Reviews

Well. What can I say other than: "I was wrong"?

I completely misread this film. At first it angered me with it's dangling situations and lack of conclusions.

Still, I watched it again and again, at least seven times. (Not an easy task as this film was never in wide release in my area.) I watched it again and again and if you asked me why I was continually watching a film I claimed I didn't care for, I would have no answer for you...

Other than it mesmerized me and there was something deep within the film I had missed in my reactionary knee-jerk original response (Which is below.)

Don't watch this film. Study it. Over and over again. Javier Bardem MUST get an Oscar for his amazingly cold portrayal of a mechanical killer. In fact, every actor in the film is worthy of praise.

Does it end tidily? no. Not by a long shot.

This story is not the ending...

see it again and again.

You'll find the genius in it.

------------- This is an awful tease of a story that ends abruptly just when you think every aspect of it will begin to come together to form a D'enouement or climax, or at least make sense.

It is a pointless, ponderous, pretentious film consisting of nothing but light, shadow and words (-and precious few words at that!). I have watched it four times and it is an intellectual and emotional sucker punch. Not since 'The Majestic' and 'Gigli' have I gone to the theater and felt so robbed.

Though moody and well shot, I didn't find it entertaining or clever. The lead character is killed off screen. His wife might be dead. The money is gone. And we are left with not the slightest idea or hint of what really happened, other than a monologue from a retired sheriff who whines about how he finally realized he had a thankless, dangerous job.

It is a film you have to sit through so you can (finally) get the point of it; violence is dangerous to people and if they're lucky, makes them old before their time. Maybe that's a surprising idea to some, but as a combat veteran, I don't need to sit through a film to know that.

I'll go out on a limb here and offer that anybody who has ever rubbed shoulders with trauma doesn't need an overly long Hollywood treatment to tell them violence is unsettling and soul consuming.

This is a film devoid of any conclusions, repercussions, resolutions or (finally) value. Yet, Apparently we're all supposed to rush down to Starbucks and huddle in excited circles while we discuss amongst ourselves…

The phrase 'cop-out' comes to mind. In fact this movie reeks of a film school student trying way too hard. It would have made a better graphic novel.

People who find value in this film are the same suggestible types who see Jesus in a piece of toast, or the virgin Mary in a rust stain on a highway overpass...

THERE IS A REASON WHY THIS FILM NEVER HAD A WIDE RELEASE. When an expensive film fails to achieve a wide release it is the studio or producers or distributors or even the director(s) telling you it is a flawed film.

Honestly, each time I left the theater I felt as if I was denied the second half of the film...

Save your time and money.

I should start by admitting that I find Jennifer Aniston adorable.

Vince Vaughn is every fast talking overly-confident friend I've ever known.

This film could have been great. It isn't.

It is a weak film full of odd underdeveloped (and thus unexplained) side characters and it contains one of the most unsatisfying (and the biggest 'cop-out') endings ever put on film.

If I want inadequate, unfunny, unsatisfying and realistic, I'll refer to my own struggling relationships. I don't need to pay Hollywood top dollar to show me that. I can get that for free.

It has its hints at humor, but overall? Awful.

I have watched this film with my Psychology major girlfriend four times. She claims Treadwell was a man with a deeply repressed sense of his own self, that he could not accept the reality of what he was, so that knocked the freight train of reality off its tracks. "If he isn't really who he is, then bears aren't really what they are." she says. "Think about it, a really effeminate man looking desperately to be loved by 'bears'"

I don't really know about psychology, but in the film Treadwell often rambles on and on in the middle of the wilderness, surrounded by Grizzlies, about how he's "so not gay" and how much he loves "human women." A little too much protest?

I Knew early on in the film Treadwell was a man who was going to die by Nature. It seemed as if he was completely out of touch with reality at times. His "Nature" video recordings included his constant efforts to cover up his receding hairline.

He named ferocious 1000 pound wild animals "Mr. Chocolate" and "Freckles" and "Tabitha" and "Downy" and actually tried to act like them.

He chased grizzlies around yelling "I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you!...""I'm not mad!" (Like a grizzly could give a dang.)

He claimed poachers were rampant, and though I don't doubt they are, he never provided any evidence of it on hundreds of hours of film. Though he did take the time and trouble to capture film of himself asking "How's the hair look?"

He claimed (as he squatted in a National Park) that he was "the ONLY protection" the bears had without ever describing exactly the protection he was (exclusively) providing.

He railed violently with unrestrained vitriol against the very park service that gave him maps, warnings, water, weather reports, checked on his safety and allowed him to squat when and where he did.

It was all about the bears he claimed, even as he yelled "Timothy Conquered!" as he stared directly into the camera and almost continually wiped the hair away from his eyes in an effeminate way. "But alas! Timothy is not gay!"

So concerned about Nature was he that he chased a fox that stole his hat for hundreds of yards yelling "That hat is so important for this trip!" and "If I don't get that hat I'm dead!" He conditioned foxes to the presence of humans to such an extent that they lost their natural fear of Man and began stealing his fashion accessories... This serves nature how?

He was someone who cried about the natural death of a bear cub subsequently eaten by other bears. Yet he made no mention of the tons of Salmon eaten by the bears every year, or the deaths of any of the other animals that occur in the wild

He was not a naturist, not an ecologist, not a scientist. He slept in a tent surrounded by grizzlies as a grown man, an adult… with a teddy bear. Let that sink in.

He was someone who never understood that nature is neither for nor against anything, no matter how valiant or well meaning that 'thing' is. Nature just IS. Treadwell couldn't contemplate that life feeds on life. Every living thing is a potential food source for another living thing.

