The script writer for "Tales of the City," Part One, has an interesting challenge. How to write a story about five couples within a single episode, and not have it look like a soap opera? The format is tailor made for a soap, and in juggling the stories of five different relationships back and forth, a soap it inevitably must be.
True the casting treats us to some nice looking actors, and the lines are quite naturalistic for the time period's setting. It's just that the script was somewhat doomed from the start, due to the original novel's pre existing structure.
How much one likes this will depend on how one finds these characters interesting. Like a good soap writer, the scripter here is skillful enough to make the chatter topical, sophisticated, and sassy. That doesn't guarantee a fine motion picture, though, and the plot(s) emerge as on a bit of a sleazy level.
"Tales of the City," Part I was, for me, interesting, thanks to the obvious talent both onscreen and behind the scenes. But a fine film it's not -- nor did it intend itself to be. Just a series of confidental peaks into private lives of some of the "beautiful people" of San Francisco.
True the casting treats us to some nice looking actors, and the lines are quite naturalistic for the time period's setting. It's just that the script was somewhat doomed from the start, due to the original novel's pre existing structure.
How much one likes this will depend on how one finds these characters interesting. Like a good soap writer, the scripter here is skillful enough to make the chatter topical, sophisticated, and sassy. That doesn't guarantee a fine motion picture, though, and the plot(s) emerge as on a bit of a sleazy level.
"Tales of the City," Part I was, for me, interesting, thanks to the obvious talent both onscreen and behind the scenes. But a fine film it's not -- nor did it intend itself to be. Just a series of confidental peaks into private lives of some of the "beautiful people" of San Francisco.