The Cinema:
Ah, another in a long strip of mediocre (and again, simply awful) movies based upon Saturday Night End skits. In the but week that First is releasing the latest crack ("Ladies Man"), they also bring to DVD this 1993 vehicle, starring Dan Ackroyd and Jane Curtin as two overwhelmingly-domed aliens imaginative to Earth. Beldar (Dan Aykroyd) and Prymaat (Jane Curtin) set themselves up as illegal aliens, and any minute now, it looks much the same as there's a spoil on the scheme.
Although everything seems like it's prospering okay as the years go by, an INS spokesperson named Gorman Seedling (Michael McKean) starts suspecting something's up and seeks distant the two Coneheads, with the support of his assistant(played fairly well by David Spade). Meanwhile, daughter Connie(Michelle Burke) and local boy Ronnie(Chris Farley) deficient in brotherhood, much to the likely anger of father Beldar. As with the entr’acte of the "Saturday Night Live" sketches turned to films, a 5-10 minute sketch tends to break apart when pulled to a 90 twinkling of an eye peculiarity. This is especially apparent here, where, as the "Coneheads" were skits were exclusive within reason amusing, there's just not enough involved to do a great deal with.
This leads to the usual techniques of a "SNL" film, which involves pulling together a virtual parade of cameos (Adam Sandler, Drew Carrey, John Lovitz, etc) as a remedy for one-write down, slight jolts of diversion in advance of getting outlying to, well, nowhere in distinct. The biggest mockery in the skit and in the movie is that the two main characters talk peculiar and look funny - and bits like that by no means carry a feature. Writers Bonnie Turner and Terry Turner father managed to be more remunerative with their sitcom "3rd Dumbfound From The Sun"(which also stars Curtin), but flatten that seems to procure call distant of steam as this will be the last season for that give someone an idea of.
The DVD
SOUND
: This is a suprisingly decent Dolby Digital 5.1 presentation. Although it's not anything close to "Independence Day", there are some rather creative instances of surround use and very respectable sound quality. Much of the film is what you would expect from a comedy, as dialogue-driven scenes dominate a great deal of the film. Yet, the more intense sequences do distribute sound effects nicely around the room, as the surrounds fire up more often than I would have expected - see the massive fireworks display in chapter 9, for an example. Better than the average comedy audio presentation - definitely a suprise in the audio department.
MENUS:
: Menus are non-animated, with very basic film-themed images serving as backgrounds.
EXTRAS:
The trailer.
Final Thoughts
: I've not at any time been a fan of "Coneheads", but Primary has done a very good apportion with the audio and unexpectedly strong audio property. If you're a fan of the film, it's a DVD worth picking up. Otherwise, I wouldn't vouch for it.
Picture Succeed
The Take
* 1/2
DVD Grades
Video 89/B+ = (356/400 possible points)
Audio: 89/B+ = (356/400 possible points)
Extras: 69/D+ = (207/300 possible points)
Menus: 70/C- = (140/200 doable points)
Value: 80/B- = (240/300 possible points)
ADD UP TO POINTS:1299/1600
DVD ACCLIVITY:B/81%
FILM GRADE:
* 1/2
DVD GRADE:
B
DVD Information
5.1
Streaming movie sites have become popular with people who spend a lot of time online nowadays. These sites make it possible to watch full-length feature movies, and even streaming television shows right on your computer screen using a technology known as ?streaming-video.? On some of these web services you can even play interactive games in HD with 3D graphics. There are numerous websites offering these services, some free and others requiring paid memberships. The best free full movies site is watch-funny-movies.com
Dolby 2.0(English/French)
English Subtitles
1.85:1/
Dual Layer:No
Rated:PG
86 minutes
Anamorphic:Yes
Area:1
LINKS TO ONLINE STORES:
*
800.COM
*
“A loopy tale
about a superstitious widow’s quest to find her 12-year-old daughter.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
A loopy tale about a superstitious widow’s
quest to find her 12-year-old daughter Blanca. One of the problems facing
that search is that Blanca died in Veracruz’s small town of Tlacotalpan’s
hospital from a mysterious viral infection after checking in for a tonsillectomy,
but that doesn’t convince her pious mother Esperanza (Dolores Heredia)
because she was not allowed to see the body for fear of contamination and
when she returns the next day to get Dr. Ortiz to exhume her body for a
forensic investigation–the good doctor has vanished without an explanation.
