This movie could be rated as garbage but garbage it's not. Great movies leave me in a highly emotional state. Even if the subject is not tragic I catch my breath and my eyes begin to water. Alas, there are far too many movies that lend me the feeling that I have wasted 90 minutes or so of my life (several Oscar award winning works and box office successes are guilty as well as the obvious bombs). They leave a bitter-sour taste behind them.
Yet there are other works which do not displease but are hardly great. Maybe in essence such pieces-which render nothing more than a pleasant after taste- like a young wine- behind, are even more priceless in essence than the truly great movies as they entertain and for my money that is what the film industry is all about. Good little movies such as Scoop are carefully crafted melodramas. It is not really comedy as I for one did not roll with laughter in the aisles of my TV den . Woody Allen's humour, though delicious, is of the dry tongue-in- cheek kind. Don't miss the lines, listen carefully, easier to do with a DVD player than at the theatre.
Scoop is a predictable Nancy Drew sort of tale of foul murders, with the addition of a small degree of fantasy and vengeful ghosts. Not of the Stephen King or Hammer films ilk. There is no blood or gore, the dead souls being rowed to Hades by Charon look and act more like passengers on a London bus than shades passing across the Styx , there is even an unwritten sign : "Don't Speak to the Driver". One murdered soul accidentally discovers that by plunging into the black river he can swim back the land of the living to appear momentarily in Duncan style, not to haunt "Macbeth" but to provide cryptic clues to the doubting young American girl and her convinced Vaudeville "Dad " so they can pin the real murderer whose signature seems to be a Tarot card. By the end of the film, one realises that having succeeded in fingering the murderer there is a price that somebody among the good people has to pay.
For all that the acting is smooth, the cast is good and the leading actors and actresses are superb. Scarlet Johannsen is very good looking by today's rather dismal standards. She is basically a plain wholesome and fresh plain young woman who has such a natural attractive personality and thick-lipped sensuality that makes her beautiful. This comes through even when playing the rather nerdy role of an ungainly badly dressed and bespectacled young naïve American in London. Woody, so atrociously clad he looks like he gets his rags from the Salvation Army, plays the role of a bumbling old fool who among other things gets locked inside a secure room and trumps that by forgetting the combination which would allow his attentive co-amateur detective outside to let him out. I can imagine the parts during 1940s being played by Lucille Ball and Bob Hope respectively . -
Now the cinematography is awesome. The scenes are set in London and the Home Counties. Even a brief scene in an antique store is delicious, This brought to my mind that contrary to raves by some critics and reviewers that it is a "European-style" film (whatever in Hell that means), and despite having been produced under the umbrella of the BBC, it is really designed mainly for American audiences. The usual picture-postcard views. The old metropolis seems to glow and the perpetually grey overcast skies of southern England don't seem to matter as the constantly rains sprinkled gardens are beautiful (not that there is a single rainy day and the only fog is on the River Styx but there is little sunshine). The extras catering to the aspired American audience seem to be hired from Hollywood's Casting Center of English Characters. Did you spot the Prince Charles look alike in one of the garden party scenes?
The musical background is largely Tschaikovsky with a touch of Greig during the ending credits aside from the odd party Rumba.
This is a movie worth spending 90 uninterrupted minutes of one's life in enjoying it.
Yet there are other works which do not displease but are hardly great. Maybe in essence such pieces-which render nothing more than a pleasant after taste- like a young wine- behind, are even more priceless in essence than the truly great movies as they entertain and for my money that is what the film industry is all about. Good little movies such as Scoop are carefully crafted melodramas. It is not really comedy as I for one did not roll with laughter in the aisles of my TV den . Woody Allen's humour, though delicious, is of the dry tongue-in- cheek kind. Don't miss the lines, listen carefully, easier to do with a DVD player than at the theatre.
Scoop is a predictable Nancy Drew sort of tale of foul murders, with the addition of a small degree of fantasy and vengeful ghosts. Not of the Stephen King or Hammer films ilk. There is no blood or gore, the dead souls being rowed to Hades by Charon look and act more like passengers on a London bus than shades passing across the Styx , there is even an unwritten sign : "Don't Speak to the Driver". One murdered soul accidentally discovers that by plunging into the black river he can swim back the land of the living to appear momentarily in Duncan style, not to haunt "Macbeth" but to provide cryptic clues to the doubting young American girl and her convinced Vaudeville "Dad " so they can pin the real murderer whose signature seems to be a Tarot card. By the end of the film, one realises that having succeeded in fingering the murderer there is a price that somebody among the good people has to pay.
For all that the acting is smooth, the cast is good and the leading actors and actresses are superb. Scarlet Johannsen is very good looking by today's rather dismal standards. She is basically a plain wholesome and fresh plain young woman who has such a natural attractive personality and thick-lipped sensuality that makes her beautiful. This comes through even when playing the rather nerdy role of an ungainly badly dressed and bespectacled young naïve American in London. Woody, so atrociously clad he looks like he gets his rags from the Salvation Army, plays the role of a bumbling old fool who among other things gets locked inside a secure room and trumps that by forgetting the combination which would allow his attentive co-amateur detective outside to let him out. I can imagine the parts during 1940s being played by Lucille Ball and Bob Hope respectively . -
Now the cinematography is awesome. The scenes are set in London and the Home Counties. Even a brief scene in an antique store is delicious, This brought to my mind that contrary to raves by some critics and reviewers that it is a "European-style" film (whatever in Hell that means), and despite having been produced under the umbrella of the BBC, it is really designed mainly for American audiences. The usual picture-postcard views. The old metropolis seems to glow and the perpetually grey overcast skies of southern England don't seem to matter as the constantly rains sprinkled gardens are beautiful (not that there is a single rainy day and the only fog is on the River Styx but there is little sunshine). The extras catering to the aspired American audience seem to be hired from Hollywood's Casting Center of English Characters. Did you spot the Prince Charles look alike in one of the garden party scenes?
The musical background is largely Tschaikovsky with a touch of Greig during the ending credits aside from the odd party Rumba.
This is a movie worth spending 90 uninterrupted minutes of one's life in enjoying it.