| Overall Grade: |
B- |
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| Story: |
B |
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| Acting: |
B |
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| Direction: |
B |
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| Visuals: |
C+ |
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Nice Idea Just Cruises, Pleasant But Too Light
by PhilosopherJay (movies profile)
Jun 26, 2007
There's some good acting here by Edward Hermann and Kirsten Dunst. Hermann makes Hearst very human and even more pathetic than Orson Welles did in Citizen Kane. Kirsten Dunst rehabilitates Marion Davies.
There's good chemistry between Dunst and Eddie Izzard who plays Charlie Chaplin. The scenes between them light the movie. Unfortunately, nothing else is really all that interesting.
Izzard resembles Chaplin only slightly in his face and unfortunately he weights about 60 pounds more than Chaplin. His performance suffers when compared with Robert Downey's oscar-worthy Chaplin performance. Izzard's natural voice has a Cockney accent that does resemble Chaplin's. Unfortunately, he does an accent in the movie that doesn't resemble Chaplin's at all.
Besides Izzard's performance, there is a major script problem. Only film buffs (2% of the population) are going to understand all the inside jokes and relationships. The average person will be bored and mystified. They won't have a clue why they should care about any of these characters.
The movie really needs about a ten minute tutorial at the beginning to explain who Hearst, Luella Parsons, Thomas Ince and even, sadly, Charlie Chaplin were. |
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