rikitiki

It's crazy, it's cheesy and it's great fun! No one can take this monster show seriously at all. Except perhaps the staff involved, who have my admiration, because it’s staggering that they can handle the technical and organizational ins and outs of this cavalcade.

Don't be fooled! This is no comedy, the only funny thing about it - and cynically so - is that someone had the gall to label this a comedy. Although this movie exudes a relaxed atmosphere that puts a smile on your face, when you realize what you are actually watching, your amusement passes. If you focus on the content and not on the portrayal, you realize you are watching a drama and a quite tragic story of a family and especially their teenage daughter. Eighties music everywhere, the teenage girl should be wondering if the boy is still just her friend or her lover, but instead she has to deal with death and her mother's mental illness and get over the fact that everything in the family has been revolving around her mother's mental health for years. But still, the movie doesn’t seem altogether hopeless, and in the end it offers a way out of the oppressive situation. And while the solution is rather too fairytale (not every trucker you hitch a ride with is so helpful and nice), it doesn't fall into the boring clichéd happy ending with the family getting back together. Because, even if it did, it's a different kind of "together" than is typical in an American movie. IN A NUTSHELL with spoiler: How to never get to see your favorite singer live in concert.

A cheap costume parade that was already a dud at the time of its release: the sets are poor, Jan Marais over the hill and you couldn't get any wit or esprit out of it if you stuck a sword in it. The whole thing is terribly naive and dumb, the maid becomes a rich duchess just because someone heard somewhere that she might be the bastard daughter of the recently-deceased duke - and everyone immediately believes it. That must have been a wonderfully gullible time. La Toure and his theatrical squadron perform the most boring incomprehensible mime on stage, which is supposed to be funny but instead is simply overlong. And the only reason why the girl finally falls into La Toure's arms must be that she suffered a severe psychological shock. IN A NUTSHELL: A worn-out troubadour can no longer squeeze a tune out of his decrepit mandolin.

I never had a poster of Pamela hanging on my wall. I always thought of her as a barbarian - artificially pretty and with a brain also made of silicon (she confirmed this in the documentary: "Thinking is overrated.") So I wasn't wrong. Except that Pamela won me over a bit with this performance because, besides her fake breasts and unprecedented naivety, she has other character traits. They certainly include indomitability and straightforwardness, and certainly honesty. And whatever it is, the story of her stolen sex video was horrifying and I hope it wouldn't happen today under similar circumstances and with the consequences it had then. Because, yes, she was exposing herself, but that was her own decision. No one has the right to expose her without her consent, and no one has the right to claim that the theft couldn’t have harmed her, if she voluntarily displayed herself on the pages of Playboy. No one should be allowed to laugh publicly at the victim of a crime, as many journalists and presenters did at the time. They made her the brunt of jokes, which made her upset and truly ashamed. This crazy experience and the following witch-hunt could have driven her to suicide, but Pamela - albeit with difficulty - endured it. It's actually very powerful. ___ The documentary itself is simple - a talking Pamela, (almost) without makeup, and a lot of archive footage.

It started as an anecdote about how to talk his way out of being caught cheating on his wife and, unfortunately, it got no further. The surrogate lover joke is drawn out and long-winded. At least thank goodness that the relationship between the mistress and the understudy doesn't end completely predictably. The conclusion carries no message. At least there is the wonderful, confident and pragmatic wife, Kristin Scott Thomas, who I was rooting for from the very beginning.

A nice idea, with the excellent Auteuil and Ardant in a burnt-out marriage, where a spark or two can still be found. And the parallel story of the other couple, who are younger and have much more frequent rows because they lack years of experience is also fine. It's romantic in the French way, so infidelity is treated as par for the course. IN A NUTSHELL: How to resurrect old feelings using old tricks.

I was overwhelmed with excitement and amazement, not only at how I could have been completely unaware that such a fantastic movie had been made. It's charming, childlike - but not childish, funny, clever, imaginative and at times quite dark. The little mouse’s journey is punctuated with various emotional stop-overs and had me feeling like on a rollercoaster. And even the obligatory moral, so typical in stories for kids, rang true and was delivered in a perfectly edible way. IN A NUTSHELL: An ordinary mouse takes you to heaven.

Oh, no. This is a comedy only by description and a few very inept attempts at humor. Two friends’ journey lacks zest and insight, and is rather tedious. And even the food for thought offered by the theme is just desolately superficial.

Despite the rather long running time is quite long, the narrative jumps around with sudden changes. Bang - his (almost) brother departs, bang - he’s a galley slave, bang - he’s a chariot racer, bang - (too many spoilers). It is impossible to form even the slightest attachment to any of the characters; they evoke no sympathy whatsoever. The special effects scream with artificiality and the chariot race, which is supposed to be the highlight of the film, was so unrealistic that I laughed my way through it. The horses, chariots and chariot racers broke all the rules of physics. Everything was in such a rush that would make an F1 racer dizzy: this was just horses on speed. Moreover, the aftermath of the race suggests that after race the stable owners would have to find new horses, new riders and probably a new medics for the stadium. ___ And the hero's spiritual transformation at the end was just so sudden. His few fleeting encounters with Jesus did not justify such a change. Especially since it always seemed like the hero didn't even notice Jesus. So again: scenes that were meant to be moving and profound were just mechanical with zero emotional impact. IN A NUTSHELL: Laughter is probably not the reaction to the chariot races intended by the filmmakers. They just didn't do anything to trigger anything else.

The approach to the girl growing up, trying to define her relationship with the world and her mother, suddenly finding herself at a turning point is strikingly artful. It takes place in a dream. However, it was too depressing for my taste, the visuals didn't appeal to me, it was all one big mess and under all that dark ochre visual ballast it was a rather dull story, which was much better (and more crazily) described in Alice Through the Looking Glass and depicted in Pan’s Labyrinth (with much greater logic and narrative courage not to pawn to the viewer). IN A NUTSHELL: A depressing Alice in a dark hole.