Reviews

This movie was a walk down childhood memory lane for a lot of people, most probably Jerry Seinfeld himself. The references were spot on, the makeup of some of the historical characters was very good. Though, know that all of the depictions were unflattering caricatures. Examples, naming the Kellogg guy "Edsel" and the depiction of Marjorie Post who was a giant of positive women corporate leadership and philanthropy. The movie did pay some homage to her at the end.

Many people in these reviews are clearly too young to remember the 1960s. They have the flattops mentioned in the movies from so many of the jokes and references going over their head. That's why they say it was not funny.

The depictions of Kennedy, Khrushchev, Cronkite, LaLanne, von Braun, and Boiardi highlighted some true aspects of them, if you knew them. I laughed at one review here that said the "German guy" was "supposed to hint as being some Nazi", because he didn't know that von Braun was virtually kidnapped from Germany by the US after he led the Nazi rocket program and later led the US space rocketry program.

I laughed a number of times, not every time, and some of the jokes were pointless. But this is a fun romp with nearly the real timeline behind the Post-Kellogg toaster pastry war. Blending some current events into the scenes was pretty smart. But if you don't know any of the history of the 1960s, the gags and characters will blow past you as a mist in the dark.

I read this fantastic n book in three sittings. Compelling, real, accurately structured.

I watched the first 20 minutes of the first episode and rolled my eyes four times.

For some reason, the writer thought we needed to see each assassin examine their gun on camera when we first meet them. The telegraph office didn't have a separate office for the Secretary of War with Lincoln sitting in the outer telegraph room. Having Lewis Powell not know why he was killing the Secretary of State was ridiculous. They'd been plotting and meeting for weeks. Then they felt the need to illustrate his boorish stupidity by asking David Herold "which state?" Just terrible writing. Finally, they went to the trouble to have a pretty good representation of Seward's wounds and Lincoln is in a reasonably accurate beard and high pitched voice. But if Tobias Menzies was going to refuse to wear a beard and a stomach pack to attempt to resemble Stanton, they should have cast someone else. I was looking forward to this series. I turned it off after 20 minutes, I may go back, but I'm not in any hurry about it.

It's a good story that stays pretty close to actual events. Benedict Cumberbatch is always good. Almost didn't recognize him at the outset, then transformed a couple times even during the movie. He's very good at changing his mannerisms, voice tone, and other variations that make him a different character most times. Rachel Brasnahan, however, had all the same body motions, voice inflections, and facial expressions that come with Mrs. Maisel. It detracted from the movie for me. Also, I enjoy Zeljko Ivanek, but he plays the same type of character very often and consistently plays them the same way - same body language, same speech pattern, etc.

Holistically, this may have been an excellent treatment of the issue of women trapped in bad situations. However, I have three criticisms that damaged it for me.

1. The writing was very bad. The dialogue was poorly constructed and not believable.

2. They portrayed Diana as doing things that would not appear to be within the normal scope of her range of actions and decisions. Therefore, although it was introduced as a fable, it was still not believable.

3. In an outcome I could not have predicted before viewing it, upon finishing the movie, I was more sympathetic to Charles, which knowing the real history of the situation, is preposterous and tells me how bad the screenplay is.

However, Kristen Stewart was very, very believable in her skin, just not in what she was scripted to do. She was easily as good as Diana as Renee Zellweger was as Judy.

The plot is a cliche, almost every word of the dialog is cliche, the characters are cliches, the plot points are cliches, the effects are cliches. I saw this out of expectations because I have liked a lot of Jessica Chastain movies. This has changed my expectations. I'll be much more cautious now.

While I didn't bother to predict every turn in the story, each was immediately recognizable from a million other stories everyone has seen and so poorly portrayed that you hoped you could be spared the next turn.

Liam Neeson does a nice job and seeing him act with his son is a nice bit. The scenery is attractive. But everything is so fake and clearly part of a formula, that even decent performances are lost in the debris.

People who are saying ridiculous things like "this is the worst movie I have ever seen" says much more about them than it does about this movie.

