Reviews

It's funny reading the external reviews for this film. Roger Ebert was such a sourpuss! Whereas Janet Maslin and Pauline Kael, both very serious critics as well, took it for what it was--a harmless, enjoyable little romp through the stone age. I'm sure in 1981 it would have been classed in the same category as "Holy Moses", "History of the World, Part I" and the like, an "adult" comedy filled with innuendo and sly scatological humor. These days it would probably be considered a family film. I was 9 or 10 when I saw it on cable at the baby sitter's house and it tickled me to no end. Watching it again recently it's a ghastly enterprise that would barely make the cut on Comedy Central but it does have its charms, chief among them Ringo Starr as the hapless hero. He's a great physical comedian, using only his face, body and a vocabulary of grunts to express himself. The dinosaurs that seem to be around every corner are goofily rendered in stop motion animation, yet they have twice the personality of any modern CG monster. It's all harmless fun and I wouldn't be horrified to show it to my 10 year old nephew.

I watched this yesterday and was astounded by the performances of all, but especially Mickey Rooney. He is so natural and fluid. His performance is seamless. For those who think of Mickey Rooney as a happy-go-lucky character type, this performance will floor you. He is nasty and ruthless and heartless. The rest of the cast is similarly flawless. How much time did it take to rehearse, I wonder? Watching these old live broadcasts is also a revelation. That they were able to have such variety and density in such confined environs is amazing. While some things such as transitions and breaks are crude by today's standards, that they did all of this live is impressive. There is a montage near the end of the program with cross-fades and multiple locations. How did they do it? The writing is equally spectacular. Can one think of anything similar being done today? As another reviewer noted, the denouement does have something of a false ring to it. I won't spoil it here. I know how I would have ended it. It would be interesting to read the Ernest Lehman story on which the show is based to see if it is the same.

This was a great little documentary series on HBO in the early 80s and it's part of what made the new frontier of cable television so wonderful. I think this might have been one of HBO's first original programs. This was History Channel long before the History Channel. Each episode was dedicated to a person, time, place or event in (mostly) the 20th Century. From the Titanic to the Hindenburg, from Babe Ruth to Broadway Joe this series wove with depth, intelligence and wit the tapestry of history that made us (collectively) who we are. It wasn't simply a matter of telling a story, but placing it context and showing how history's effects create the present. Dick Cavette was the narrator and his particular style of nonchalant intelligence engaged the viewer, never speaking down to the viewer or over their head. He was the perfect host for this entertaining, educational and very much missed program. It would be wonderful for this to find its way to DVD.

I hadn't watched this film since my teen years when I first got into the Bond films and watched them on television. I picked up one of the new enhanced DVDs and watched it with Roger Moore's commentary. First, the picture looks stunning. It's amazing what they've done. I thought, at best, it'll be nice to look at. But I was surprised how good it was in both story and performance. While it entirely ditches the plot of the novel, the writers did manage to keep some of the character history which gave it some legitimacy as an Ian Fleming adaptation. It also added some depth to the villain that could sometimes be lacking in the series. The film relies more on drama and light suspense than gadgets and action; it's more of a cat-and-mouse game than a race to save the world. The only drawback to the plot is the inclusion of the Solex. I suppose this was added in an attempt to reflect the current world energy crisis, but its handling of it gives a grounded, gritty action/drama film a bit too much of a sci-fi touch. Scaramanga's Fun House set is a bit silly for the proceedings as well. Might have been a bit more interesting had the two stalked each other through the streets of Hong Kong. But the locations are beautiful, John Barry's score is better than I remember and Moore balances toughness with his trademark light touch very nicely. And he's a delight to listen to on the commentary track. I will be pick up the rest of his films (replacing those I already have) just to hear his recollections.

