Reviews

I read the Ludlum book this is allegedly based on. The novel was great, as are all Ludlum books. Hollywood did its usual of thinking they are better than the author. The movie diverged so greatly from the bookit is essentially unrecognizable. Aside from the title and using same named characters from the book, the movie is pointless and boring. The story is lame and the acting terrible. Most of all though was that they took a great story and totally ruined it.

This show sucks. T&A, killing with guns, gratuitous sex, excessive use of the f-bomb all proves it's written by and aimed at little boys who are enchanted with T&A, guns and the f-word. All they can come up with for audience attracton is T&A and killing, just what you'd expect from useless teenage boys whose imagination extends no further than their crotch and the glamor of using guns to kill people they don't like. It presents a world which encourages the most immoral and amoral activity available to the richies who can afford $40K per day to stay there. This is probably what today's super rich would want to do, no doubt having the robots all wear MAGA hats so they can feel good about gunning them down. The whole point of this show seems to be to outdo video games in portraying firearm violence. I hope the next school shooting calls the entire Westworld team into court as accessories for incitement to murder. This show is the benchmark of Hollywood crap. Everybody involved in making this POS should be grossly ashamed of themselves.

My wife and I watched for maybe five minutes. Then I jumped forward a chapter to see if it improved. It didn't. Nothing but pseudo-science drivel and lots of meaningless footage of sunsets, rivers, people and sitar music, which had nothing to do with anything. This movie had nothing to do with quantum mechanics. Go read the Netflix reviews on this POS to get a fuller understanding of how bad it is. Save 77 minutes of your life for something more useful, such as watching grass grow or, even better, watching paint dry. On top of all the lame philosophizing the problems are compounded by the speaker having an unintelligible accent. Just because he is a PhD quantum physicist doesn't mean he knows how to preach it. He had no interest in presenting quantum mechanics, he just wanted to bloviate on about new-age BS and feelings and beliefs and spiritualism. The title is so misleading the makers should be banned from ever handling a camera again.

This movie was completely confusing. It is nothing but a bunch of scenes strung together but there is no logical order to them. You could take the film, cut it at every scene junction and then toss the pieces on the floor and let a bunch of goats loose to prance about on them for an hour or two to scramble them up real good. Then pick them up at random and splice the pieces together. You couldn't tell the difference before and after. As long as the opening and closing credits were at the front and back it would be the same movie as what the producers released. This review applies equally to the Alec Guiness and Gary Oldman films. Both aren't worth watching, unless you feel compelled to watch them several times to try to figure them out. Not worth the bother.

This movie is a pathetic piece of mushminded garbage right out of the seventies. I suspect the "experts" they have spouting nonsense are all scientologists. Especially "Ramtha" the blonde bimbo in the red suit. Every time she spoke it was all just new-age blather, devoid of sense or meaning, forget about her absurd overacting. They build the whole plot line on an exploration of quantum mechanics without ever once mentioning the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the heart of quantum physics. They do allude to its uncertainty by talking about the indeterminacy of an electron's position, and the role of the observer in nailing down its real position. They then make the leap that this uncertainty and observer's imposition of determinacy extend to the macro world, which quantum physics principles do not. They leap from metaphysical, sophomoric "profound" questions with no answers, to assertions that our consciousness reshapes reality and the world. The entire wedding party sequence looks like an excuse to have fun with CGI critters, the lame plot jettisoned for the time being. The heroine, Amanda, is a wet blanket, popping lithium pills constantly. What I found most absurd was the subway display of photos by Mr. Emoto, of water being influenced not only by thoughts, but by notes expressing emotions or thoughts taped to bottles of water. The "influenced" water was just pictures of snowflakes. Everybody associated with this movie should be ashamed of themselves. I'm surprised the "experts" appeared under their real names. Looks like a career killer to me. For those of you who see this and think you've learned something or your life has been profoundly changed, have I got a bridge to sell you!!

I was only seven years old when my parents took us kids to see Where's Charley? I have never forgotten it or the song Once In Love With Amy which Ray Bolger sang. I was madly in love with Amy myself after we left the movie. I still remember the opening words, Once In Love With Amy and the melody they were sung to. I'd love to see this on DVD too. Why can't Hollywood get all these old movies out to DVD anyway? They are leaving gold buried in the vaults. What I mostly remember about the movie was the dancing Ray Bolger performed, although I don't remember Amy dancing or not, but I assume she did too. Too bad the IMDb contains no pictures of the actress who played Amy, Allyn Ann McLerie. I'd love to see what she looks like now, or then, so maybe I could understand why I fell in love with her when I was only seven.

My freshman roommate in college (1963) was a huge Ayn Rand fan. He tried to explain her and her philosophy to me and it all went over my head, at that time. He did tell me about The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, Objectivism, etc. All of it way over my head. Since then I've learned a few things, done a stint in the Army (Vietnam), traveled extensively all over the world, worked for a living, married, paid LOTS of taxes and am now nearing retirement. My older brother recommended The Fountainhead and so did an old high school friend who discovered it in college. I finally for the first time read it and then rented it on Netflix. My wife and I watched it and found it enjoyable and enlightening. Gary Cooper nailed Howard Roark as well as George C. Scott nailed Patton. At first I thought he looked a bit old for Roark, as the story began with Roark in college. In 1949 Hollywood didn't have the "younging/oldening" makeup they have today. Patricia Neal did Dominique very well as did Raymond Massey for Gail Wynand. I found Cooper's Roark speech at his trial at the end extremely well done, moving, logical and convincing. Having read the book and seen the movie, especially with Ayn Rand's excellent screenplay, I have discovered that I've been an Objectivist most of my life. I admire Roark for his strength and nobility and the movie portrayed that as well as did the book, which had far more time to expound on the topic than a movie ever could. I recommend it highly.

