Reviews

It's been 19 years since Gordon Gekko used "Wall Street" to let us know that greed is good. Now, Michael Douglas takes the GG persona and morphs it into a Secret Service agent, Pete Garrison. Guess what? It works! This is a solid political thriller that kept me guessing. The detail work in showing the security precautions taken by the SS on behalf of the President and First Lady was likewise intriguing. All the leads were pretty good but, try as I might, I could not accept Eva Longoria as a Secret Service agent. Whereas Jodie Foster just made you suspend belief and really think she was FBI agent Starling in "Silence of the Lambs", you do not get the same feeling with Longoria. Nevertheless, this is a fun film, escapist entertainment with the Beltway as the backdrop.

BATMAN AND ROBIN is the WORST movie I have seen. I would give it a 0 if you could. Uma Thurman is a female Riddler from BATMAN FOREVER. The surfing in the sky sequence is very un-Batmanish in my view. I didn't care for the Batman credit card deal, either. George Clooney is probably a very gifted actor, but, he was a bad choice for this film. If you enjoyed the prior Batman movies, you probably will not care for this one. On the other hand, if you did not like the other Batman films, this one may appeal to you. I guess my expectations were not met by this film, and that colors my view of virtually all aspects of it. Overall, I would not recommend you spend your time nor any money to view this particular piece of cinema.

The original Crocodile Dundee film was fresh and creative, as was the first sequel, as it juxtaposed the culture of the Outback with the shallowness of modern urban society, tipping its hat to the superiority of the former over the latter. This film, however, seems to have been shot with the idea of profit paramount. The product placements are obvious (Pepsi, Apple computers, Wendy's and, who could miss it, a Subaru Outback station wagon), as is the thinly-developed plot. Paul Hogan was very effective in the earlier films, but in this one he seems tired of the role. Without the novelty available to the earlier films, the only thing that would have saved this one was a vibrant Mick Dundee, and, unfortunately, Hogan could not pull it off.