kcterrell-25046

What a delightful retro look at the scandals of television game shows of the 1950s and 1960s, beginning with the rigging of the $64,000 Question. The writing is tight and the story proceeds quickly and without pause. The dialogue is the stuff of the great films of Hollywood from a different era. The subject may not be that of Citizen Kane, but the actors approach the film with a sense of reverence and conviction. Fiennes delivers an outstanding performance, as usual Even the heavy hand does not carry a two-by-four, but rather allows the viewer to follow his own path in wrestling with the moral questions vividly framed. Highly recommended.

A shameless Hollywood production that tries to jam together several mis-fitting pieces for its own mercurial purposes. Despite a fair enough effort, the film-makers ended up releasing an insulting jig saw of string-tugging romance, contrived possibilities, and insincere morality.

International pop star falls for a much older divorcee and entices her into a world-wide fling of sex, pop music, immature celebrities, and self-realization. Constantly returning to her senses, Selene (Hathaway) breaks off the affair three times, only to have puppy dog and paparazzi favorite Hayes (Galitzine) come crawling back for more, dragging the underbelly of his fame into her private life.

Hathaway steps in with a professional and beautifully played Selene; Galitzine, serving as the eye candy with a fetish for older women (Freud was an unpaid consultant in virtually every scene). Still, Galitzine's performance was surprisingly passably good. The supporting cast was forgettable, but this is expected as (after Hathaway) no one here has much experience in front of a camera and all are still learning their craft.

In the end, the film fails miserably to satisfy its major purposes: 1) cast Hathaway as a box-office draw to pad the wallets of some Hollywood hangers out; 2) provide a vehicle for introducing another backroom creation of yet another cookie-cutter boy band; and 3) get some film time to bolster the careers of several newbies who have been dubbed by the mercenary Hollywood money crowd. That the public has to finance and sit through their creation is just insulting.

Don't worry, Hollywood still knows how to make you cry and carry you along on the highs and lows of romantic love. It's just when you look behind the curtain and all of Hollywood's very worse traits are staring back at you, that you vomit between the tears and quivering lips.

John Hughes tackles adolescent love, and wraps it up in ego, selfishness, prestige, popularity, and cynicism. His writing is crisp, sharp, and surgically precise, rushing headlong to the final Shakespearean climax, which here is self-realization, growth, and mature love. The vehicle is sublime, boy wants girl, girl uses boy, and, finally, boy uses girl while blind to all the love that has been surrounding him his entire life.

The young stars' acting is superb, delivering the message with emotional depth and compassion. If you peruse the line-up, you'll find several future Hollywood stalwarts who gained fame here. I suspect that the film failed to score because everyone was burned out on the preceding run of emotionally challenging coming of age movies of the 1980s: The Big Chill; All the Right Moves; St. Elmo's Fire; The Breakfast Club, etc. Viewers were ready to move on to new genres: Goodfellas; Dances With Wolves; and the beginning of the Marvel Series and Franchise. In essence, Hughes returned one time too many to the well of 80's success.

It's a shame, because this was the best film of that lot. Please enjoy.