"Ship of Fools" reminded me of "Grand Hotel": take a bunch of big-name stars, fit them out in a screenplay full of romantic melodrama, and watch everyone go to town. Unfortunately, the formula doesn't work so well when the backdrop for the story is pre-WWII Germany; it makes the melodrama seem not only irrelevant, but also somewhat tasteless.
I couldn't find much to care about in this film, despite its solid production values and talented cast. The doomed love affair at the center of the drama seems tailor made to bore one to death -- other plot lines, like the one involving George Segal and Elizabeth Ashley, get short shrift by the screenwriters.
There are three reasons to see "Ship of Fools": 1.) Michael Dunn, who gives a winsome and entirely winning performance as the diminutive narrator and speaks directly into the camera in a gimmick that shouldn't work but does 2.) Lee Marvin, giving a pleasingly unlikable performance as a belligerent American 3.) and Vivien Leigh, whose morose character at one point in the film breaks into a five-second spirited Charleston, which by itself makes the film worth sitting through.
Grade: B
I couldn't find much to care about in this film, despite its solid production values and talented cast. The doomed love affair at the center of the drama seems tailor made to bore one to death -- other plot lines, like the one involving George Segal and Elizabeth Ashley, get short shrift by the screenwriters.
There are three reasons to see "Ship of Fools": 1.) Michael Dunn, who gives a winsome and entirely winning performance as the diminutive narrator and speaks directly into the camera in a gimmick that shouldn't work but does 2.) Lee Marvin, giving a pleasingly unlikable performance as a belligerent American 3.) and Vivien Leigh, whose morose character at one point in the film breaks into a five-second spirited Charleston, which by itself makes the film worth sitting through.
Grade: B