Reviews

I find that I must pull out this movie and watch it once every few years. Movies don't get a lot stranger than this one. Watching "Fantastic Planet" is like watching a dream Salvador Dali might have had in the 1970s after dropping acid, listening to Pink Floyd, and watching "The Ten Commandments" and "Horton Hears a Who" simultaneously. If this sounds appealing to you (and why wouldn't it?), you'll most likely enjoy this movie. Be warned: the film moves at a glacial pace. It's more about imagery than story or plot. Very imaginative stuff.

I can't add a lot to the comments already made by those who gave this movie a bad review. It really is horrible. You know an adventure movie is bad when you find yourself fast-forwarding through the battle sequences.

I rented this movie without carefully reading the plot outline on the jacket. I saw the title "Druids," read that it was about Vercingetorix, and assumed that the movie was based on the so-so book by Morgan Llywelyn, which I had read. However, the movie has nothing to do with the book. The movie has nothing to do with Druids. The movie has nothing to do with anything. I'm not even sure there was a script (despite the fact that there were at least two writing credits). If there was a script, I'm not sure anyone in the movie bothered to read it.

The casting is good for a mild chuckle. I love how the young Vercingetorix, who speaks with a distinct American accent, grows up to be Christopher Lambert, who barely manages to spit out vaguely understandable English, warped by a grating French accent that could peel paint.

Bad sets, bad costumes, bad cinematography, bad casting, bad direction, bad acting, bad editing, bad research, bad music, bad hair. I would recommend this movie only for insomniacs who have already tried all the other sleep-inducing agents available on the market.

Where can Christopher Lambert go from here? "10-10-220" commercials?

I understand the value of the suspension of disbelief for the sake of enjoying a work of fiction, but these days, filmmakers seem not to think twice about crossing the line between requiring an audience to suspend disbelief, and outright insulting an audience's intelligence.

This movie is dumb. Really, really, dumb. The direction alternates between gimmicky and trite; the script is tired and entirely predictable (despite the intended "plot twists" that are really only added layers of inanity); the acting is on autopilot.

One sure sign that you're watching a cookie-cutter action film: every time an automobile crashes, it explodes. Another such sign: the hero is armed with some ludicrously unconventional weapon at some point, and uses it to defeat a "bad guy" who has him hugely out-gunned (a side note on this point: when I first saw the old squirt-flammable-liquid-on-the-villain-just-as-he's-lighting-a-tobacco-produ ct trick in "Cape Fear," I was amused. Now, having seen this ridiculous gimmick appear countless times in innumerable bad action flicks, I'm almost ready to curse the day man discovered fire).

Now that we're living in the 21st century, I think it would be kind of action- and mystery-movie directors to acknowledge the fact that crime-scene investigators have been checking for fingerprints for the last hundred years or so. When a convicted felon - whose fingerprints are automatically recorded - puts his hands on the steering wheel of a car that is later found burned out at the bottom of a hill, there's a very good chance that his fingerprints will be found and he will subsequently be identified by them. Likewise, when a convicted felon goes around generously putting stacks of stolen money in people's mailboxes in broad daylight, his fingerprints may very well give him away, if he isn't first spotted by his "beneficiaries".

Charlize Theron is funnier in this movie than she possibly could have intended to be - the way her eyes get squintier, her voice gets grainier and she takes on that overdone "bad girl" look and persona once her true motives are revealed; the way she kisses each of the men she kisses in a more lewd fashion than the last, until, ultimately, one could reasonably fear that she may bite James Frain's head off at the jaw. Her topless scene is the only watchable moment in this film, and that's not worth anyone's rental dollar, since that scene will most certainly be available for free at myriad websites very soon, if it isn't already.

After watching Ripe, I'm left feeling cheated of one and one-half hours of my life. The movie gets off to a confusing start, and goes downhill from there. The two young female stars of the film (Monica Keena, Daisy Eagan) are difficult to watch, the sets are hideous, and there is no feeling of genuine chemistry between any of the characters.

As for plot: forget it. The film is comprised primarily of silly episodes that do not serve to develop the characters or their relationships. From the beginning, we see that Rosie (Eagan) is seriously disturbed and dominating and that Violet (Keena) is submissive if slightly more cunning than her tomboy sister. These characters do not change one iota during the course of the film. When the story line isn't bogged down with mind-numbing predictability, it's busy being disgusting - focusing on unsavory body functions.

Perhaps the most irritating facet of this movie is the army base on which most of the action takes place. I understand that the US military has suffered some steep budget cuts over the last seven years, but I doubt that any army base in the nation is as poor-looking or completely lacking in discipline and protocol as the one depicted in this film.