97% of this takes place in the 'Baca household. The first 20 minutes are entirely in Wookiee-speak. No subtitles. At least 10 minutes is Chewie's little brother amusing himself with holographic circus acts. And what a disturbing family Chewie comes from. No wonder he runs off with Han Solo at every opportunity. He left his little brother with the wolves. That kid is totally f'd. Harvey Korman in drag doing his Julia Childs bit and Chewie's mom cleaving Bantha rump. And she's totally ill-prepared as a domestic. Hopefully she's better in the bedroom; why else would Chewie's dad marry such a harpie gasbag who couldn't cook her way out of a wet paper sack? Of course, he's no great catch himself. Gimpy, grumpy and old. And he digs some sort of intergalactic VR Wookiee porn. Dirty old man. Who thought this would be appropriate for kids? Luke looks like he just stepped out of a tanning booth. Harrison Ford is as dashing as ever, as Han is intercut with battle clips from Episode IV. Art Carney is the best thing in it. He's such an old pro and this was probably just another gig to him. The music is terrible. Sounds like it was composed entirely on a Casio keyboard. A cheap one. God, this is awful. Have a few stiff drinks or a few good tokes and catch this on YouTube.

This kind of "inspirational" saccharine is enough to make you sick. It telegraphs its sentiments like the biggest semaphore on earth. It removes from the audience its own interpretation and feeling by making the choices for it. The big finish is swimming in weeping orchestration that must supposed to work like jumper cables on a dead car; I guess you'd need such prompting to feel if you're stupid enough to watch a film as simple-minded and sappy as this. Streep glows and you wonder if she really has the depth of feeling on display or if it's just that---a display, switched on and off like a light. Because I can't for the life of me see how she could possibly find life in such a dud of film. Even though it's based on a true story, and an inspirational one at that I'm sure, the set-up, execution and performances play like a third-rate TV movie or half-witted high school drama.

How Burt Freundlich continues to get movies made is astonishing. He's been a hack since his first feature and continues to be with this film. Even more astonishing is that he got an actress as luminous, intelligent and talented as Julienne Moore to not only appear in his hack films but to marry him to boot! (I'm guessing there's an on-set love child reason behind this.) She's probably responsible for gathering the rest of the usually talented cast to participate in what amounts to be a sub-high school level wanna-be's attempt at a Woody Allen homage. Freundlich does not know drama, does not know structure, couldn't write a script if it were ghost written for him and directs with a hand so leaden it's amazing the audience can walk out of the theater afterward in full consciousness. His films are just mind-numbing. This guy is no auteur. It must have been a slow year at Sundance when "Myth of Fingerprints" slipped through with such shining notices (and, for God's sake, how did he assemble THAT cast? Such talent, so wasted.) What he needs to do for the sake of his craft is take some episodic TV jobs. Learn how to tell a story. And quit relying on your wife to get your sorry films made.

I wasn't sure if I should take this show seriously or not. I mean, you have fish walking around in cop uniforms and it's on another planet and is it funny bad or bad funny and is it on purpose or is it really that bad? The fish thing really threw me. I mean, walking, talking cop fish. What is that? It's a joke, right? Or are they serious? That's what I didn't get. Maybe I'm an idiot. Or maybe they're the idiots. I don't know. I was shocked--shocked!--to see 007 director John Glen was at the helm of this thing. I mean, really, after getting booted from Bond this is what he turns to? Walking, talking cop fish in outer space? Granted, that Christopher Columbus film is no classic, but you'd think he'd have gotten better offers than this. I actually only saw one episode and picked it up halfway through, so I really don't know what I'm talking about. Maybe it's an unsung classic. But it sure didn't seem like it.

