Reviews

For a long time when I was a kid, this film sat on the shelf of our local video store and I used to glance in its direction, seeing as the cover looked kind of fun. One day, I persuaded my mother to rent it for me, but when we got the tape home, it was corrupted, which meant no "Freddie as F.R.O.7" for me. At the time, I was disappointed. Having actually sat through this film when it was on satellite TV recently (precious moments of my life that I can never have back - it is perhaps no defence to say that there was something hypnotic about the awfulness), I am glad I did not endure this as a child.

This film sums up everything that is bad with some kids' films. It's lazy, amateurish and uninspired. You get the impression the feeling was that the kids wouldn't really notice how bad the script and storyline were, and how unconvincing the characters. It seriously underestimates its audience; OK, I'm a grown-up now, but I hope as a kid, I would have called this for the nonsense that it was (and from other comments on here, I can see a fair few people who watched this as children did just that).

Freddie is a French frog (not sure whether the whole idea of the character is actually politically correct these days, really) who ends up as a British secret agent, the logical career progression, I am sure, after you have started out life as a prince, but thanks to the evil machinations of your aunt, end up an amphibian in the palace moat. This curious medieval-set section from the beginning of the film, as others have noted, appears to belong in a different draft of the script. Then I don't know where the aunt goes, there's something about the Loch Ness monster and some woman and some disturbing suggestions that the frog fancies both of them and then Brian Blessed appears. Brian appears to be doing an animated version of his role in "Flash Gordon", and I kept expecting him to shout "Gordon's alive?!" at some moment where the stupid frog was doing something moronic. Brian Blessed is trying to take over Britain by stealing monuments and using them as power sources or shrinking them or... something. Somehow, people across Britain get sent to sleep (possibly they have been forced to watch this tripe). Then Freddie manages to remember that love is more powerful than a sword and then this helps him to use some power that comes out of his tongue or eyes or whatever, to kick Brian Blessed's behind, and then somehow Brian gets shrunk so that he can fit in a little matchbox. Then the aunt reappears as a scorpion or a snake or something and gets electrocuted. Then I think it's over.

A few comments on IMDb have praised the animation; to me personally, it looks horrendously ropey, but I may be unfairly judging it by 2007 standards. In my view it's certainly not stood the test of time. Astonishingly, this film features a voice cast that looks incredibly strong on paper: as well as the aforementioned Blessed, we have (Sir) Ben Kingsley, Jonathan Pryce and Nigel Hawthorne, all fine actors who I suppose must have had tax bills to pay in 1992. They can do nothing to salvage this horrible, animated mess. The lines these guys have to work with are shockingly bad. The scriptwriter's idea of humour is for Freddie to express clichés such as: "Well, we can see 'ere dat, 'ow you say, your chickens 'ave come 'ome to roost!" I may have missed something, but I thought this line was said following a sequence that had nothing to do with chickens, coming home or roosting, and as such was entirely random and apropos of nothing - is there supposed to be a joke somewhere that I failed to grasp? I have no idea - perhaps it just filled a few more seconds of screen time and that was the idea. Then there's the dreadful songs and just... ugh. Horrible film, and an embarrassment for all involved. Kids (and the adults who watch films with them) deserve a lot better. Whilst I am sure it will not have had anything like the same budget, "Freddie as F.R.O.7" came out the same year as Disney's "Aladdin"; the latter is light years ahead for entertainment value, professionalism and treating children with even just a bit of intelligence and good taste.

This is a deeply unpleasant film, with no redeeming qualities other than the presence of the undoubtedly talented Michael Rooker, an actor who has been unfortunate enough to spend his career languishing in roles, and movies, far beneath his capabilities.

The movie lacks the drama and tension of a thriller and is simply a succession of ultra-violent scenes. By the final reel the violence has become so over-the-top as to be sickening - the final battle is nothing but blood and guts galore. The lead female character is blasted to death, quite unnecessarily, and no other character seems to care. Her body is dragged out of the way and the boys carry on with their shooting of each other.

Quite horrible, and not to be recommended.

"Maid in Manhattan" is a romantic comedy with two major problems: it's not romantic, and it's not funny.

One major problem (noted by nearly all IMDb reviewers so far) is the casting. You simply cannot believe Jennifer "J-Lo" Lopez as a lowly hotel chambermaid, nervous and excited at the prospect of wearing a guest's $5000 outfit. It might have worked if Lopez were capable of arch self-knowingness on-screen or if she attempted to parody herself or play on the rumours of her "diva-esque" behaviour, but she plays it straight throughout and thus is never even close to being convincing.

Lopez at least does better than Ralph Fiennes, an apparently talented actor with a host of impressive film credits to his name, who spends most of the film looking vaguely embarrassed and as if he might, at any moment, need to make a telephone call to his agent. Presumably he is supposed to seem dashing and charming, but he just comes across as an unsexy yet over-sexed politician. As I would probably criticise an American actor's poor English accent, it has to be said that Fiennes's attempts at an American drawl do seem to be pretty appalling, even to my British ears, but his major problem is that he, too, is simply not believable in the role he has been given: Fiennes is not romantic comedy material, and something about the way he never quite makes his presence felt on screen shows you that he himself knows it.

The script is pretty awful, but cheesy lines and bad dialogue do not necessarily get in the way of an enjoyable romantic comedy film - what matters is whether it all hangs together: do we care whether these people get together? Are we rooting for them? And here, it's hard to see how anyone could care about these two. Fiennes and Lopez meet and seem to fall for each other for no reason at all - there is zero chemistry between the pair, and their scenes do not reveal any kind of understanding between them. Lopez's character speaks of some amazing "connection" between herself and Fiennes's senator, and we are left wondering if perhaps they had some meeting not committed to celluloid where they talked, maybe got along, had a good time, made each other laugh etc etc etc because none of these things happen here. J-Lo gets a magazine stuck to her behind, something that gives us one of the film's most excruciating scenes (and lines), and they look at each other a bit, and Fiennes's character seems to think Lopez's is hot, and well, that's it. Pretty uninspiring stuff.

Meanwhile, Bob Hoskins turns up, pretty randomly, as a butler who teaches J-Lo how to arrange cups on a tray or something, and then quits his job when Ms Lopez is (pretty fairly and reasonably, in the circumstances) fired by the hotel, Bob telling her she will make a good manager someday. More examples of the film's failure to convince: like the mysterious "connection" between the two leads, we are presumably supposed to imagine for ourselves Lopez's managerial skills (cup-arranging does not seem to be an executive role), as we are not shown them on-screen - and Hoskins's giving up of his employment over a thief being correctly identified and punished is just plain stupid.

Natasha Richardson is spared having to adopt a phoney American accent, but she does appear to have been contractually obliged to repeatedly embarass herself and generally look pathetic. It's a great shame that her pitiful character comes the closest to eliciting a smile or a laugh out of the audience, because we are only being encouraged to laugh at how sad this woman is for daring to think the non-charming, non-dashing Fiennes could ever be interested in her, rather than there being any wit or real humour in her lines.

Most excruciatingly embarassing of all is the end sequence in which the lead characters are reunited after Lopez's son turns up at one of Fiennes's press conferences and asks the kind of question kids in bad cheesy movies usually ask, only one hundred times worse.

Most romantic comedies do not achieve cinematic excellence, but the better examples of the genre at least serve as light entertainment. This film does not even manage that.