oltmansg

I was honestly very disappointed with this movie. I kept hearing from my fellow co-workers about how AWESOME this movie was and were amazed that I had never seen it. "You HAVE to see this movie," they chanted. So I did.

Other than seeing a lot of Bond movies with Roger Moore, and Jackie Chan of more recent times, most of the big name actors in this movie never really appealed to me that much. I never cared much for Smokey and the Bandit movies, for instance. Maybe I just didn't have the emotional attachment to the actor's reputations that apparently a lot of people have.

With all that in mind, I instead watched the movie hoping for a fantastic movie that stands on its own merit instead of riding the coattails of a bunch of (mostly) washed-up actors. Unfortunately, this "comedy" had no sense of comedic timing, the slapstick was poor, the gags were not funny, none of the jokes are original or particularly funny, and there was never any real likable characters (except maybe the cross-eyed "doctor") in my view.

Why anyone would think this was anything but an expose' of once popular Hollywood "talent" is beyond me. I was able to watch this movie all the way through, which is saying something. However I just kept waiting for the entertainment that never materialized before the end of the movie.

I give it half a star.

Quite frankly, I was amazed at the level of criticism this movie has received. It was amazingly funny.

First a brief synopsis: Several groups of people are in the same hotel in Las Vegas. While each of these groups is playing slots, they receive a special token, which they redeem to the manager/owner of the casino/hotel (John Cleese). This random selection determines who races to go for the money.

The twist however is that John Cleese's character has set up this race as a betting event for a bunch of high-dollar compulsive gamblers. To me, the funniest part of the movie was to see Cleese and company killing time betting on incredibly STUPID (read: funny) stunts while waiting for their group to win the race. :)

The film is not without it's problems, just like pretty much any film. I felt that Rowan Atkinson's presence and character was not near what it should have been, and I could have done without Cuba Gooding driving the bus full of transvestite Lucille Ball impersonators (hey, if you saw the preview, you saw at least something of this).

Overall though, it was excellent.

In fact, to truly appreciate this film, that is exactly what you will have to do. The first time I saw it, I thought it was awful. There were many scenes that seemingly don't translate well to the small screen.

On subsequent viewings however, I began to appreciate the film more and more. It is really interesting. And although I say it is interesting, I can't say why. I suppose it's the extraordinary attention to detail, or the way it conveys so much with so little dialog. I'm not sure what! In fact, that's probably the reason I find it interesting.

One thing that I will point out is that if you do get a chance to see this movie, watch the letterboxed DVD. I was BLOWN AWAY. There are actually scenes that are distorted by the VHS copy, by reasons of the much lower picture quality but also the cropping of the image.

Case in point: The scene where we see Dave exercising inside Discovery there is a rather long shot of the "eye" on the HAL computer. On the VHS copy, it's a seemingly tedious shot with no reason for being there. However, on inspection of the DVD copy with the higher resolution picture, you can clearly see Dave jogging in the reflection on the lens. The purpose being to show how lonely Discovery is, and an erie sensation that "you're being watched."

It's almost impossible to notice this on rental VHS copies of this film... maybe because of degradation due to age, but the DVD was the first time of many viewings I noticed it.

I urge you to give it a second, third, etc. chance. This film deserves it.