jdwayside

As a friend of mine said: "This is apparently what happens when you let the SCA make a movie". The sheer presumptuousness evidenced by the producers of this film is simply appalling - everything's been re-done in a sort of "Oh, it's a swords-and-sorcerors film, so everything has to look and work like every other monsters-and-magic movie in existence" sort of fashion - Celtic-sounding music and accents, and stock mediaeval costumes and backdrops.

The reworked plot and characters bear no resemblance whatsoever to their counterparts in the original novels. I could forgive the film-makers a *bit* of artistic licence, but the origins and motivations of the principal characters have been altered to the point where LeGuin's original Ged and Tenar are simply missing in any size, shape, or form from this film.

The writing is wooden - it's like a bloody junior high school play. The dialogue lends new meaning to the word "cliché". Everything is over-dramatised, and LeGuin's award-winning prose is just *gone* - there's nothing left of it.

Greatly obscured if not removed altogether is LeGuin's message that all people are capable of good *and* evil - instead, we have cookie-cutter evil plotters superimposed on a story that does not need them.

Equally disappointing is that the *magic* of the original trilogy is also gone. We're denied Ged's discovery of true names and their power and instead it's just splatted out there in front of him (and us). After 5 minutes after this (and about fifteen minutes into the film), I simply quit watching.

I give this film a 3 because it's just stupid, silly, and awful, but without sufficient substance to merit being deemed "vile". I'm not even sure if it is capable of supporting MST3K-style satire. It's just really... quite... bad.

Unless you're one of those people who really enjoy an evening wasted with formulaic fantasy Oooooh Kewl It's Got Magic 'N' Monsters & Stuff fare, do yourself a favour: Give this abortion of a film a very wide berth, and go read the Earthsea novels instead.

Theresa Russell plays her character with an amazing degree of depth and variety in this film. She's sexy, vivacious, fun-loving, wanton, capricious, headstrong, and yet vulnerable to the soulless, self-serving shrink portrayed chillingly well by Art Garfunkel. Theresa's character is very lifelike and (despite the character's flaws, both obvious and subtle) also quite sympathetic.

This is not an easy film to watch. For one thing, it's rather non-linear, and flits around between several different times and places. Rather than telling a story as such, it's more of a jigsaw puzzle, the pieces of which are revealed and placed one at a time. For another, it's actually rather unnerving to watch the process of her dissolution, both due to how realistically it's shown and the fact that we want to like Malena (or at least I did).

If you're at all a fan of Russell, I think you'll find that this is one of her best performances ever, and the direction and staging are first-rate.

(It was also a bit weird to see Harvey Keitel with long hair.)

Okay, this movie has rote acting by nobody memorable (with one exception), and the plot would be better if the movie HAD no plot because the one that it comes with epitomises lame, hokey, contrived, and Just Plain Dumb(tm). Think of the worst possible way you could rip off the first movie, and then prepare yourself for something ten times worse. So don't worry about this review containing any spoilers, because there's really nothing to give away.

These things being said, it does have Alyssa Milano looking very provocative indeed, and leaves the absolute bare minimum to the imagination as regards what she wears and does. It's about as far as you can go and still get on broadcast TV. (I understand they cut a couple of minutes from the air version, but I've never seen the video, and even though I've no girlfriend at the moment, I'm still not that inclined to rent it and find out.)

The one other point in this film's favour is that there are a couple of interesting bits in the soundtrack. What the heck - even though I hate Charmed, I kinda like Alyssa, so I'll give it a 6. With the understanding that, if I'd actually had something better to do tonight, I'd've probably dropped that to a 4.