While cooking in the apartment she shares with her fellow widow Soledad,
Esperanza sees in the grimy glass oven window St. Jude appear as an apparition
and he drops the hint that her daughter is still alive. She scampers to
the church to give her confession to Father Salvador, telling him what
Saint Jude layed on her. The kindly Father, more interested in watching
the soaps on TV than listening to dopey confessions, cautions her for now
to keep this miracle to herself. But she can’t resist telling Soledad,
who thinks she’s gone batty. And, so develops an arduous tale of a bereaved
woman’s incredulous amateur detective investigation, love for a lost one,
faith, and self-discovery. But the real theme might be that one can never
underestimate the gullibility of religious worshippers, who look upon icons
with the same fervor as fans of pro wrestling look upon their heroes.
Esperanza is comfortable at home with her altar
of religious statues, votive candles, rosaries, and pictures of saints.
In the real world, she’s ripe for all kinds of delusions. Consulting a
host of other saints to guide her, she opts to search anywhere in Mexico
for her daughter when Father Salvador thinks it might have been possible
that the pretty girl was kidnapped by Dr. Ortiz and sold as a sex slave
to a brothel. Unbelievably, even for a fable, Esperanza takes jobs in various
brothels prostituting herself in an attempt to find her daughter at any
cost. Her Candide-influenced adventures take her to the faraway brothels
of Tijuana and even to Los Angeles, where her lack of success in finding
her daughter brings unexpected success in landing a man. She falls in love
with the good guy pro wrestler Angel Galvan, whose professional handle
is the “Angel of Justice.” The two are a match made in heaven, or from
a script that so shamelessly tugs at the heart strings – it’s a
match unmasked in the world of cinematic feel-good fancy. This romance
makes her realize she’s a woman in need of love, and thereby her mood changes
reflect her new gayer appearance as she goes from wearing black to
brighter colored dresses. All the while travelling she keeps contact with
the puzzled Father by giving him through long-distance phone confessions
of her sexual escapades, and surprises him further with a return visit
to the church. A new set of plans arises when her oven window was cleaned
by Soledad and she no longer receives visits from the saints (this was
just too hokey to buy into).
To its credit, the film never goes for the
easy jokes it could have had at the delusional but innocent woman’s expense,
as it aims to follow one of William Blake’s poetical dictum’s “following
one’s folly is a way of getting to the truth.” I don’t think this whimsical
tale had enough staying power or weight to be anything but cutesy, as I
found the story lacking in too many good storytelling essentials to be
more than slightly engaging. It takes stupidity to new heights of relevance.
It is too dumb a tale to be taken seriously and just didn’t jibe as a comedy,
especially since it so wanted to be taken seriously.
It’s a film by Alejandro Spingall from a script
by Maria Amparo Escandon that she developed from her novel at the Sundance
Screenwriters’ Lab. It’s meant to be like a folklore fable and in an artsy-fartsy
way be beguiling. It was the winner of the Jury Prize in Latin American
Cinema at Sundance, 1999.
|
Starring Dakota Fanning, Julia Roberts, Dominic Scott Kay, Steve Buscemi, John Cleese, Oprah Winfrey, Cedric the Entertainer, Kathy Bates, Reba McEntire, Thomas Haden Church, Andre Benjamin, Robert Redford.
Directed by Gary Winick.
Rated G.
C+
"I beg your pardon — she's hideous."
E.B. White's
Charlotte's Web
is an elegant, wonderful, timeless children's story, but the big-budget live-action film that has been made from it is kind of lame. The most unfortunate thing, probably, is the fact that its status as live-action inevitably reduces it to being the kind of movie that has a barnyard full of computer-animated talking animals, meant to look as realistic as possible with the exception of their lips, which creepily simulate human speech. This sort of thing has
never worked
, and for all of the technological advances we've seen, it still looks chintzy and low-rent. The film's look betrays its source material.
