Reviews

A consistent homage to all the 'values' that have brought the credit crunch to the USA and UK.

Selfishness and shallowness portrayed as acceptable and lovable characteristics.

The underlying theme being that it is fine to lie, cheat, get into debt, deceive your closest friends and it will all work out fine - as long as you really really want whatever it is you are prepared to lie, cheat and deceive about.

A career woman, uses a nice person, a stranger she meets at a wedding, shows no interest in him as a human being and despite saying 'I don't want you to feel like a thing' goes on to treat him exactly as a 'thing'. A prop to help her get what she wants.

What she wants is to sleep with a serial womaniser, to get promotion and higher pay and that's about it really.

Then when she gets them she decides they aren't as shiny as she thought they'd be and wants the 'thing/stranger/wedding guy' to be her permanent plaything instead.

She still has no idea about him as a person other than he took the time to get to know her (and for some incomprehensible reason given her behaviour and lack of any redeeming characteristics) and bought her a watch to replace one she lost as a child.

Yet based on this tenuous reason she admits the subterfuge to her bosses and risks her job. Given she has already decided the job isn't all that great - it isn't that much of a sacrifice.

Then the 'new improved' female gatecrashes a strangers wedding, risks the business of her intended 'plaything' by ensuring he will be remembered as the guy who ruined his clients wedding by being stalked by a nut job.

For some reason this selfish, irresponsible act endears the used, abused 'plaything' guy so that he agrees to be 'the one' for her - kiss, kiss, end of film.

The main guy character has in effect fallen in love with a selfish, controlling, manipulative, scheming narcissist and signed up to be treated badly until she finds something more shiny to distract her in the future.

So given how stupid a lot of people are that bit is probably true to life at least.

But touching, funny, heart warming - no it isn't.

I like Alec Baldwin. I am a woman of a 'certain age' so for me he is extremely attractive and I would happily sit and watch him for an hour or so no matter what he was doing. Just as well in this film.

Poor SMG was unbelievable. Who chose her wardrobe? They must have really really hated her. One fun game to play is to observe how each outfit gets more and more frumpy and unflattering as the movie continues. Completely unflattering colours, wrong shapes for her body, necklines that made her look fat. How did they do that? She is frighteningly thin and they still made her look plump and dowdy with fussy necklines and clothes which had waistlines giving her the appearance of a dumpy old middle aged lady. I watched this on a girl's night in with a friend and we were convulsed with laughter as the horrific 'unfashion' parade unfolded.

The character was so insensitive and bratty - I can't understand why the suave older man would have been attracted to her other than for a one night stand. She whinged and tantrummed constantly. I thought it was going to turn into a psychological drama and we would find out he had been molesting his daughter and had 'issues' in a Lolita type way.

That might have given the film more depth. There was certainly that kind of vibe about the piece.

Jody Foster plays her part with skill and believability as the young girl alone at home doing what she has to do to survive. Slightly reminiscent of 'Arsenic and Old Lace' with Cary Grant and his eccentric aunts.

The film differs from the book according to Wikipedia in that she intentionally murders Mrs Hallett in the book whereas Mrs Hallet dies accidentally in the film.

Throughout the film we are only told what happens to Ryn's parents by her. Personally not sure whether or not to believe her entirely as she shows herself to be a convincing liar throughout the film.

I would like to know how she got that chipped tooth for example? Perhaps a hint of violence from her past? Martin Sheen was very creepy as the paedophile son of Mrs Hallet and I was shocked at how much he resembled his son Charlie from his role in 2 and a half men.

Mario was played well and Officer Miglioretti was a wonderful rest from all the other adults in the film who were either just fleetingly on screen or villains.

Put me off almond biscuits and tea for life though.

The story wouldn't work if it was made now. I really thought this was a made for TV movie and was surprised to read here that it was released in cinemas. I don't remember it.

It does bring back to me the attitudes in place at the time. Although even when the film was made it was a little old fashioned even then. It seemed very odd that the Tyler Moore housewife was depicted as 'boring' when the Lahti career woman seemed much more dull and less open to new ideas and epxeriences. The housewife was active vibrant and had opinions on art etc while the career woman was single minded.

I don't know if it was deliberate but in actuality the career woman was confused and needy with an addictive personality, and the housewife was balanced and in control. Later the housewife suggests she wasn't independent enough - and yet it looked to me as though she was not only independent but supporting her whole family without realising it!! I agree with another comment - this would have been more interesting if the husband had lived and we had seen how this resolved under those circumstances.

