Reviews

The director is credited with the song "Maria's Eyes", but having just seen a theater version of Dr. Dolittle, I heard a song that sounded too similar for coincidence: "When I Look in Your Eyes", written by Leslie Bricusse. However, I'll grant that the original lacks something by being sung to a seal instead of Natassja Kinksi.

Aside from the musical borrowing, you have to admire Konchalovsky for wanting to tackle the material, revolving around small-town characters and impotence; he really brings out the dignified melancholy of a rust-belt town with steep streets, passing freight trains, weak sunlight and beautiful countryside. The movie is uneven in places, mostly from the performances: Kinski seems unsure whether to play her character modestly or with sashaying allure; Savage has a tough job playing an unsympathetic character, but sometimes makes it worse with explosive histrionics; Mitchum is stuck with bad dialog ("those eyes"). Raising the movie above these problems is a good basic story, affecting shots and images, and the majority of Kinski and Savage's scenes together.

Jaw-droppingly bad stuff. Anal rape has some sort of fascination for the maker of this movie, and the dwelling upon it in scene after scene doesn't come off so much as a meditation on brutality so much as a display of prurient fascination and revulsion for "anal penetration".

The director seems to have thought that a little low-rent atmosphere would compensate for inadequate characterization, mediocre acting, and a climax that has the emotional impact of a hiccup.

Normally, I'd forget I'd even rented such a thing, but putting this down at least keeps me from thinking I hallucinated such an oddly awful hour and a half.

I really enjoyed it, and so did my 3- and 5-year-old (and yes, we read the book). The animation and live-action scenes showed a lot of love. Though elements of the story seemed a bit hurried or neglected, they weren't anything a fairy-tale fantasy couldn't absorb in stride. The music works well enough for this non-fan of musicals, and I prefer serviceable and inoffensive tunes to the treacly jingles and melodramatic scores of the usual Disney classics.

My only real complaint would be with the ending, as it really is unclear how the aunts drove across the ocean (did they obtain their own crocodile tongues?), and the slice of NY upon landing has a grim, Munchkin-town quality. Still, everything up to that point has left you with lots of goodwill towards the movie's makers.