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flatstep77
Reviews
The Westing Game (1997)
Rare Improvement on Book
Some people on these boards apparently want to maintain their adolescence by believing what they read as children has value in the mature world. I watched this with my daughter the day -- she liked the cover -- and realized that I'd read this when I was in school, a long time ago. I hated this when I was 14 -- too many characters, too many cute elements, such smarmy inside jokes. The whole thing left a bitter taste in my mouth, one that I've been trying to erase for a long time. The movie finally did it. Cute but not stupid, you never felt as if you were out of it because you didn't see what the point was. It never patronized or condescended. It was truly liberating.
Never mind comparisons to the book, which if you hated you'll love the movie and if you loved the book, you'll hate the movie -- twas ever thus; the movie itself was well acted, beautifully shot, cleverly designed and even done where I grew up in Milwaukee. All in all, excellent. My daughter liked it too. She's 9.
Scorpius Gigantus (2006)
I Did Have Fun
I rented this to see what it was really like -- and it was just like every other monster movie in the current crop. Experiment on something, it goes wrong, send somebody in to save the day. The girls were cute; the guys were not so competent, the lead was full of himself. It's a carbon copy except for the bizarre language moments, though I kind of liked those too. All in all I had more fun than I should have. I mean once you accept that the bugs are CG bugs, then they're just like every other monster movie out there. Maybe they went overboard with beheading the cute babe, and maybe we didn't need to see the snot shooting out of the bad actor's nose, but it all seemed right to me.