I would hope that he would have been kicked into touch by both women. But I suspect the wife would have ended up with the best friend and the husband with the career woman and the wife would have lived happily ever after and the husband and career woman would have struggled along for a few years and then divorced.

Was this supposed to be a comedy? It didn't make me laugh at all.

This film is totally unbelievable. The only way a girl would perform this act on a dog is if she had serious mental health issues or had a long history of sexual abuse or was under duress. Yet we are asked to believe that an otherwise 'normal' healthy female just got a bit bored and 'made a little mistake' and oops had a sexual encounter with a dog. What's more it never had any detrimental affect on her ever again except when she tells someone.

Not she was raped by a dog or the dog did something she couldn't resist - she actively initiated oral sex and completed this activity with a pet dog of her own choice. She wasn't on drugs or anything she just 'felt like it'.

The rest of the film seeks to put this action in a light of 'hey it could happen to anyone she's only being honest'.

But really for this to be believed we have to believe that this is a woman who is capable of doing absolutely ANYTHING if she 'just feels like it'. Think about it - could she have considered the rights and wrongs of this action before carrying it out? If she had she would have stopped in her tracks. Human beings have instinctive boundaries for reasons. If we are now to start considering bestiality as a 'cute' little aberration, what is next? Child abuse? Yet the 'heroine' is portrayed as a hard done by, nice girl who had one moment of aberration. If she had been forced to carry out this act by an abuser - the story might have made more sense and I would have been able to accept the storyline. But there is no way that anyone carries out the prolonged activity required and referred to even once - if there is not some deep, disturbance that requires a great deal of psychiatric help. This is NO WAY a one off happening in an otherwise perfect life.

I know this is just a film, but it is through normalising behaviour such as this via the media that society becomes desensitised and more and more awful realities become possible.

I could imagine an abuser showing this to a child to persuade them that it isn't such a big deal and then moving on with their agenda. It could also be used by an abuser to underline to a child not to tell about the abuse - because look how people will react to you if you do.

This is not about truth. The director WANTS people to think it's about truth. This is about degradation and how easily people (the viewing public)can be manipulated into accepting the most appalling concepts if wrapped up in the right way. The watching public are being manipulated, degraded and laughed at.

This is a film in which the actors and the viewers are being humiliated and made fools of in a very sophisticated way by a clever but extremely disturbed film writer.

This film appears to me to be being used as a vehicle for the creator of the film to get off on the excitement of playing with your mind in an abusive manner. I don't know whether it is conscious on their part - but it is the most classic example of Mind F***k that I have ever encountered.

I hope that this doesn't offend anyone too much. But if you watched this film - I don't think there is any room left to be offended by anything any more.

There is a lot of swearing and there are a lot of sex scenes. So I wouldn't want to watch this with my teenage kids or my parents. However the swearing is in tune with the film and so is the sex so it isn't out of place at all.

I enjoyed this film. I didn't see any plot holes - just unexplained moments - but then what in real life is totally explainable? Every day we live with technology and social systems and people who we cannot explain - so why should a film not be allowed a little of this uncertainty? As long as the entirety of the film makes sense - and this one really does.

The acting was believable and the characters likable. I usually dislike the male leads who flit from one woman to the next, but this lead character was very sympathetic.

I felt so sorry for him as he realised he simply could not escape his fate. There were some very funny surprises along the way as well.

Poor man!! Winona Ryder turns up throughout the film as a parallel storyline as a mysterious killer. She is the dark counter play to the lighter male storyline.

I see this film as a story about how good people can be swallowed up by bad experiences and fate, but that how in the end true optimism and kindness will win out.

It is a lovely film to watch if you want some laughs, and a gentle but interesting and surprising storyline.

Not for prudes though.

I loved this film. In fact if this film was a person I would immediately divorce my husband and marry this film. And I am fairly fond of my husband so that is no small accolade. ;) I watched this alone late at night on a hot dark sticky night and it was as if I was in the other world with the characters.

The plot was tight, it was complicated enough to keep me thinking and working things out, it had surprises, the acting was phenomenal. Keanu Reeves was heart achingly believable. This is what I call a TRUE film, even without knowing it was partly autobiographical by Dicks, the truth and honesty of the performances glowed through.

So ironic considering the film is an animation which is by definition the most illusory of all filmic media. Yet the artists had brought out the emotion and depth of each character so that their pain was something I could feel as I laughed and cried and remained glued to the screen to the very end.

