at reception again. And they don't even THINK about getting hold of the guy who paid for that room and question him? Are we really expected to believe that the staff said 'Oh, Larry didn't come back down from room 1078. That's odd. He's gone missing. He's just vanished into thin air. Oh well, better call the newspapers'?

After this, the film descends into stupidity, and all the characters come off as having no feelings or guilt. Cameron Diaz especially acts way out of character near the end. It's just not believable.

It's a shame. After Act One, the writer trades good dialogue, believable and dynamic character exposition and a well-paced plot line for grotesque violence with no justification. I swear, after the first 20 minutes I thought I was watching another 'Deer Hunter'. After it's over, it's more like 'Dear God'.

This film is actually three short films, only connected by the fact that they take place in New York City. So I will comment on them individually.

The first short, 'Life Lessons', is directed by Martin Scorsese and is about Lionel Dobie, an artist (Nick Nolte) whos girlfriend Paulette (Rosanna Arquette) dumps him as a lover, yet stays in his atelier to live. Nolte, from the first scene, portrays a neurotic, 'typical' New York abstract painter, complete with discrete little temper tantrums about deadlines. He seems balanced and normal. But his painting is going nowhere. So he drives to the airport to pick up his girlfriend, and she discloses to him that she is leaving him and going home to her brother. She fell for a stand-up comedian (played by Steve Buschemi - his comedy scene is great because it's bad humour in a stunning setting) but he dumped her the day after. But, this fling flung her out of her comfortable relationship with Lionel (where we get the image that she was never happy anyway) and now she's going home. Lionel stays cooler as you would expect and convinces her to stay with him, no strings attached, for her sake. We believe him, at this stage.

Back at the atelier, however, the reality of this new relationship starts to shine through. Paulette doesn't like Lionel very much and has a real identity problem (you get the impression that she paints just because Lionel does), but Lionel appears more and more obsessed - not so much with Paulette herself, but with the company. He percieves Paulette as his property and becomes ragingly jealous when she brings guys home. Paulette, stuck in his atelier, teases him by dressing provocatively and asking him questions like 'Do you love me? - Then prove it by...'. Because of Paulette not being within his grasp, Lionel goes down the tubes. It's not love, in my opinion. It's pride.

But, as Lionel's real world fades and collapses, his painting grows and changes and comes to life. The moment his own life with Paulette ends, the life of his painting begins.

It's sort of a heavy story in the way that you really have to concentrate and suss out the character's motives. It's not light 'E.R.'-type drama, but it's a lot more fulfilling.



And so we are led into 'Life without Zoe', directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It's about a 12-year-old girl and her little life. If Martin Scorsese had stayed in the director's chair for this segment too, we could have had a re-run of 'Taxi Driver', where the 12-year old was a prostitute and the story was rough, but excellent. Instead, the 12-year-old is a rich Vada Sultenfuss, and the story is saccharine and empty. This middle film is destined to be the one people forget. For one thing, there is no narrative drive in the story as far as I can see - there is a robbery which is pretty pointless, there is a rich little boy who has a costume party, and there's the parents. While there are a few charming qualities - that the parents act childishly and their child mothers them; that the costume party is ludicrously lavish to the extent of having violinists and flambeed whatever at the baby's table - this segment is a children's movie. Nothing more, nothing less. Kids would get a kick out of seeing the wealth and possibilites of the kids and the fun of the party, but that's about it. Bad acting is acceptable in children - and abundant here - but it's also present in the adult performances. Some loser says after the robbery 'Wow if I could only hold on to that sense memory I'd be head of my acting class'. You've got a long way to go, buddy...

And so it's time for 'Oedipus Wrecks' by Woody Allen. This is the funny one. In fact it's so wonderfully absurd that I won't spoil it by telling you much about it. Only that Woody Allen surprisingly plays a neurotic New Yorker, and this time he is embarrased because his mother is always on his back and bothering him. The development of this story is just so strange and funny that I'll let you find out about it for yourself. It's not Woody at his best, but it's still funny.

Altogether, the segments I would rate 7,4,7 giving an average of 6.

The cast from the highly succesful film 'A fish called Wanda' is back, with a film totally unconnected with it. That is to say, none of the actors involved in the two movies - John Cleese, Michael Palin, Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline - play the same characters, and the setting is completely different. It also means that this film was completely unsuccesful. So, why is it that the same actors and author (John Cleese) responsible for a film that caused a man to die laughing in the theatre (really!) make another movie which is totally ignored and forgotten?

Search me. But this movie is ignored, and in my opinion that's a good thing. It's not nearly as good as "A fish called Wanda", which deserves to be remembered.

To me, this movie fails not so much in the comic timing or its delivery - the situation development is clearly Cleese, and smacks of the classic 'Fawlty Towers' episodes - but the subject matter. Whereas 'A Fish called Wanda' and 'Fawlty Towers' always put the protagonists in enourmously embarrasing situations, due to their own stupidity coupled with circumstance. You'd laugh till you cried as you saw Basil Fawlty again and again unintentionally convincing the psyciatrist that he really was completely insane, or the way Michael Palin in 'Wanda' managed to crush those little dogs without fail.

In 'Fierce Creatures', all that Clessesque talent to build situation is spent merely on convincing his american bosses that he's having a lot of sex. To me, this is not particularly embarrasing. Maybe to a tight-lipped Englishman it is, but not to me. Therefore, already the film's comedic potential - to me - goes down the tubes.

And that's before the plot even gets going. Allright, so 'Wanda's plot was a little wierd too, but this is just strange. OK, it's original, but it seems a little thin to build a whole movie on. The premise is this:

A big multinational firm buys a chain of companies, which includes a zoo. The big brash head of the company (Kevin Kline) demands a 20% return on his money from all his enterprises, so he hires a chinese ex-policeman called Rollo Lee (John Cleese - and no, he doesn't look chinese at all) to supervise the zoo's earnings and get them over the 20% limit. To do this, he demands that the only animals allowed in the zoo are supposed to be fierce man-eaters, to get the audiences.

Well, the boss sends two supervisors; his son (Kevin Kline again, he can't resist those roles where he gets to dress up) and a girl called Willa (Jamie Lee Curtis). And so it goes - Willa falls in love with the zoo and Rollo, and Kevin Kline is just an idiot.

They are fighting to stop the big boss from selling the zoo. But in my Wanda-saturated mind, I was already saying "No Sale".