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Reviews
The Pink Panther (2006)
It does have its laugh-out-loud moments
Remakes, rehashes, call them what you will, are becoming the 21st century Hollywood staple. Old movies and old TV series alike have become a fertile ground for an industry that seems to have exhausted its entire supply of original ideas.
Which is not to say that it's always a bad thing. "The Pink Panther" 2006 style, is forgettable froth, but it is watchable. I had my reservations going in not merely because Peter Sellers was one of a kind, but I must confess to being absolutely not a Steve Martin fan. I find his "humour" more irritating than funny.
So, given my low expectations, I have to say he makes a reasonable job of infusing his version of the Clouseau character with something other than a poor Sellers rip-off. Indeed, it is to Martin's credit that he plays the role his way, and doesn't even try to imitate the man who made the part his own. In other words, Steve Martin plays Clouseau, and not Sellers-playing-Clouseau. That's a relief, for starters. He could simply never pull it off if he tried.
Actually, Martin makes a better Clouseau than Kevin Kline makes a Dreyfus. He is almost singularly unfunny in his role as the long suffering boss of the world's worst policeman. This is a pity, because although the movie is very funny in parts, it is no more than a slapstick farce and could have used even more funny moments than its delivers.
The scenes involving the unluckiest cyclist in Paris are particularly funny, even if they are telegraphed from a mile away, while Clouseau's hopeless attempts to parallel park a Smartcar into a space large enough to accommodate a Jumbo Jet are no less funny merely because even a blind man could see it coming. On a more subtle level, the mild digs at both French and American culture are amusing, even if the scene where Clouseau takes a lesson in "American accent" is overlong and easily the most irritating in the film.
One thing that the film proves very quickly indeed is that Beyonce Knowles can't act. Her portrayal of a superstar singer whose boyfriend was murdered moments after he proposed to her is so unspeakably bad that it adds some moments of great humour to the film that were never intended. If Ms Knowles was hoping to emulate the likes of Barbra Streisand and make the transition from singing diva to screen star, she should abandon ship now. She can't even sing like Streisand, and she can barely act like a lamp post.
The Da Vinci Code (2006)
A dark and disappointing adaptation
Let me state at the outset that I am not going to debate the merits or otherwise of the storyline. Dan Brown himself has gone to great pains to point out that "The Da Vinci Code" is a work of fiction, and it even so says on on the book's cover. The truth or otherwise of the story has been debated to death, suffice to say that I treated the book and the movie alike as fiction.
As for the movie itself, I have to say that I am no doubt in the minority here, but I found it highly disappointing and one of the worst big screen adaptations of a blockbuster novel ever, the putrid "Raise The Titanic!" aside.
In a nutshell, had I not already read the book, I would have had virtually no idea of what on earth was going on. One problem is immediately identifiable. The way the book is written, with so much reliance on codes and clever word games (anagrams) simply does not lend itself to a smooth transition to film. Although I read the book in one weekend, there were several passages that I would reread or stop and ponder upon for a few moments, before continuing. This obviously doesn't work with a film, where you have to follow the story at the film's pace and not your own.
Secondly, too much of the movie is set at night and/or in dark environments, where I found it difficult to see what was happening while still trying to follow the often heavily-accented dialogue. Admittedly I watched the movie on DVD and it may have come across better on the big screen, but I somehow doubt it.
Thirdly, there is too much detail in the novel to make a movie of acceptable length. Thus the film, while trying to say as faithful to Brown's tale as possible, rushes through many scenes in a desperate bid to get everything in without going on all night as it does so. It could be argued that the scriptwriters and everyone involved with the project took the view that almost everybody who watched the movie would have already read the book anyway. It certainly comes across that way, but that isn't the purpose of filming a book, is it? On top of everything else, I though the acting was largely weak. Tom Hanks is a wonderful actor, but he is seriously miscast as professor-turned reluctant action hero Dr Robert Langdon. Harrison Ford, for instance, would have been a much more effective choice. Audrey Tautou's accent may be charming, but it made it extremely hard to understand what she was saying, a serious flaw for so central a character. And although I enjoy Jean Reno's acting, is he really the only French actor who can speak English? He seems to turn up in every movie that requires a French male character these days. Having said that, he is just about the only person in this entire movie who is believable in the role he or she is playing.
If you haven't seen the movie, read the book first. Read the book anyway, and draw your own conclusions, if you haven't already done so. The film version, however, is strictly superfluous.
Raise the Titanic (1980)
An unspeakable mess
There are films that you can say, they're so bad, they're good, like some of those silly locust/piranha/snake/shark/pick a creature of your choice infestation movies.
"Raise The Titanic" is merely bad. It is well chronicled that Clive Cussler, author of the book upon which this garbage is allegedly based, was so horrified with the end result that he refused to allow another of his books to be filmed. He eventually relented more than 20 years later, when "Sahara" arrived. By the sounds of things it may be a freezing day in hell before Cussler gives his blessing for a third time.
That is a pity because he writes those wonderfully absurd and over-the-top stories that are just begging to be turned into popcorn blockbusters, but who can blame the man. "Raise The Titanic" may be the worst big screen adaptation of a novel ever, although the "Da Vinci Code" isn't far behind.