This film was terrible. Forehead slapping leaps of logic, way too precious in performance and a "message" that should inspire the audience but only serves to deflate it (while simultaneously framing the film's writer-director as its symbol--the ultimate irony), "The Lady in the Water" couldn't be enjoyed even by the children for whom it was apparently written. Utterly useless waste of time and resources on the part of everyone involved (including the audience). That's pretty much all I have to say about it, but I need ten lines to be elligible for posting. There's only so many ways you can say a movie truly is terrible, too terrible to consider watching. Even an insomniac couldn't be put to sleep by this thing. If anything, it would make him so angry that he wasted his time watching it that he'd have to sit through an entirely different (and much better) movie to cleanse the taste of it from his brain. Don't go near the water, indeed.

No Bond film is completely worthless (Moonraker is worth the trip for the yucks alone, but it helps to be high when you watch it), but many are not worth their source material and this is one of them. It's unfortunate that the producers felt they had to constantly outdo themselves with each successive movie, straying further and further from their source. The book "Diamonds are Forever" is a taught, gritty thriller that would have made a swell noir in its day. The films always struggled with fidelity when it came to adaptation. Only "Goldfinger" and, largely, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" were faithful to (and, in the case of "Goldfinger", actually improved upon) their source. "Dr. No" and "From Russia With Love" suffered by their inclusion of SPECTRE. "Thunderball" needlessly complicated its plot. And "You Only Live Twice" began the unfortunate trend of picking only basic elements from the source and throwing them into a whole new fabrication. "Diamonds are Forever" suffers this fate, and not to its benefit. It starts with a diamond smuggling pipeline and brings Bond to America to face a cadre of colorful thugs, as the novel did, but departs wildly by replacing the mob with SPECTRE as the chief villain. From there it follows the standard formula the Bonds have more or less continued since.

But it suffers for more reasons than that. The script lacks wit, the performances lack conviction, the stunts are dry, the picture is flat. And everybody seems to be sweating. Connery is heavier and relaxed, but he's completely charmless. Charles Gray is simply wrong for Blofeld (they've never really gotten this character right on screen). I suppose Jill St. John is okay as Tiffany Case. She could have been a little tougher. She started out right, but descended into hapless damsel. Wint and Kidd, ruthless killers in the novel, are played for laughs. Even John Barry's score feels listless. It even regurgitates some cues from "From Russia with Love" (which would later reappear in "Moonraker"). Perhaps he was becoming as bored with the franchise as Connery had. The series would continue to bloat throughout the seventies before tightening up again in the eighties.

If you're a completist it's worth watching, but probably not worth having on your shelf. Of course, when there's nothing else on TV a Bond film always fills the hole.

It's true this film plays out more like a video game than a James Bond thriller of old and it's a little too self-referential, even for a Bond, but it does have its moments. However, those moments only made me think of better days.

When Bond goes to Cuba I thought, "That's something Connery could have done back in the day." It would have been brilliant and timely to have had Connery go to Cuba (even though none of his films have taken place there.) I thought the sword fight was a classic duel way past its due in the series. We've seen Bond fight with all manner of gadgets, guns and fisticuffs but a fencing match is really perfect for the character. Brosnan pulls it off with his physicality but it could have used a little more grace. Another "Connery moment" that could have been.

The total outrageousness of the plot, of course, reminded me of the worst of the Bond films, particularly "Moonraker", and perhaps that was the point of reference for this anniversary film. I guess it should be of little surprise that both this film and "Moonraker" represent the highest financial achievements in the series while simultaneously representing the lowest artistic achievements.

The CG effects were terrible. The charm of the Bond films is the believability of the props and action. Using models and practical effects make Bond appear to be at least somewhat human and provide tension that a CG effect simply can't generate. The worst offense was the para-sail, followed by the plane demise at the end. They both looked like straight-to-video knock-offs.

Brosnan is a good Bond but he needs better material. And for better material the series needs better writers. I don't know what happened to Michael G. Wilson. Maybe his co-writing credits on FYEO, OP, AVAK, LD and LTK weren't as deserved as they appear since the new films have none of the wit of Richard Maibaum's sure hand. I'd love to see Nicholas Meyer have a crack at it as sole writer not just a script doctor.