It is decades since I saw a film that I felt sorry when it ended because I wanted to see more, know more and experience more of this world and its people.

I didn't think I would like it because usually I shy away from gritty films with depressing themes and drug abuse is not a subject I have any sympathy for. But I love Sci-Fi with a passion, have a soft spot for anything with Keanu Reeves and adored Blade Runner and am drawn to any film adaptation of any work by Philip K Dicks - so I recorded this and watched it.

After going to bed afterwards and dreaming about the film (that has never happened before to me) I am now going to buy the DVD, the Book and the graphic novel.

There is more to be gleaned from this I think and I intend to explore further.

Pretty actors, good actors.

No story.

I was very disappointed by this film. Not because I like shoot em ups - I don't - but because it had no clarity at all. It reminded me of how I felt when I had a really bad fever once and became delirious. Nothing made sense and I was having to fill in the gaps for myself all the way through. I would have had a better time just staring at a blank wall and making my own film up in my head. The experience made more sense when I checked the background of the director/writer of the film and found he was also behind Cherry 2000!!

A film that was on a week or so ago on cable and which was agreed by my family to be the worst and most annoying film we have ever sat through. Its most annoying trait was echoed by Happy Here and Now - in that both films keep on promising to get better if you just keep on watching. You have the feeling that it must be going somewhere and any moment it will all fall into place and make sense. After all they wouldn't spend all that time and money on a complete pointless waste of effort would they?

Umm.... Yes. They would.

This was like listening to music as themes interwove and mingled. We had each couple seemingly so different and yet all with similar difficulties and challenges.

It was so clever how we saw each couple having conversations about their friends and yet in each conversation they said more about their own relationship difficulties than they did about the people they were talking about.

I don't live in America let alone LA but I could recognise so much of these lives and personalities and their struggles.

To me the film was all about how problems are part of personality and money cannot reduce or relieve those issues at all. The only way to survive is to rely on one's character.

I particularly liked the Jennifer Aniston relationship with her 'unemployed' employer. It was just like the Princess and the Frog. This film kept me involved, entertained and occasionally it surprised me - I think I will want to watch this again.

I watched this on satellite TV last night and was amazed. It was like being transported back in time :) I had friends at Bristol Uni during the period the film was set in and I was at a different University but regularly crashed at their flat on a weekend. It was sooo twilight zone to hear the music, see the clothes and have it all come rushing back as though it had been yesterday.

I had forgotten the fad of wearing loads of badges proclaiming zillions of allegiances to causes and bands. Remember the TV version of Ford Prefect in Hitch Hikers, who also did this?

I had forgotten about joining the marches and protests against Thatcher, and Racism etc and the plastic pint glasses at the Students Union.

The orange sixties/seventies decorated down at heel student houses. Sleeping on a mattress in a sleeping bag in a room that looked like the storage room for a junk shop - I did that too!!

A real nostalgia trip - yet a great story as well. Made me feel young again at the same time as making me feel very very old - quite a feat.

Started watching this but didn't believe in any of the characters. In particular the relationship between the bakery assistant and the waitress just didn't work for me at all. The scenes between the bakery owner and the assistant were nice but the rest was just very slow. It was a very superficial movie and it gave me the feeling that I was watching play rather than a film. The characters were very 'stagey' and the storyline was a lot like a stage farce. By the time the pyromaniac waylaid the assistant I was bored and didn't care what happened next and so I switched off. Glad I didn't pay to see it. Didn't laugh or even smile once. There seems to be a strange tendency for Americans to classify their films as 'comedy' when they are funny peculiar rather than funny ha ha. I have finally learned to avoid what Americans term dark comedies which usually turn out to be gruesome weird and unfunny. Now it looks like I will have to be a bit more discerning when they call a film romantic comedy as well. Maybe comedy means something different when applied to a film rather than a series in America. I don't understand why America can produce amazingly funny comedies like Two and a half men, Will and Grace, King of Queens but can't seem to produce really funny films without resorting to toilet humour. This film wasn't gross or anything. But it wasn't anything at all just one big yawn...

I love the newer episodes with CJ and Grandad - I also liked the storyline with Kate falling for the principal. I want to find out what happens to Rory and Kerry and Bridget and the family next. I think CJ is very funny and I love his scenes with Grandad. I have always loved James Garner in everything he does, and it is a credit to his acting that I never think of him as James Garner or Rockford in this series and totally believe in him as Kate's Dad. This family is so real and funny. It was terribly sad when John Ritter / Paul Hennessey died, but as in real life these things happen and the way it was written into the series and dealt with was both funny and sad and always extremely sensitively and lovingly dealt with. But generally a very funny show with lots of laughs and fun.