If you watch this film and ignore him, it's a beautifully shot film about nature. If you watch it and look at him, it's a film about a deeply troubled man completely out of touch with reality who thought he could bend nature to his own naive, immature, ignorant ideal who eventually gets eaten by bears, the sound of which is recorded by a camera with its lens cap still on… Sad really, here's a man so vain he recorded every tiny mediocre thing he did in the wilderness, who claimed not to care if he gets eaten by bears ("Its how I want to go") and after years of tempting fate, when it happens …the lens cap is still on… Ouch.

Werner Herzog's film is so unassuming, so apolitical, and so un-judgmental, that we are left to draw our own conclusions.

Werner Herzog handles the film in an even-handed professional way, and to his credit does not include any of the sounds of Treadwell's (or his Girlfriend's) death. If we find Treadwell a psychotic victim of his own deluded behavior, we don't want to hear it. If we think him a hero, we don't need to hear it

I've heard hundreds of Coaches whine about how there are no good coaches in this movie. That's the point! And don't get me started on the many European Soccer (Sorry, Football) enthusiasts who have savaged this movie. It's an American movie, so it only deals with Soccer on the surface.

It's also a Hollywood movie so it's overly simplistic and full of schlock. Hollywood hasn't produced anything original in the last 15 years. Hollywood has lost it's way.

Ferrel does his thing. But I think he's capable of better. Goodness knows Duval has done better. Coach Ditka was a surprise. But then all he does in the film is BE Mike Ditka, so it's not like it's a stretch.

My biggest gripe about this film is that it didn't go deeper into the Father-Son relationship. I don't want to get all sentimental, but the relationship men work out between each other is far more emotionally complex than we would ever want to admit. There's fuel in that idea for a television series, a 90 minute Hollywood driven film barely touches the surface.

I could offer the same complaint for the film's glossing over of Soccer. Soccer has not caught on in the States for many reasons, but for the most part Americans don't understand it. I found the device of simply importing talented European Children hit far too close to home for me. I remember squirming in my seat. I don't want soccer to catch on in the States until we can grow our own great players and not rob Europe of theirs.

But I'm picking nits. This is not a film to change the world. It's simple and silly, empty calories on film, like cotton candy for your eyes. As long as you know that going in you won't be disappointed.

Of course it is full of holes but it's not as bad as most would have you believe.

Worth a rental.

it's Great fun... for 9 year old Boys.

I enjoy humor that can apply a cutting edge to both sides of an issue or story. I also don't mind infantile humor. ('South Park' comes to mind, and as infantile and offensive as it can be, it is at least intelligent.) Not so Eurotrip.

I understand (now) that this film is aimed at 9 year old American boys, but even so, it is unforgivable.

The working title was "The Ugly Americans", but in this film EVERYONE is ugly. It should have been called "The Ugly Humans".

In this film all Americans are innocent rubes or ignorant boobs who undertake the trip of a lifetime. They visit Europe only to get drunk and set the Popes hat on fire.

The "Europeans" are jaded randy perverted men who molest boys, or jaded randy perverted women... who rape boys.

Bratislava, we are lead to believe, is like Beirut, Grozny and Fallujah, all at their worst, combined.

Judging by this movie everyone in Europe speaks their native tongue with a suspicious American accent. "Hey Miami Wice! Number one Telewision program!!" At points I found myself squirming, embarrassed, as if I were watching a student film.

I wasn't completely turned off until the scene where 'scotty doesn't know' meets Mike's Father in Berlin. The young boy in the background takes out a grease pencil and paints a Hitler mustache on his lip and begins goose stepping around the room.

What was supposed to be funny about that? Was I supposed to think "Of course he's a Nazi-he's German!"?? I felt insulted that the film makers would assume I thought every German related to, admired, or followed Hitler.

I have relatives who DIED fighting the Nazi's and I thought that scene was a cheap shot at the expense of the German people. This scene was utterly repugnant. Enough said.

I won't even go into the crass scenes at the Vatican, they were just Stupid.

In short this film depresses me because it demeans BOTH Europe and America.

I hope you didn't spend $10 to see it in the theater. Don't buy it, rent it.

Better yet, if it's this kind of ignorance you're after, bang your head against the basement wall until you can remember nothing. At least you get to keep your money.

And to anyone in Europe who thinks Americans are like the four twits in this film, congratulations, Hollywood has made an idiot out of you too.

While I don't consider this as good as the 3 other Wes Anderson films, it is still far superior to the "You got served" "Triple X" "Mission impossible" crap that Hollywood insists we endure.

Like most of Andersons films the story really is superficial. The true film is about the relationships between the characters, and their backgrounds. The dialog, backstory, history, and psychological make-up of the characters, and the nuances of the situations are what drive the film. What we have been indoctrinated to know as "plot" falls by the wayside.

This film is obviously a poke at the Jacques Cousteau films that I loved (and made fun of) as a young man. The ship in the film is named 'Belafonte'. Cousteau's ship was named "Calypso". -Who was the King of Calypso music? Harry BELAFONTE.

Cousteau started his career by inventing the SCUBA apparatus (Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus), became a global leader in underwater research, and then ended his career by narrating films about mundane surf creatures. ("In a flazh zee muzzer tertle terns on our cameraman, Shee attacks heem, eet is all we can do to escape alive.") Cousteau's Calypso had a Helicopter and a Hot Air Balloon.

Cousteau was so popular that John Denver (at the height of both their popularities) sang a song about Cousteau's ship! (Calypso) The Life Aquatic is not as tight as Tennenbaums, nor as engrossing as Rushmore, but it is eminantly as watchable. Like the other Anderson films it cannot be watched once. If you watch it once you'll find yourself going back to it again and again, studying it, looking for things you might have missed...

And isn't that the point of film making?