We'll forgive some of the technical absurdities in the story line. The film was made some years before the wreck of the Titanic was discovered and nobody could have known that it is so thoroughly mangled, even if the beautifully whole and well preserved specimen the movie offers was always going to be wildly unlikely. We need an intact Titanic for the story to work, so fine, we can live with it.
What we cannot stomach is the incredible hatchet job which the screenwriters did on Cussler's novel, changing place and people names for no reason. Historical research obviously meant squat to these people so in the film we end up with a man who played in the band on the Olympic for three years before joining Titanic. The fact that Olympic went into service only about one year before Titanic is calmly disregarded. It's a minor point to all but real ship buffs, but you won't find it in the book.
The story is set during the Cold War. Apparently some very rare and utterly fictitious metal called Byzanium will for some reason make nuclear war obsolete, or some such crap. Surprise surprise, the entire world's supply of Byzanium is...you guess it, lying on the bottom of the Atlantic, thanks to a dastardly iceberg. The Americans must have it, so Dirk Pitt and company accept the challenge of raising the Titanic from two-and-a-half-miles down as if they were being asked to wash the dishes.
The threatening hurricane which adds excitement to the book is totally missing here as our heroes plod through one of the most tedious and poorly filmed "blockbusters" ever to disgrace the cinema and eventually pop the Titanic to the surface. After endless and quite stunningly boring undersea shots of what a three-year-old child could see is a scale model, the Titanic unglues herself from her watery grave and, hey presto, there she is, ready to complete her interrupted journey to New York. Lovely stuff, but after taking forever to set the scene the raising itself is made to look about as tricky as lifting a toy submarine from the shallow end of a swimming pool.
And, guess what, folks!! The Byzanium ISN'T on the Titanic, after all. It's in an English cemetery, but of course opening graves isn't much of a story line when compared to raising sunken liners, is it? The final plot "twist" in said cemetery is so absurd it defies belief, and again it didn't come from the book.
Acting? Some talented actors do the best they can with a truly atrocious script. Anne Archer is left with the unenviable task of uttering the most stomach-churning line ever committed to celluloid - "I just can't get the wormie on the hookie,". which could have been enough all by itself to destroy her career. In fact her role is removed of all meaning by the screenwriters and Ms Archer seems to have nothing more to do but be the pretty female in the cast.
The late Richard Jordan is a passable Pitt, but Jason Robards is nothing like the feisty Sandecker of the Cussler novels. Even Alec Guiness as a surviving crew member of the Titanic can't do much in his cameo role to stop the pile of rubbish from sinking faster than the object of its storyline.
It is no great surprise that "Raise The Titanic" quickly gained notoriety as one of the, if not THE, biggest bomb in Hollywood history. The special effects are awful even by the standards of the time (1972's "The Poseidon Adventure" is even older but fares much better in this department). The acting is wooden, the film is disjointed, and it just doesn't gel. There are a desperately few moments to savour. The scene where the Titanic surfaces is moving, and the music which accompanies it is evocative, but that's about it.
With a budget of some $30 million - enormous for its time - they could hardly have done a worse job of it. Why on earth they hired a director whose experience was limited to TV serials is one of the greatest mysteries of all time. What is much clearer is what producer Lew (later Lord) Grade meant when he said "Raise The Titanic? It would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic."
That is my favourite quote in showbiz,and is ultimately the movie's longest lasting legacy. Famous, for all (and I mean ALL) the wrong reasons.
The Poseidon Adventure (2005)
Very weak remake of 70s classic
Clichés abound like faux Father Christmases in December in this extremely weak remake of the 1972 movie which, when all is said in done, spawned a Hollywood love affair with disaster flicks which continues to this day.
The problem, of course, is that everything resembling an original idea has evidently been long exhausted. So what do we get in the space of a few months? Not one, but two, rehashes of the Poseidon Adventure. Put together, the two cannot hold a candle to the original.
The first and most obvious cliché is that inevitable phenomenon of our post 9/11 world - the terrorist plot. Exactly why terrorists wanted to blow up the good ship Poseidon is something I have already forgotten. Which leads me to one of the biggest flaws in a seriously flawed production. The characters are so poorly sketched that you don't really give a stuff about who is doing what, or why.
I watched this in its mini-series format, spread out over two nights, which of course didn't help. The whole premise is so weak that after 24 hours I had already forgotten almost all of part one. One thing that does stick in my mind is how ludicrously miscast Rutger Hauer is as a bishop, presumably reviving more-or-less the role played with such Godfearing gusto by Gene Hackman in 1972. At least, though, Hauer makes some attempt at injecting a bit of passion into his part, even if he is utterly the wrong actor for the job. Most of the rest of the cast goes through the motions as best as could be expected from a C-Grade crowd, looking for all the world as if they are doing whatever needs to be done to ensure a pay cheque and stuff-all else.
The capsizing scene actually isn't bad. It's no worse than what we see in the woefully disappointing "Poseidon" which followed a few months later, and in some ways the made-for-TV effort is actually better than its big-screen successor. But that is saying very little, and ultimately the "Poseidon Adventure" 2005 is a mess, drawn out, poorly cast, woefully written, and about as gripping as a slap in the face with a dead goldfish.