That's not the only problem. I have this theory that books are not movies, and
Charlotte's Web
is as good a specimen as any to confirm it: the screenplay is slavishly faithful to White's story, but the story changes in unpredictable ways. No longer does Fern (played here by Dakota Fanning), the sweet little girl who spares tiny piglet Wilbur from destruction, serve as the fairy tale's steadfast human anchor; instead, she is gradually marginalized before being rendered completely irrelevant, her plotline resolved in a way that's sweet but also a little crass considering that her act of saving Wilbur is pitched as either heroic or miraculous, depending on who you ask.
It's important to note that this is emphatically a children's movie, with virtually no attempt having been made to give it universal appeal or the label "family film." As such, it's ill-becoming of one to be too grouchy, and in fairness, it would take an affirmative effort to make anything by E.B. White genuinely bad or in any way offensive. This iteration of
Charlotte's Web
is by no means that, and I can't imagine that it won't delight the less demanding younger set.
At the same time, there are plenty of reasons to be disgruntled. Complaints about the look of the film and its treatment of Fern are legitimate, I think, but on an even more general level, it's hard not to notice that
Charlotte's Web
has been turned into a mash-up of vague and tiresome platitudes — lots of talk about friendship and childhood and miracles (especially miracles) without ever really pinning down what any of those terms mean or why we should care. The film's incarnation of Doctor Dorian, for example, has Beau Bridges showing up to spout profundities at Fern's mother, and it struck me that a modern day Greek chorus works much better (once again) on the page than on the screen. I'm not sure this film speaks to children with on their level; ultimately, and while recognizing that friendship and childhood are important (I am noncommittal about miracles), I think it's talking nonsense at them.
Further complicating matters is the voice casting, most problematically Julia Roberts, who is a bizarre choice for Charlotte and sounds for all the world like Julia Roberts standing in front of a microphone and reading lines. Live-action Dakota Fanning, on the other hand, is terrific, declining the invitation to be cute to the exclusion of everything else, and making Fern utterly believable. That makes the film's treatment of her all the more upsetting.
Last summer, I
marveled
at the way that virtually shot-for-shot remakes can lose so much in the translation.
Charlotte's Web
is the literary adaptation equivalent. It doesn't turn E.B. White into a travesty, but it manages to make him border on inane.
–Eugene Novikov
Anyone who wishes the heyday of rock ‘n’ indulge in hadn’t been homogenized and commercialized into submission should hype a dismount a punt out of “The Banger Sisters.” Feisty fun from start to ending, pic, which stars Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon as legendary former groupies who reconnect for the at the outset time in 20 years, will resonate best with moviegoers over 35; if word gets out to the boomer demographic, neatly scripted and efficiently helmed comedy from vet screenwriter and debuting top banana Bob Dolman should glare at the B.O.
Footloose, still vivacious bartender Suzette (Hawn) has been a fixture at the Whisky a Go Go on L.A.’s Sunset Strip since Jim Morrison passed out atop her in the club’s bathroom. When the chronically cash-starved, authority-flaunting Suzette is fired for insubordination — which in her case stems from seemingly genetic rebelliousness — she sets out for Phoenix unannounced to see Lavinia “Vinnie” Kingsley (Sarandon) for a morale boost and possible financial assistance.
Frank Zappa gave Suzette and Vinnie their joint sobriquet the Banger Sisters in recognition of services cheerfully rendered to musicians and roadies. “If you played L.A., chances are we rattled you,” Suzette opines. The two women, now fiftyish, haven’t been in touch for two decades but since Suzette hasn’t modified her cheery freedom-loving disposition one bit, it doesn’t occur to her that Vinnie may have taken a different path.
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Armed with a flower child’s eternal optimism, Suzette is panhandling for gas money at a truck stop when fastidious Harry (Geoffrey Rush), desperate to ditch the Greyhound bus he’s been riding on, volunteers to fill her tank if she’ll drive him the rest of the way to Phoenix. Blocked screenwriter Harry, age 50, gave up driving a while back; it’s also been 10 years — by choice — since he’s had sex. Suzette’s spontaneity and forthright womanly appetites are threatening to the ultra-methodical, emotionally zipped tight Harry.