I've seen the play twice, a while ago, and the movie's ability to portray the music so well, to extend the quality of the scenes, and to knit a story together using Victoria was terrifically creative work. Watching the dancing, even seeing what the CGI folks did with ears, tails, and fur, and how well everything was put together was phenomenal. I never took my eyes off the screen. Thee was so much to see, watching how every scene was staged, how the movements were blocked, and the performance of individual actors were all excellent.

Right, Judi Dench is not a great singer, but neither is the Old Deuteronomy character. Ian McKellan was wonderful in his spot, Jennifer Hudson better than anticipated, Rebel Wilson and James Corden really good choices letting their personalities come through, Steve McRae fascinating through his number, and Idris Elba a more involved Macavity than in the play. This doesn't even mention Francesca Hayward and the many excellent dancers who had background roles.

But the thought and work that Tom Hooper, the choreographer, and the set director, achieved for this movie were exceptional.

If someone is too young or too stupid to understand the story or to suspend belief to go into the world of cats, or gets spooked by seeing CGI fur and people moving like great dancers trying to emulate cats, or just wants to pretend to be "cool" and rip the production that's on them and a matter of a lack of understanding. Much the same way I can't understand why a person would watch a movie while drunk, but, obviously, those people did.

If people in Poland during WWII are offered asylum by transport to Canada instead of Sweden or Switzerland, you know you're in for trouble. The plot had gigantic holes in it. Manslaughter gets no penalty, People make social visits to soldiers at the front unannounced, a bloody face becomes perfect in the next scene. Nine months pass and there is no change in season, yet the day after a blizzard, there is no snow on the ground.

The leading female character was written either so unrealistically or just as a tramp, it was really unbelievable. Giving examples would be spoilers.

I think Darryl Hannah and Roy Scheider may not have been doing great movies, but even they had to be embarrassed to be in this one. It's a good thing I saw it for free.

Some people have talked about the pacing by the director being too rushed. Maybe it as. The writing, I know, was just horrible. I couldn't contain my smirks as the actors were required to utter some of their lines in entirely unworkable moments. I'm guessing it took a few takes before they stopped smirking, too. --SPOILERS-- The scene in which Dr. Flanner says he's sorry for the wife's passing was so poorly wri . . . oh, no that was poorly acted. Well, the scene in which Adrienne is mulling over the remnants of Flanner's life was really badly wri . . . oh, that was crappy acting again. But, in both cases, Lane and Gere had so little with which to work. OK, a "crab crack" needing hundreds of crabs for the entire town the day after a hurricane when crabbing could not have been done with the worsening weather for a few days was really a bad idea. Well, I'm putting this behind me in my life, 97 minutes I won't get back.

There are some nice sweeping scenic panoramas of Australia, but every element of the plot was so cliché in every respect that the only unknown parts of the movie were just the little details. And even through the clichés, there were so many plot holes that I was whispering to my wife on many occasions about some unbelievable situation, improbable sequence, and wondering how characters could not see what was happening when we were watching the stuff going on 30 yards away from the characters who were facing in the direction of that stuff.

I hardly notice continuity errors even on DVD rewinds, but Jackman is lassoing right-handed, then left-handed, then right-randed in one continuous scene with two cuts, and Kidman has her hand at her chest, then down by her side, then back to her chest in another continuous scene with two cuts that was so obvious that the editor who left it in that way just could not have cared about his work.

If you're reading this before you see the movie, you'll see these things jump off the screen at you. But to give any of the examples of plot clichés and improbable action would be spoilers and you don't want that.

The best part of the movie? A coupon with the ticket for a free small popcorn so the upgrade to the big, refillable popcorn was only $1.75.

I apologize to Ms. Hamilton who clearly devoted a great deal of time, energy, and love to this project, but the final product here is really not very good. It's her first screenplay to make it to film, her directorial debut, and she is the lead character. I am sure she will improve as her experience grows.

In the first 20 minutes, there were at least 25 scene cuts with few lasting as long as 90 seconds. But that made sense in the bigger view because the characters had incredibly little to say. Not much of what they said was trite, but there was virtually nothing in which to engage a viewer in the story except to continue questioning when this forced pushing of the story along to the real stuff was going to end. One scene at a dinner table had some good dialog, but even that ended abruptly and it was the longest scene of the first 25.

