L'amore ai tempi del colera

The screenplay writer took much pains to try and conserve the essential meaning behind Garcia Marquez's writing, but failed to capture the sentiment behind each scene. Another disappointment was directors interpretation of Dr. Urbino Juvenal character, played by Benjamin Bratt. He seems like a soulless social clown who does not know anything about his surroundings or of the social society of which he is apart of. The director's portrayal of Ariza and Daza's relationship as one of a rekindled romance during the latter part of the film, is incorrect as i believe that Marquez' intention was to show that two characters towards the end of their lives who had finally found a connection because they had suffered similar circumstances that had left both characters empty. Although it is true that most novels fail to capture the meanings behind such sentiment, this was at most a mediocre attempt. Out of a possible 10 i have to give it a 4, only because a writer as masterful as Marquez should not be misinterpreted in this way.

To begin with, it's challenging to make a movie out of a brilliant book. Yet: the acting is very bad, appart from Bardem, which made it somehow to fit a character that is miles away ( even physically) of what he seems to be in real life. Some dialogues were changed from the book just for the sake of change, I guess, losing their beauty and meaning. Make up is bad - appart from, again, Bardem's, not to say that the casting in itself is pretty uninspired - appart from those in Florentino and Transito. All in all you can say it's Bardem's movie on a great Shakira music. But that's not the spirit of the book.

This was a vulgar and empty film. There was no content, only "emotions," for most of it, and very flat characters. It was exploitative in the extreme, so much so that emotional intensity the film was striving for ended up seeming a bit like a joke, and had no actual pull.

If you take away all of the psychology from characters and reduce them to "basic emotions" such as love, pain, sadness, fear, etc., but those emotions are not motivated by the story, then what you have is an empty spectacle, a bit like a live show at Disneyland. Not to mention the painful and unintentional mix of gritty realism and artifice, such as characters aging at different rates, having glued on mustaches that look like they're going to fall off, having an old head and a young body in a nude shot, or one character having a New York accent while the rest have Spanish accents (why wasn't the film in Spanish to begin with)?

Lots of gratuitous titties, done in an offensive way. And anachronisms such as the use of the word f**k in 1890, as in "your father f**ked everything in sight!" Ridiculous. In its favor the film has nice cinematography and some good costumes, and I think some of the actors made a valiant effort, but I still have to give it a 1 for being so condescending to its audience and for ruining the Marquez novel.

First of all let's make clear that it would be impossible to portrait the book in this title... in my personal I feel the characters where completely different but it was not fault of the actors, probably of the script Anyway taking clear that Garcia Marquez's excellent job is simply impossible to fully adapt to a book it was an overall good production I was amaze by Bardem's performance, specially because it's a real challenge to portrait so many different stages of a same character. The acting of Bardem was (in my opinion) excellent. the photography was simply beautiful (though I admit there where a shot or two that reminded me more of Mexico than Colombia, but overall it was a Colombian landscape) the landscapes where exquisite and the musicality was decent, though Shakira's music I feel ruined it a little (I'm not a big fan of Shakira) in my opinion the BIG mistake of this movie was the fact that it was in English... I find it kind of anti-artistic to perform Colombian characters that speak in English... I believe that the movie has to adapt to the context it develops on, also it completely took off the little of Gabriel García Marquez's magic it had.

Overall I found it a great work... it's not an adaptation to Garcia Marquez's novel, but it was a great movie which I enjoyed.

We all know the book is fantastic, but since the beginning I thought it was going to be difficult to capture its magic in a film, so I went to see it without too high expectations. There were some details that I found great, for example the music, the scenery, the colors etc. BUT I think the feeling of the story couldn't be reached nor transmitted at all, and the acting was below average. To me, the characters at the film were not interesting at all -anything could have been changed from the book and I wouldn't have cared- they were simply "other people". Shakira's (Colombian singer) songs with amazing tropical shots at the background are the best this film has to offer.