While time was standing still for the fun-loving Suzette, her erstwhile co-conspirator in sexual escapades has made a clean break with her rambunctious past — emphasis on “clean.” Prim and proper Lavinia, who now does social work, is married to Raymond (Robin Thomas), a corporate lawyer with political aspirations who hasn’t a clue of his wife’s notorious past. They’ve raised two teen daughters who can barely picture their rigid controlling mom tapping her foot to an easy-listening beat let alone going through studly rockers like paper plates.
About-to-graduate Hannah (Erika Christensen) is class valedictorian and Vassar-bound. Sixteen-year-old Ginger (Sarandon’s real life daughter Eva Amurri) is spoiled rotten and has a strange psychosomatic tic involving her throat.
Suzette’s impromptu arrival as Lavinia and Raymond are seeing Hannah off to the prom, does not go well. Holier than thou Lavinia is soon accusing Suzette of “looking too permissive.” Bummed, Suzette crashes at Harry’s hotel, which happens to be the site of the high school prom. Suzette is the perfect one-woman rescue squad in the right place at the right time when Hannah reacts badly to a tab of acid. Merely by being herself, Suzette is the catalyst for seismic changes in the Kingsley household. She’s also a positive influence on self-pitying Harry. For Suzette may be a flake but she’s a genuine free spirit, always true to herself, outspoken and attuned to her own brand of self-actualized integrity. When Vinnie is abruptly put back in touch with her long lost sensibilities, humor ensues.
Never heavy, deftly modulated comic script is an amusing exploration of the “Do as I say, not as I do” school of parenting and a casual primer on constructive applications of freedom and responsibility. Pic manages to skirt any intimation of sordidness while making it quite clear that Suzette and Vinnie were unabashedly intimate with everyone filed under “Classic Rock” in today’s record bins.
Narrative situations play into both actresses’ strengths and physical attributes, right down to their respective cleavage quotients. Rush is quite simply a hoot. Adult fans of good thesping in the service of a lightweight but thoroughly entertaining story should bask in the antics.
Ultra widescreen frame provides plenty of opportunities for thesps to strut their stuff and is well suited to the open road and the frighteningly manicured estates of suburban Phoenix. Use of music is appropriate but borderline too subtle for an ode to an era. Jim Morrison is thanked in the credits for his “assistance.”
Although this rarely achieves the heights of classics like Snow White and Dumbo, it allay has its moments. Typical Disney elements abound: polished if sometimes stodgy ardour; sugary soundtrack based on Tchaikovsky; a delicate, vapid princess, square-jawed prince, and cutesy creatures of the forest. The early scenes of household cheer with the matronly good fairies, interspersed with interludes of romance and regal pomp, are frequently overlong and uninspired. But in the final thundering confrontation with the wicked Xanthippe, set in the decaying Gothic splendours of the Forbidden Mountain, the fascinating works once more. An epic intellect conjures up impossible monumental castles, shadows and monstrosities, with exciting action marvellously orchestrated across the CinemaScope frame.
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Outlaw. Gaffer Steven Soderbergh; Producer Robert Newmyer, John Hale; Screenplay Steven Soderbergh; Camera Walt Lloyd; Editor Steven Soderbergh; Music Rock-face Martinez; Art Chief Joanne Schmidt
James Spader
Andie MacDowell
Peter Gallagher
Laura San Giacomo
This is a stunning, nuanced, excellently controlled exploration of how a quartet of people are defined by their erotic impulses and inhibitions.
Imaginatively presented opening intercuts the embarrassed therapy confessions of young wife Andie MacDowell with the impending arrival in town of James Spader, a mysterious stranger type who was a college chum of MacDowell's handsome husband (Peter Gallagher).
Given MacDowell's admissions that she and Gallagher are no longer having sex, it would seem that Spader is walking into a potentially provocative situation.
He drops a bombshell by revealing that he is impotent, seemingly scratching any developments on that end. Meanwhile Gallagher has been conducting a secret affair with his wife's sexy wild sister (Laura San Giacomo).
Pic is absorbing and titillating because nearly every conversation is about sex and aspects of these attractive people's relationships. Several steamy scenes between Gallagher and San Giacomo, and some extremely frank videotapes featuring women speaking about their sex lives, turn the temperature up even more.
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Lensed on location in Baton Rouge, La, for $1.2 million, production looks splendid.
