To say that BANDITS one of the most crudely put together movies I have ever seen is an understatement. There were times where I didn't know where the characters were, what their motivations are, what their relationships are to one another, etc. It also does this thing where the whole movie is a flashback and its so poorly directed and edited that I didn't know when we were in the flashback or when it was the present.
This movie steps into every bad comedy trap there is, and I mean EVERY SINGLE trap. There are at least five of those loud arguments where nobody says anything important and its supposed to be funny. I counted two times where two guys are in a fist fight over a woman and she gets in the middle and yells at them to stop. There's the character that's a hypochondriac (ha ha). I counted 3 faints (nobody laughed at those since the Marx Brothers). At least three or four senseless car chases, etc. The movie's like a road map of what can go wrong at the screen writing stage. It might even make a good educational tool for aspiring screenwriters.
The thing that's really shocking though are the people involved. Barry Levinson's one of my favorite directer (or at least he was before I saw BANDITS) and the guy who edited BANDITS has done all his films. They did YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES, WAG THE DOG, and RAIN MAN. Billy Bob Thorton's has done great movies before (has anyone seen A SIMPLE PLAN?) and Cate Blanchett should have won the Oscar for her work in ELIZABETH. So why was this movie made and why did all of these talented people make it incompetently. This movie looks like it could have been written by some of the losers at the International Student Media Festival!
This movie steps into every bad comedy trap there is, and I mean EVERY SINGLE trap. There are at least five of those loud arguments where nobody says anything important and its supposed to be funny. I counted two times where two guys are in a fist fight over a woman and she gets in the middle and yells at them to stop. There's the character that's a hypochondriac (ha ha). I counted 3 faints (nobody laughed at those since the Marx Brothers). At least three or four senseless car chases, etc. The movie's like a road map of what can go wrong at the screen writing stage. It might even make a good educational tool for aspiring screenwriters.
The thing that's really shocking though are the people involved. Barry Levinson's one of my favorite directer (or at least he was before I saw BANDITS) and the guy who edited BANDITS has done all his films. They did YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES, WAG THE DOG, and RAIN MAN. Billy Bob Thorton's has done great movies before (has anyone seen A SIMPLE PLAN?) and Cate Blanchett should have won the Oscar for her work in ELIZABETH. So why was this movie made and why did all of these talented people make it incompetently. This movie looks like it could have been written by some of the losers at the International Student Media Festival!