41 lines
4.4 KiB
Plaintext
41 lines
4.4 KiB
Plaintext
i can hear the question already .
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what on earth do these two movies have in common ?
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to most people , not a lot , except that both are by renowned directors .
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as i saw them , however , both movies have flawed romantic scripts wrapped in distinctive packaging of lavish visuals musical numbers .
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but oh , how differently the packages affect their films .
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while " everyone's " production numbers make an otherwise ordinary woody tale something special , jane campion's imaginative visuals only serve to emphasize how pompous and uninvolving laura jones' script is .
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i left " everyone says i love you " not remembering a lot about who loved whom , but its infectious happiness put a grin on my face .
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i left " the portrait of a lady " not remembering a lot about who loved whom , and i could have cared less .
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" everyone " features nothing allen hasn't done before storywise .
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woody is again desperately in love with a beautiful woman ( roberts ) , and against the odds they manage to click for awhile before allen is left wondering what went wrong--again .
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similar situations happen to his family and friends .
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some of the more outlandish comedy scenes even hark back to his " early , funny " films .
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the scenes between tim roth and drew barrymore could have come out of " take the money and run , " his directorial debut .
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however , nothing allen has ever done prepared me for this one-of-a-kind display of sheer good spirits .
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in fact , in this movie , the feeling itself is what's most important .
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yes , the movie would have been better--among his very best , i think--if it had a meatier story .
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but what it lacks in substance it makes up for in feeling .
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and what better way to express feeling than through music ?
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love is often best expressed in a song , and the numbers the cast break into here cut straight to the heart .
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some are a tad too goofy , such as the number where a lot of ghosts prance around in a funeral parlor , but i admired allen for even putting them in there .
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it also helps that as usual , allen has a top-flight cast working with him .
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their singing voices range from quite good ( goldie hawn ) to not quite good ( allen ) to literally unlistenable ( barrymore , whose real voice was dubbed by a professional ) .
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but while their vocal abilities differ , all the actors do a great job of putting joy up there on the screen , and making it rub off on the audience .
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granted , some people will simply never accept characters singing in movies , but for those attuned to it , this film should work wonders .
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jane campion , too , has a top-flight cast working for her in " portrait of a lady , " too , but even their considerable skills can do nothing to keep the film from being a stilted , virtually lifeless mess , albeit a visually interesting one .
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campion and her cinematographer stuart dryburgh come up with a great variety of eye-filling images that linger in the mind .
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unfortunately , what didn't linger in the mind for me was the story the visuals were supposed to be reflecting .
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i remember very well shots of a train with its light beaming and shots of men vanishing around nicole kidman , but i can remember very little of what happened between all these people .
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even worse , i don't find myself feeling bad that i've forgotten .
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the problem , i think , lies not with the cast , which seemed to be trying very hard for the material .
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it was the script that couldn't convince me to care about anyone .
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the characters were putting out all kinds of emotion , but i found no reason to connect with any of them .
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i understood that the story was about cold , emotionally vacant characters , but for me to care about them , i have to identify with them somehow and want them to inject feeling into their lives .
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jones' script never simply gave me that opportunity .
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in the end , it almost seemed as if campion was trying to inject some life of her own into the proceedings with her visual flourishes .
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unfortunately , as she kept painting these dazzling pictures , they only served to push me further away from the material and remind me that there was no connection between me and the film .
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in the end , the movie's one strength ended up hurting it .
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so here we have two films with pretty uninteresting plots , and yet i was able to truly enjoy one of them .
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why ?
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with both films , my head cared about neither story , but only " everyone says i love you " was able to make my heart sing .
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