1989: Nomination: Best Original Screenplay
(Color) Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1989. Running time: 101 MIN.
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Recent Reviews:
- Sunbathe., Jan. 1, 1989
It's close to sit through early talkies made in 1929, even if they've been archivally restored until they're as glistening as the hour they were released. There are, of circuit, exceptions: Alfred Hitchcock's "Tribute," F. Richard Jones' "Bulldog Drummond" … ahm….ahm…ahm…and I'm thinking it over! Understandably, categorically "Blackmail" & "Bulldog Drummond," anyway. "Blackmail" also exists as a breezy silent blear, but the miraculously of "Bulldog Drummond"is to hear, to go to the very first time again, the beautiful expression of Ronald Colman, then 38, in the privilege role.
Unlimited producer Samuel Goldwyn may not have been the from the start to rift the new market, but he was far and away the classiest. Captain Hugh Drummond is bored out of his skull, so he takes out a London Times advertisement, announcing that he's skilful for adventure. Phyllis Benton (Joan Bennett, then nineteen) asks him to rescue her uncle (Charles Sellon as Hiram J. Travers) from the clutches of the villainous Dr. Lakington (Lawrence Grant). Drummond & his loyal buddy Algy Longworth (Claude Allister) are on the job! Unequivalent to many creaky vehicles of this transitional era, "Bulldog Drummond" moves at a breathless clip & there's measured time for a 75-year-old gag near halitosis, drolly communicated to everybody of the irritable guys by Bulldog: "Even your best friends won't discern you." It's also a therapy to see Lilyan Tashman as the vulgar femme fatale Erma. Tashman was one of Hollywood's best-dressed blondes until her break of dawn death in 1934.
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Everything about the casting is fresh & funny & audiences clamored to take the $2 (pre-Depression) admission fee. Colman worked 18 hour days to earn his first Oscar nomination for this one, although he finally demanded a less arduous plan. He made 26 more films over the next 28 years & when all is said won an Oscar on his third take a shot in the service of 1947's "A Double Life." And Bennett, less alluring as a blonde than as the bottle brunette she would become in 1938, till had a reason of her own worth by refusing to be bound for b assault a screen test. (She was peacefulness working 75 films later, well-spring into her seventies.) Based on the tale by Herman Cyril "Sapper" McNeile & the play by McNeile & Gerald DuMaurier.
© 2007 - Monica Sullivan - Air Date: 7/4/07
I don’t know if it’s a slap in the face against the film or the specify of the American media, but Legalese, a 1998 courtroom satire that aired as a TNT Original talking picture of the week, looks pretty cliched seven years out. The story of cagey lawyer Norman Keane (James Garner), who specializes in defending guilty-as-sin celebrities, came effectively post-O.J., when it was already in way for the sake of the media to treat giant money defense attorneys like celebrities themselves (heck, these days we have the news of Michael Jackson recruiting Scott Peterson’s bencher reported to us as breathlessly as the A-Rod trade). Of course, the silent picture goes one better—Keane has been so overexposed he’s now stiff to rethink his scheming in commitment to reciprocally himself into an ordered bigger star.
Keane has neutral come distant of a big case—and tarnished his position by shamelessly defending someone that was doubtlessly a criminal—when into his office walks ward film star Angela Beale (Gina Gershon), newly accused of first extent murder. It seems she shot her brother-in-law, claiming it was self-defense and an essay to protect his abused sister, though all evidence indicates she was sleeping with the guy solitary a few days first. Keane knows he can win it, but he doesn’t want the known to hate him. Luckily, he runs into brassy-faced law school grad Roy Guyton (Edward Kerr), a charming guy with “a fraction of Iowa” in his part. Literally runs into him, with his motor vehicle, and when Guyton is able to combination his legal remedy mumbo-jumbo, Keane realizes he may have found just what he needs to encourage himself back on top.
Guyton is green, but, Keane explains, if Roy takes the Beale case, he can wear an earpiece and gull direction from his mentor right in the middle of a dry run. It’s not that Keane has an interest in Beale’s plight—she’s just as opportunistic as he is, and uses her “it was abuse” defense to finagle herself a talk show, Enchanting Uncivilized the Night with Angela Beale—he’s just in it for the call out (after all, on the other hand a existent genius could gain a victory in a case without ever setting foot in the courtroom).
