Chroniques de San Francisco

What a disappointment and what a boring mini. Totally wasted the talents of Jackie Burroughs, Parker Posey, Joel Grey, Billy Campbell, and John McMartin. Hideous "happy" ending and quickly tied-up endings. There may have been a good story, but it didn't make it to the screen (and Maupin wrote the damned screenplay himself).

What can I say? Mother Mucca is a character I just can't quite get into. I find her crusty, salty and slightly repulsive. You just know if you got too close to her she'd have that old person's smell. And with the cigarettes added to that well,......ugh. She doesn't have ANY of the love-able quirkiness Mrs. Madrigal has.

And the rest of this? It becomes tawdry and tedious. And then,........oh dear, we add in the terrible Jonestown Massacre and how two characters escaped and a fake Jim Jones. No, no, no! This is something out of Mary Hartman Mary Hartman, not Tales of the city!

If you've seen the first one there is something innocent and charming about it all. It may be very cliched but it works. The dialog here is bad, there are no real intimate conversations or situations with the characters. Maybe by this point in life we had lost that so no writer could quite come up with any ideas. We had moved on to empty sex and that was supposed to just hold everyone over.

Eh,.....hope they don't do anymore of these.

This third installment of "Tales" takes place four years after the original and continues following the story of Mary Ann Singleton (Linney) and the gang at 28 Barbary Lane into the Reagan era. The plot goes a little haywire with too much time spent on Jim Jones, Mary Ann trying to advance in her career, and other much sillier points. The series also suffers from too much focus on Garrick's DeDe Halcyon Day. The character, as she appears in the third movie, is not particularly sympathetic and her motivations are not well explained.

Again, this series really is worth seeing because of Linney, she knows her character very well by now and does a great job. Campbell really only has about 15 minutes of screen time in this one and Dukakis is good, but her character is getting tiresome. Certainly watchable, but not up to the caliber of either of the first two installments.

This is definitely a step up from the last installment. I still don't like some of the recasts. Overall, still not that great but good that the original series ended here on a better note.

Truly, truly, I was even more surprised when I saw how much was "revealed" in this particular sequel; sorry no major descriptions--instead I highly recommend that you see this for yourself. Thought this was a fine ongoing continuation of "More tales of the City" which opened some doors that were promptly closed within this sequel. Enjoyed seeing more life in the City, San Francisco, enjoyed seeing the scenery, and I enjoyed seeing the ups and downs of relationships. One such relationship I enjoyed seeing was between a certain "daughter" and her mother--again no names as I definitely recommend that you see this sequel for yourself and find out who I am referring too.