In the book, McMurphy was a lovable rogue, Falstaffian in character. Jack Nicholson turned McMurphy into a stupid jerk a**hole, not the least bit likable. Besides which, McMurphy was a big hulk of a guy and Jack Nicholson is a tiny little wimp guy not the least bit like McMurphy. In the book McMurphy fought Nurse Ratchet because he had the best interests of the inmates at heart and she was a sadistic monster and deserved a comeuppance. In the movie he fought her just because he was a jerk. She came across much more like a decent nurse looking out for the inmates, undeserving of McMurphy's torments. Nicholson's McMurphy could never have torn up the sink and thrown it out the window, he's just too small for that. The book's McMurphy was big enough to make such an act believable. I was so disappointed by this movie I quit seeing Jack Nicholson movies for several years. As I thought about all the Jack Nicholson movies I'd seen over the years, starting with Easy Rider, I realized that in every movie his character was an a**hole. That made me think maybe Jack Nicholson is really an a**hole. Then he shined like a star in About Schmidt. I loved that one. So I will now go see Jack Nicholson movies again. I guess age has improved him. Separate from Nicholson's McMurphy ruinations, I really missed the part where the chief's hand grew gigantic in anticipation of using it as a monster weapon as he contemplated some taunts. The book made that a great scene. The movie just ignored it. Too bad, it would have been good. Not that I can tell you how to film such a mental struggle in the chief's head but I'm sure some creative Hollywood type could figure out a good way to do it.

As an overachieving college graduate, Ben Braddock is so constantly stupid and naive, he is just not believable. He is so spineless and childlike how can Mike Nichols expect us to believe that this wimp actually made it through college, with high grades, as it is implied throughout the movie and was a track star to boot? When this first came out it owned the Campus theater for an entire quarter while I was at college. Then, it seemed profoundly meaningful. Now, it just looks dated and is not the least bit entertaining. I just want to slap him in the head and tell him to wake up and find his cojones. How Elaine could be attracted to such a loser as Ben Braddock is the main mystery of the movie. All the adults (meaning, the parents) in this movie are such clueless drones they are just as unbelievable as is Ben. Seeing it again after 30 years was a mistake; I should have just left it in my memories as a good movie. The performances are excellent, the characters are idiots and the story is lame. Now, it is profoundly meaningless. What a disappointment.

I didn't like this movie because it was populated with a bunch of mindless losers. Bob and Carol represent everything wrong with Hollywood and America today, amoral "feeling" versus thinking rationally. My wife and I couldn't decide if this was a satire, a comedy, or a drama. Mostly it just seemed to be a lampoon of 60's Hollywood hedonistic, leftist, thinking, and represents today's moral relativism where everything is OK if it feels good. There ARE moral absolutes, regardless of what "modern" thinking proclaims. Sanctity of marriage is good and infidelity is bad, it's that simple. Bob and Carol are so lacking in any moral foundation, let alone common sense, that they are misled by the morons at the Institute (Esalen, for those of you who are unaware of it; it's a real place sad to say) into almost destroying their marriage and that of their friends. At least in the end reality hits them in the nose and after a stint in bed together they realize the moral bankruptcy of their "new thinking". I assume they went home and their marriages were better for the experience. But one should not need such an experience to remain faithful to one's spouse. Why do people marry anyway if not to remain faithful to each other? Single days are for catting around, not marriage.

Technically the acting, directing, screen writing, etc were all well done. Maybe that's why I hated the people in the movie and didn't like the movie. None of the adults in this town should ever have been permitted to have children. They are all dysfunctional idiots, criminally neglectful of their responsibilities as parents who have brought children into the world and then left them to go off and become burdens on society. The adults should all be sterilized. And it should be made retroactive by killing off most of their children too. Most of these kids are liabilities, to themselves, their families, their school, their community and to America as a whole. Maybe that was the point of the movie, to show how defective today's parents are, leaving their child raising responsibilities to video games, other children and society in general. Get that, Hollywood giving a moral lesson to America. How unimaginable. As if anybody in Hollywood has any moral foundation whatsoever, especially in the area of child rearing. I will not waste my time or money on any other movies this director makes. I gave it a three as it did make its point, however distastefully.

My wife and I are going to see it this weekend. I got a call from my brother in Georgia who saw it and loved it. Years ago I had forced my whole family to watch "Somewhere In Time" and everybody LOVED it. I have watched it straight through three times in a row when I first got obsessed with it and got my tape recorded off TV. I now have a DVD of it. I've considered attending the Somewhere In Time weekend at the Grand Hotel on Mackinaw Island but the travel and hotel accommodations are too expensive so I gave up on that. I continue to recommend it highly telling people to put the kids to bed and sit through it non-stop. My brother recommended The Lake House enthusiastically, saying it's much like Somewhere In Time. Basically if you liked Somewhere In Time you'll like The Lake House. I don't expect to fall in love with Sandra Bullock like I did with Jane Seymour. And Keanu Reeves is no Christopher Reeve. But I'm hopeful.

OK, it's now January 15, 2008. I did see the movie and it's nowhere near as good as Somewhere In Time. It was sweet and romantic but it just didn't get me the way SIT did. Maybe it was the missing Rachmaninoff music. Plus Sandra Bullock is no Jane Seymour and Keanu Reeves is definitely no Christopher Reeve. Not even close.