Legalese wants to be a scornful ridicule, but it not at all quite gets there, mostly because it simply isn’t humorous. The characters are likeable enough. Garner has the charisma to be both the villain of the piece and a father numeral concerning Roy, and Kerr is appropriately low-key. But aside from a few good gags (including a wares hint where Roy tells a reporter he is wearing an earpiece because of nerve deafness, winning him the support of a nerve deafness advocacy group), but all in all, it doesn’t really say anything. Screenwriter Billy Spark had the identical sort of impose on with Shattered Glass, about a writer for a major periodical who was forced to admit he’d made up most of his stories—it’s all surface, nothing underneath, no hint of some larger satiric point. Skipper Glenn Jordan doesn’t do him any favors with his decidedly old-train TV camerawork and languid pacing.
That’s not to say the film isn’t humorous. Mary-Louise Parker has a small task as Garner’s assistant, so bewitched with Roy that she keeps taxing to evade him to have sex with her during business hours, and provides some entertainment (though she doesn’t seem to be trying too insensitive to do any more than that). Keane, whose lifelong appetite has been to land an interrogate with Ted Koppel, has to settle for tabloid vulture Brenda Whitlass (Kathleen Turner), host of a become called Scandals Unlimited, which turns every development in the Beale case into a flashy news segment (upon the revelation Beale’s sister was ill-treated, the show airs a piece called Feed-bag, Drink and Beat Mary). But other than these passing amusements, there is little in the satire of Legalese that qualifies as comedy, perhaps because the as a rule televised trial sideshow has only gotten more popular in the last seven years, and none of this seems the least touch over the top.
Another movie in the VeggieTales franchise, this time that focuses on a pirate adventure.
Genre:
Animated
MPAA Rating:
Starring:
Phil Vischer, Mike Nawrocki, Cam Clarke
Director:
Mike Nawrocki
Running Time:
1:25
"The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything — A VeggieTales Movie," the umpteenth entry in the 15-year-old animated franchise and the first to forsake the Bible for Robert Louis Stevenson, is clever enough to keep adults entertained, even if the story is something of an antique. Dynastic intrigue. Adventure at sea. Imperiled maidens. Pirates who say "Arrrrrr." Plus three 21st-century busboys from the pirate-themed Pieces of Ate dinner theater who are transported to the 17th century to face real danger and be real heroes.
Robert the Terrible is the uncle of the rather anemic Eloise and Alexander. Robert wants his brother's crown and to achieve this has taken his nephew hostage. Eloise uses the Helpseeker (think prayer) to find help. The magical device finds our three heroes at the Pieces of Ate: Longtime fans know that the veggies play different roles in each story; this time it's Mr. Lunt, a gourd, who portrays Sedgewick, Larry the Cucumber who plays Elliot and Pa Grape who plays George (voices of director Mike Nawrocki and writer Phil Vischer). The Helpseeker then takes them, via magical rowboat, to the 1600s.
The moral of the story is about the meaning of courage. Does it mean swashbuckling your way around a stage? Or does it mean doing the right thing when the right thing scares you out of your wits? It's a useful lesson, for kids or adults, the latter of whom will probably be more amused by the movie's Mel Brooksian conjunction of anachronistic references and lapses into the modern. ("You guys got TiVo?" Sedgewick asks upon meeting Eloise.)
Of course, the movie poses one problem: How are you going to get kids to eat their greens when the greens are bouncing around so adorably? The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything don't, in fact, do much. But at least they won't raise your cholesterol.
– John Anderson (Jan. 11, 2008)
Contains nothing offensive.
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Reviews / 28 October 2007
The World Unseen
UK / South Africa / 2007
The list of novelists who have adapted and then directed movie versions of their own work is, perhaps unsurprisingly, rather short. Bruce Robinson’s
Withnail And I
was based on an unpublished novel, while Stephen King infamously came a cropper with his ludicrous directorial debut (and hopefully swansong)
Maximum Overdrive
. But beyond that the field is, to my knowledge, bare. And maybe this is for the best—authors tend to be precious about their work, unwilling to make the harsh cuts and restructuring necessary for a successful translation from page to screen, even if all they’re asked to do is write the script. For a writer to then take the next step and realise that work, with all the compromises and setbacks inherent to any film production, must be an emotional and at times painful experience. I’ve not read Shamim Sarif’s feted debut novel
The World Unseen
, but its cinematic incarnation seems to have suffered in the translation.