I enjoyed this movie. I watched it in the afternoon because there was nothing else on the other channels I felt like seeing. From that rather unpromising beginning ( I expected it to be a sloppy tearjerker) I was agreeably surprised as the story unfolded. Knowing it to be a true story I wasn't expecting any massively surprising twists and indeed there weren't any, but the characters developed satisfyingly and the jungle scenes were fantastic. I'm lucky enough to have a large cinema screen at home and watch films via a 'proper' projector, so the huge scenes outdoors with the insects and wildlife were gorgeous and it really felt like I was actually there and experiencing it for real. I get bored easily and I also get a bit jumpy with suspense stuff, but I stayed with this film all the way through and without any boredom. But I did fast forward through the bits where he was running through the jungle with the little boy on his back because I'm a mother and that kind of thing worries me, I was just waiting for an accident LOL It had a happy ending which made a nice change - I get fed up of films that leave me feeling tearful and depressed - this one was nicely positive. It made me feel like maybe visiting the rainforest myself one day - but not to wade in the swamps - leeches are my worst nightmare!!

I liked the Springtime for Hitler sequence - especially as a blonde John Barrowman was a gorgeous surprise! BUT....

In the original the writer was driven to try to kill the producers who had made a mockery of his play and ridiculed Hitler in the process.

In the remake - the writer had been chosen as the star and had rehearsed the play and only failed to take his place on the stage moments before the show because he broke his leg. So another person substitutes for him because 'he could mouth the words along with the actors' Yet the writer still gets annoyed and says the play has made a mockery of Hitler and tries to kill the Producers.

This makes no sense at all as the play is exactly as he would have rehearsed it and so why would he suddenly be angry - instead of angry during rehearsals etc? The original version with the flower power space cadet actor playing Hitler was funnier and made more sense.

The songs were too long and not clever, tuneful enough or interesting enough for my taste.

But if you don't mind plot holes and like musicals - it is OK.

OK I LOVED THIS MOVIE!!! My fifteen year old "desperately trying to be cool" son loved this movie (despite himself) and so did my husband.

Lovely story that kept me awake - although I was cosy and warm in front of the fire and had just had a large meal.

Chicken Little is the cutest character I have ever seen on screen and the space effects were fantastic. The sight of this little chick sitting in the back seat of his dad's car safely strapped in was sooo cute. But he is smart and funny too. I loved the little touches like his own front door within the big front door, and his own low handles on the interior doors - cute cute cute cute cute!!!

There were moments that reminded me of Close Encounters, Star Wars, Toy Story, Star Trek and others. Lots of twists and surprises, but gentle and happy. Just the thing to watch when you need cheering up and being kept amused. I watched it twice running, once with hubby and once directly afterwards with teenage son and wasn't bored for one moment.

Oh and did I mention it is CUTE????

I learned things I didn't know about Fanny and I thought Julia Davis's portrayal of her was absolutely spot on. It was fun to watch and quite touching in places. Fanny became a much more human personality after watching this play/comedy/drama and I felt very sympathetic to her even though she was obviously an extremely difficult person to live with.

I felt very sorry for her family as well. She obviously had quite a collection of personality disorders which were not being recognised or helped. For eccentricity read 'in need of psychiatric or psychoanalytical help'.

Blue eggs with mayonnaise made us all laugh. I thought the lady member of the publics menu sounded yummy.

I would give this less than a 1 out of 10 if I could. I recorded this from Sky Movies plus and was looking forward to it. I haven't read the books so I am not one of the people who would be upset at its closeness or otherwise to the books ideal. It was just a dull boring film. I liked the sets and I liked the children. When Carrey was off the screen it was a better experience. I watched until they were at Billy Connolly's house and then Carrey reappeared and I simply couldn't watch any more.

It was totally implausible. Billy Connolly's character was so obviously a nice gentle friendly reasonable and intelligent person. The possibility that they couldn't immediately have told him that this new 'assistant' was in fact Count Olaf - was completely unbelievable. I have no idea if this plot disaster was from the book or not, but coupled with the appalling over acting of Carrey it was enough for us as a family to decide that the film was just too pathetic to watch any further.

We had more interesting things to do. There was a newly painted wall in the other room we could more enjoyably watch as it dried. At least Matte Magnolia doesn't over act.

I am so glad we didn't waste money as well as time on this turkey.