Tuesday, December 15, 2009

A Couple of Movies I Didn't Like (But Finished Watching Anyway)

DUPLICITY – This was a movie I felt like I should enjoy a lot more than I did. I’m not much of a Julia Roberts fan, but I like Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti (who is seemingly in even more movies than Jane Lynch is in TV shows, if that’s humanly possible), and I usually enjoy intricately plotted movies where nothing is what it seems. For some reason, though, this one just didn’t work for me. I found keeping up with all the plot convolutions more boring than intriguing, and in the end I just didn’t care what happened. Maybe I just wasn’t in the right mood to watch it.

NOVEL ROMANCE – This one had what should have been an okay premise for a romantic comedy: single female magazine editor wants a baby, so she offers to publish the work of an aspiring writer in return for his sperm. Unfortunately, with the exception of a nice line here and there about the writing business, the script just isn’t funny, and Traci Lords is terribly miscast as the editor. The movie also makes the same mistake so many movies do and would have us believe that novel manuscripts are thin things bound in plastic covers. The great Paul Johansson does his best as the writer and delivers the movie’s best line (the profound “Most writers are full of shit.”), but he can’t save the film overall. The only other thing the movie has going for it is a supporting turn by Mariette Hartley, who is still beautiful after all these years.

7 comments:

Michael Bracken said...

Every time I see a manuscript improperly portrayed in a movie or television show, I scream and throw things at the screen (at home, anyhow; in public I'm a little more reserved).

pattinase (abbott) said...

Duplicity was a real disappointment and six months later, I couldn't even tell you the plot.

beb said...

Traci Lords is also staring in a direct to DVD version of "A Princess of Mars" where she will once again demonstrate that she has all the emotions from A to B. Nor will she be appearing naked.

AndyDecker said...

"Traci Lords is also staring in a direct to DVD version of "A Princess of Mars" where she will once again demonstrate that she has all the emotions from A to B. Nor will she be appearing naked."

Wasn´t this supposed a major film? The Burroughs adaption? And all we get is another low budget production which I guess will have the production value of your average scifi original movie? Sigh. This is sad.

And what is the point if Dejah Thoris isn´t naked? Not to mention that Lords - which I like - is alittle bit old for this role.

Mark Terry said...

Duplicity disappointed bigtime for both my wife and I and everyone else I've talked to.

Steve Oerkfitz said...

Andy-There is a big budget film of John Carter of Mars in the works. Princess is just a direct to video crapfest. Probably will show up on the Sfy channel soon.

James Reasoner said...

I've seen some publicity photos from that PRINCESS OF MARS production. Lords just isn't Dejah Thoris, as far as I'm concerned, and they've got the wrong number of arms on the Tharks. The guy playing John Carter looks reasonably good, though. The book is in public domain, so I guess there's not much ERB, Inc. can do about the movie. It's from the same folks who produced TRANSMORPHERS and assorted other copycat movies.