As a window into a hitherto unexplored subculture, the film is undeniably interesting. But as a work of narrative fiction, there’s little here we haven’t seen before. In 1950’s, apartheid-ruled South Africa, two women of Indian origin begin a tenuous friendship—Miriam is a repressed housewife and mother of two, living in a remote house on the outskirts of Cape Town. Amina is a rebel, ‘masculine’ in thought, deed and dress, part-owner of a popular café, misunderstood by her traditionalist family who only want to see her married off and domesticated.
To its credit,
The World Unseen
manages to steer clear of some of the clichés inherent in the material. There are moments near the beginning when one starts to dread the inevitability of certain upcoming scenes—the
Bend It Like Beckham
mother-daughter confrontations over the nature of a woman’s place and her responsibilities to her family, or an awkward-comic arranged introduction to a potential husband. These scenes are present and accounted for, but luckily they are brief and actually rather funny, and far less important to the narrative than other, more interesting plot threads.
The central relationship is nicely played, shifting from awkwardness and tentative attraction to friendship and eventually intimacy. Neither character manages to rise far above her initial appearance – tomboy and housewife, respectively – but their gradual dance around one another is played very sweetly, and never descends into cheap sentiment.
But in other areas, the film wanders deep into formulaic territory, hampered by a predictable storyline and a crushing lack of subtlety. This is perhaps most starkly outlined in the characters of two white South African cops, whose arrival is heralded by shattering pottery and gunfire, and who make their presence felt by swearing, grabbing women by the throat and generally acting like monsters, in time-honoured bad-cop fashion. I’m sure it’s fair to say that most apartheid-era policemen were just such caricatures, but surely that’s common knowledge by now, and doesn’t need to be reiterated in such a clumsy, crass fashion.
Miriam’s husband and his inevitable extramarital affair with his scheming sister-in-law feel equally familiar, as does his transition from decent but neglectful spouse to abusive, paranoid chauvinist. A more interesting subplot – elderly black café worker Jacob’s tentative relationship with the local white postmistress – feels underdeveloped, and although we like both of these characters we are never given a chance to get to know them.
Perhaps the main problem here, ironically, is the dialogue, which is essentially declarative and functional, lacking any sense of real poetry. Better actors could, perhaps, have made something of it, but the central cast are uniformly awkward, particularly the two leads. A few sideline characters make a stronger impression—David Dennis, as the aforementioned Jacob, is subtly affecting, his cracked face showing all the strain of a lifetime of oppression and self denial. But the only actor here who genuinely seems to be enjoying himself is Bernard White as Amina’s father, an underused and very likeable character actor (familiar from, among other things, those awful
Matrix
sequels) who makes the most of an underwritten part.
Visually, the film is surprisingly subtle and rather beautiful—the South African landscape has always translated well onto film, and this is no exception. For her interiors and costumes Sarif employs a well chosen colour palette, all rich browns and soft, natural shades, complementing both the surrounding landscape and the skin tones of her actors—the white cops in their blue uniforms look even more garishly out of place. The use of makeup is less understated, and sometimes faintly comical—even after digging a garden for several hours, even during childbirth, these women never look anything less than perfect, their lipstick unsmudged, their hair immaculate.
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There are some films which one feels churlish for criticising too harshly—
The World Unseen
is clearly a labour of great love for all concerned, particularly the author-director. But Sarif makes the terrible mistake of failing to trust her audience, and feeling she needs to signpost every development, every plot turn, every emotional peak. Supposedly meaningful glances between characters are preposterously oversustained. The ‘good’ characters never set a foot wrong, while the ‘bad’ are, for the most part, irredeemable. The score is unbearably syrupy, drowning us in heavy, glutinous strings. All of which is a shame, because there’s a touching, likeable human story buried under here, struggling heroically to get out.
Tom Huddleston
/
© 2007 notcoming.com
Rachel Chlebus