Night Club

I was privileged to see "Night Club" last evening at a World Premiere event at the Phoenix Film Festival.

Not only was it great to see such seasoned actors in this film like Ernest Borgnine and Mickey Rooney, and others, but I thought Sally Kellerman, who played Dorothy, portrayed the Alzheimer's patient perfectly. I had a Father who had Alzheimer's Disease and I could see in the demeanor of Dorothy who my Father had become before his death. I believe this is a movie that all of us who have aging parents must see! I also think that all those that work in nursing homes, especially the administrators and owners of these care facilities should see this film, it will help to open up their eyes to possibilities of care and caring. There is more to care in a treatment facility than having our elders just sit around till their lives end and we know like in this movie many of them are doing just that. We will all find ourselves growing older in time with the possibility of having to enter a nursing home, if we begin now to improve the quality of care in these facilities we can look forward to being cared for in a manner with dignity and love as these three young students in this movie ended up doing. Before these care facilities were implemented we had families caring for our elderly, there is no reason a nursing home cannot feel like "home", after all they are called nursing "homes".

I believe this movie could make an impact on how we treat our elders, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles when they get near the end of their lives and need assistance with everyday living.

Kudos to the Director: Sam Borowski, Writers: Larry Delrose and Tom Hass, and the Stars: Ernest Borgnine, Mickey Rooney, Sally Kellerman, Madison Liddy, and all the others who were willing to put in their time and effort to produce a well scripted and well portrayed film.

Night Club is a huge thumbs down. the cinematography is horrible and the directing is less than adequate. It does nothing to appeal to the audience and the emotions of the characters almost never change. Nightclub does nothing cinematically to appeal to your eye. The shot selection never changes through scenes and the setting is poorly decorated. They may have one or two decorations in the scene to show you what the setting is. the movie comes off very bland because there is no background music. Night Club becomes a bore to watch because it is like a broken record. No matter what the situation, whether it be positive or negative, the characters always respond with the same emotions. It does nothing to grab your attention.

What can I say about Nigh Club? The film had heart, I'll give it that... but even that had little effect on my opinion, as any emotion that may have been produced by this films good intentions were quickly overpowered by a never ending stream of terrible dialog, God-awful cinematography, and poor acting. The film's title essentially sums up the movie, a night club is created for the elderly at a local rest home, and the protagonist masterminds this whole thing is so dis-likable, that you often find yourself hoping he fails, just so you can breathe a sigh of relief. A weak and unsupported romance also follows our hero throughout the film, and only in the end (after receiving a million dollars) does she finally come back to him... (AHEM!) can anybody say terrible timing? Aside from the apparent money hungry hussy, it was clear the director did not plan out any of the small details that would have made this film believable.

-Jim

Although the concept of this film seems somewhat interesting, the film almost instantly loses the viewer's interest because it starts off with horrible acting combined with cheesy clichés delivered by a typical young male. However, looking past that, the musical selection for the opening credits seemed fitting to the theme of the film and this might regain the viewer's attention. During the film, the lack of background sounds or music made it seem like an amateur film on a very low budget. The camera angles and frame shots were poorly executed and this greatly impacted the visual aspects of film-making that are designed for enhancement.

The acting was a bit over-done and the story took a very long time to develop. Thirty minutes into the film, the main idea was not yet depicted and the scenes seemed drawn-out and full of unnecessary filler material. The close-ups were cliché throughout the film and did not contribute to the visual imagery. The lighting was extremely basic and had no effect on the set or the actors. All in all I would not give this film a high rating because every aspect of it was quite rudimentary and lacked substance which failed to draw my attention. I would not recommend it to anyone.

I found Night Club, at first, a little slow in developing.However, once Ernest Borgnine appeared on screen, the movie took on a spellbinding appeal. The three young actors, playing USC students, gave convincing as well as possibly career changing performances. Furthermore, appearances by Sally Kellerman, Paul Sorvino, Mickey Rooney, as well as other older known actors brought not only added nostalgia, with respect to their past acting greatness, but more importantly, cemented the overall theme and genius of this film. In my opinion, I believe, this will be an Academy Award winner. As the movie poster states,"Everyone's Invited."