There were also some elements that compromised the realism of the story. Some of these may have come from budget issues in what is obviously an independent and very privately, maybe singularly, financed film. A lone Confederate tent in the middle of a field for what is supposed to be Longstreet's 1st Virginia Rifles, a soldier with a shoulder wound and, 15 minutes later - albeit 22 scenes later, not even a hole in his jacket sleeve. That soldier deciding alone that his friend should "infiltrate" the Federals and become a spy. She should have had at least SOMEONE in a command position in the script to look like he was going through the camp recruiting spies - but then again, there was no camp. Although, the dinner scene was well set, relatively authentically, and staged.

Others did not appear to come from budget issues. Longstreet's divisions were not in the Virginia mountains in 1862. Calvary very rarely fought on their mounts, especially Union calvary in 1862. The only strong man on the farm enlists and leaves for the Confederate army right before the harvest. Many Confederate soldiers came home just for harvest time. None would have left the farm just before the harvest leaving his elderly father and sister to pull the harvest alone. There was no compelling reason to enlist just then. Lee was on the move south toward Fredricksburg having been spanked a bit at Antietam in September - with Longstreet. They did not move through the Virginia mountains to get there. This setting had to be middle to late October, the leaves on the trees in Virginia had turned to their autumn colors. A girl finds her brother's name on some clothing he had left when he returned to the farm to store it before going off to spy, and she runs her hand over it as if she is in awe of the script instead of registering some anger, since we had just learned, the only thing keeping her from going to Baltimore and personal safety was waiting for her brother to return. She just realized he had returned and had not even spoken to her before leaving again. Of course, if she goes to Baltimore, she can't enlist as the story progresses. So, I don't quarrel with the outcome there, just with the means to arriving at it.

There were some others similar to that, some not so similar, but my intention isn't to run Ms. Hamilton's work into the ground. This one never took flight and I am hopeful her projects, as she continues to grow, do.

Diamontopolous and Roebuck had the voices and mannerisms of their characters dead on. It was either great casting or great performances.

The rest of the show was pretty average for behind-the-scenes-of-a-TV-show kind of stuff. But it wasn't camped up like a couple of them have been. Ironically, they made references to Gilligans' Island within the show, but this movie felt a lot like that behind the scenes movie.

Surprisingly, it was interesting most of the time. There was a decent mixture of things commonly recognized and a few things not known so readily.

I have rarely seen a movie so poorly written with cliched plot lines, illogical interactions, and ridiculous outcomes. Why did I watch, like others have said, Cassidy Rae was outstanding and she got better looking as the movie went on. The mothers weren't too bad either nor was the final villain. How often do you get a chance to watch some really good looking women, and one beauty I'd never heard of, without having to take the story seriously or even follow it? Tell me again why the athletic team bus stops at a truck stop with a maze of tractor trailers? Tell me again why the police fill her in on the progress of the investigation by calling her on a pay phone in the locker room? How many high school locker rooms have a sauna for cheerleaders to get locked into? How many times in a row can a girl who is in fear of her life go out of her way to get into situations where she is all alone? But she looked GREAT doing it!

Ensure your kids know the story before they go to see this one. Not only are many elements of the story disconnected or provided without causal relationships, but the characters are drawn as chisel-faced Pocohantas-types. Most disturbing, though, is the imposition of American values and thinking on ancient Egyptian culture.

However, it's fun to watch and the Red Sea animation sequence is the best treatment of water in an animated movie I've ever seen.

Just don't think you're going to learn a whole lot from it, but then, you shouldn't be trusting cartoons to teach too much history anyway.

In a story that speaks to the importance of interpersonal skills in life, Robin Williams delivers another outstanding performance mixing drama with comedic episodes as he navigates the title character through hurdles, detractors, and willing accomplices.

The early portion of the film brings to issue in a simple visual the importance of seeing past a problem instead seeing only the problem. The rest of the story is devoted to illustrating the value in that ability and having an impact on people and institutions.

The medical profession will not likely be happy with the portrayal of some stereotypes, but if you see them for what they, the message is stronger.

An excellent story and wonderful performances by Williams, Harold Gould (in almost a cameo), and Phillip Hoffman.