Country Dance

I thought maybe a film which boasted a cast including Peter O'Toole, Susannah York, Michael Craig & Harry Andrews might be worth watching. Alas, I was wrong. Utter pretentious nonsense from beginning to end with both O'Toole and York overacting wildly. I watched it twice and still have no idea what is was about. I've a feeling O'Toole plays the Laird of a Scottish castle who has a drink problem and likes reliving childhood games with his sister (York). He is also barking mad. But apart from that, your guess is as good as mine.

The film has no redeeming feature whatsoever. I can only assume the cast and director were blackmailed into making this dreary, unimaginative, stagy piffle. Clearly a waste of the time of a talented cast and director. Risible.

The undoubted highlight of this movie is Peter O'Toole's performance. In turn wildly comical and terribly terribly tragic. Does anybody do it better than O'Toole? I don't think so. What a great face that man has!

The story is an odd one and quite disturbing and emotionally intense in parts (especially toward the end) but it is also oddly touching and does succeed on many levels. However, I felt the film basically revolved around Peter O'Toole's luminous performance and I'm sure I wouldn't have enjoyed it even half as much if he hadn't been in it.

Well, there's another criminally underrated movie which is nowhere to be found. It's outrageous, really, not having this on DVD yet.

„Brotherly Love" would most likely become a cult classic. The story is interesting and O'Toole is always fascinating to watch.

It's better than most of the stuff we see today, just good old fashioned acting. Compelling social commentary, some good laughs and incredible performances, especially from O'Toole, make this worth watching. It's a shame "Brotherly Love" doesn't get more credit... but, hey, maybe we'll see a DVD release from MGM in this lifetime, and more people will actually get to see it.

This movie was a rather odd viewing experience. The movie is obviously based on a play. Now I'm sure that everything in this movie works out just fine in a play but for in a movie it just doesn't feel terribly interesting enough to watch. The movie is way too 'stagey' and they didn't even bothered to change some of the dialog to make it more fitting for a movie. Instead what is presented now is an almost literally re-filming of a stage-play, with over-the-top characters and staged dialog. Because of all this the storyline really doesn't work out and the movie becomes an almost complete bore- and obsolete viewing experience.

It takes a while before you figure out that this is a comedy you're watching. At first you think its a drama you're watching, with quirky characters in it but as the movie progresses you'll notice that the movie is more a tragicomedy, that leans really more toward the comedy genre, rather than the drama genre.

The characters and dialog are really the things that make this movie a quirky and over-the-top one that at times really become unwatchable. Sure, the actors are great; Peter O'Toole and Susannah York, amongst others but they don't really uplift the movie to a level of 'watchable enough'.

The story feels totally disorientated. Basicaly the story is about nothing and just mainly focuses on the brother/sister characters played by Peter O'Toole and Susannah York. But what exactly is the story even about? The movie feels like a pointless and obsolete one that has very little to offer. Like I said before; I'm sure the story is good and interesting to watch on stage but as a movie it really isn't fitting and simply doesn't work out.

The editing is simply dreadful and times and it becomes even laughable bad in certain sequences.

More was to expect from director J. Lee Thompson, who has obviously done far better movies than this rather failed, stage-play translated to screen, project.

Really not worth your time.

4/10

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With the exception of the beautiful naked scenes of Susannah York and for those with weird artistic nudity taste, O'Toole cadaverous body, there is not emotions in the theatrical and convoluted dialog of this movie. O'Toole give us brilliant examples of his acting genius in many of his work, but he leaves an emptiness and a disillusion extraordinary in this incomprehensible and scanty movie. I would say that this portrayal of incestuously relationship English style, was made with the intention of just satisfying a contractual requirement and counting, for its development , only with the effulgence of the people involved in it. If there are no other reasons, is simply a incoherent failure of business endeavor . The theme is very interesting but in this version there is only one definition emerging to the mind: boring!