Winter's Tale

As the reviews indicate either you'll love it or hate it. I loved it, my wife hated it. Quite a turnaround considering I wanted to see Robocop, but it was her turn to pick. Slow and confusing in the beginning but picked up speed after the first encounter of Peter and Beverly. The Characters were immediately likable and the two child actresses were captivating. Russell Crowe was great as Demi-Demon Pearly Soames. The visuals were terrific. It kind of made me think of Titanic with Demons, Angels and even a Pegasus replacing the Boat. All under the winter NYC backdrop. Pay attention to the dialogue because there were several of those "oh wow - that's what that meant" moments later on.

I give the film a 6 because of the incredible performances, and I took 4 off because the studio signed off on this script.

The film leaves out how they fell in love.

In the novel, they spend more time in her home on more than one occasion, they make love the first time they meet. And after they arrived at her father's winter home, they tie up a carriage to their horse so Peter and Beverly can take the kids for rides around the frozen lake. One evening they take them across the lake to a tavern with music and drinks so the kids can dance.

Little Willa falls asleep in Peter's lap on the way home. Beverly's heart melts.

Peter Lake's upbringing in America shouldn't have been passed over. He was raised by a local native tribe in the city, until he was sent out to discover the world on his own, ended up in an orphanage for Irish orphans, and thus he developed an Irish accent.

That's as much as I'll get into. I hope I've provided some context. And shame the studio that wasted all of the great talent with this script.

I wanted to love this movie. Really, really wanted to. Winter's Tale is my favourite novel; but, I didn't want that to get in my way - I went in with an open mind. I knew that lots would have to be cut out (or else the movie would be 27 hours long!), and focusing on Peter Lake and Beverly Penn was obviously the right decision. BUT, then why would Akiva Goldsman ADD something? The totally ridiculous Judge/Devil character, played by Will Smith, is an invention that was very poorly chosen - it destroyed the magic. Parts of it were good: Colin Farrell is brilliant as Peter, Russell Crowe is a fiendishly wonderful Pearly Soames, and William Hurt is perfect as Isaac Penn; yet parts were bad. Although she is a great actor, Jessica Brown Findlay is woefully miscast as Beverly. Do yourself a favour, skip the movie, and instead go and read all of Mark Helprin's novels.

Short review: give it a chance, it will eventually enchant you. But it is not an easy process

Longer review: did a lot of reviews for IMDb and cannot easily recall a film that tries so hard, has such a great cast, great cinematography, yet is constantly shooting itself in the foot.

The script is ... problematic. Parts of it seem like they were written by a fifth grader. Lots of "is this really happening?" type dialog, which generally you do not ever hear in a film BECAUSE THE ONLY ONE QUALIFIED TO ASK THAT QUESTION IS THE AUDIENCE, NOT THE SCREENWRITER.

Duhhhh

Lots of miscasting. The great Crowe, who could play a phonebook if he had to, is OK as a demon. Will Smith as the devil is another matter entirely. John Hurt has to deliver dialog so weak he must have been wincing inside. Even the beautiful Jennifer Connelly seems to have been lost in the production and is relegated to astonished glances.

Farell, no slouch as an actor, has a gift for getting lost in a role and that really helps him here. He does an OK job.

The two actors who steal their scenes are Jessica Brown Findlay, who is supposed to portray a young woman whose inner beauty lights up every scene she is in .... AND SHE DOES.

And whatever animal they borrowed from the Animal Actors Union to play the magic horse does a great job too. Hopefully they gave him extra carrots as a reward.

You really need to leave critical judgement behind if you are planning on watching this. This is for example a scene at the 1:20 mark where the continuity is so out of sync with the screenplay that Farrell has to break about 75 once sacred "film rules" and deliver a short speech which is 100% backstory, just to make sense of what is happening. Ouch!

And here is a Special Bonus for the lucky IMDb reader who got this far: if you liked this film at all, here are two films that handle the same theme in a slightly different way, and you MUST SEE THEM (no, I don't get a commission if you do). Each rates a perfect "10":

1. The original HERE COMES MR JORDAN with Robert Montgomery

2. The more recent I ORIGINS

This movie is a breath of fresh air. That being said, you have to go into it expecting and understanding it is from the genre of "Magic Realism".

I actually read the entire book by Mark Helprin, unlike most of the professional critics, so I knew what type of movie it was going to be and I had appropriate expectations. The book was around 700 pages and it wasn't a Harry Potter-type 700 pages. The novel is a very complex, wordy, difficult to read and oftentimes very confusing piece of work, jam packed with very descriptive imagery. I found myself reading parts over and over to gain an understanding of it that I still wasn't completely secure with when I was finished. In fact, most people I know have ATTEMPTED READING it, and end up abandoning the book because of the reasons I just mentioned. After I finished the book, I scoured the internet trying to find any reviews of the book to help me understand and see if I "really got it". To my frustration, you really can't find any complete reviews of the book because I'm pretty sure most people (like me) had a lot of confusion with the story as well!

In most of the reviews I read, people are ripping Akiva Goldsman apart saying his adaptation is awful, but I strongly disagree. He had to leave out some of the aspects of the book in the interest of time (For example, a whole storyline of characters from the middle of the book are missing from the film.) He kept the really important parts of the novel and successfully makes them stand on their own.

Leaving the theater, I feel like Goldsman's interpretation ACTUALLY CLARIFIED a lot of the book for me. Incidentally, I went to see the film with someone who had NOT read the book and knew nothing about it, and he thought it was way better that the reviews said as well. As a matter of fact, I definitely liked Goldsman's ending better than Helprin's! I finished the book with the feeling of "What? That's it??? Is my book missing pages?" The movie version is the way I wanted the book to end.

Additionally, Helprin's wordy descriptions played out in my minds eye of the beautiful (and the not-so-beautiful) aspects of the story were brought clearly to life in the movie with the expertly executed "tug-on-your-heartstrings" musical score and cinematography.

So, if you're looking for a curse-them-out, shoot-em-up, or futuristic outer space, or reality-based movie, Winter's Tale would be better rented on DVD. If you're looking for a more philosophical, romantic, thought-provoking fantasy as an escape from most of the usual movies in theaters today, it's worth the ticket price.