victoria-33419
Joined Oct 2018
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victoria-33419's rating
I watched this movie because Prime Video sent me an email recommending it. This was probably the most poorly made movie that I have seen. It was all over the place and poorly edited. The music was repetitive instrumental canned music that didn't match the mood of the scenes. The acting was awful and the dubbing was ridiculous. The sex scenes were totally unnecessary and the relationship between the lead man and woman was silly and without chemistry. Was anybody actually directing this film? The story line could have been made into an interesting movie if absolutely everything else was changed. It's a situation where everything they did, they should have done the exact opposite. I hope this technique of filming in more than one language and doing voiceovers doesn't become a trend. Anybody remember Woody Allen's "What's Up, Tiger Lily"? It's a satire involving dubbing that these moviemakers should be aware of.
It's too bad that any effort or expense went into the making of this annoying film. It was like a cupcake that was supposed to be a cupcake, but was all icing (made with artificial sweeteners and food coloring). The sets and locations were repeatedly saccharine, the camerawork a sporadic concoction of film noir avec romantique, and the lighting saturated poison. Too many cooks. This cupcake was overcooked with needless and distracting special effects, sappy music, and nonsensical, wooden characters. Nicole Kidman seemed to be impersonating Jennifer Coolidge. She is capable of much better. 25 years ago José Ángel García emoted such sensitivity in Amores Perros that I can still feel it today, but his character in Holland lacked development. The talented Matthew Macfadyen was left wasting away in obscurity. The director (or producers or whoever) aspired to be Cohen Brothers, but didn't even approach Blood Simple or Fargo with this convoluted film. During the first 20 minutes I was trying to figure out the genre: was it slapstick dark comedy or trendy horror, or would it soon break into a campy musical? Later on I figured out it was just an audience-punishing mess of undeserved navel gazing. The Pomeranians should have been given more screen time.
My opinion is that this movie failed from start to finish in almost every possible arena. Sorry to be so harsh-I didn't hate it-but I feel that it offered nothing new. Teenagers may have found it to be thrilling, but before giving it a 10-star rating, they should first watch Flightplan, Speed, and Phone Booth, which are all situational films of a similar genre, but succeed in holding the viewer's attention through craft excellence. It wouldn't be a bad idea to add Dog Day Afternoon to that list as well. Or perhaps watch The Game, Hanna (the movie with Saoirse Ronan) or even Con Air for examples of focused high energy storytelling. For a tense anxiety-filled film with a great cast try The Gambler (Mark Wahlberg, Brie Larson, John Goodman, Jessica Lange). Speaking of Jessica Lange, why not instead of Carry-On, watch Cape Fear with Robert DeNiro and Juliette Lewis, or even the original 1962 Cape Fear? How about a classic like Gaslight from the 1940s? Unfortunately, the only redeeming aspects of Carry-On that impressed me were the performances of Jason Bateman and Danielle Deadwyler. Those two actors earned two stars for this film-otherwise I would have given it zero stars if possible. Every time I saw Jason Bateman's face, I was so thankful to finally see an actor with some charisma. I wanted to see more of Danielle Deadwyler, and more closeups of her expressive face, but the camera moved away from her too quickly, or perhaps the closeups were edited out. I sensed no chemistry between Egerton and Carson. In fact I found Carson to be a rather unlikable character with distracting clownish makeup (perhaps no fault of Carson, but rather the fault of casting, direction and makeup crew), and Egerton had plenty of physicality, but seemed robotic with his delivery. I would have liked to have seen Florence Pugh or Margaret Qualley in the role that Carson played. Egerton was okay, but just needed better direction. However Barry Keoghan would have been more interesting, especially if he kept his Irish accent. With a predictable storyline, Carry-On was a string of unrealistic situations (such as lack of secured areas in one of the world's largest airports), tiresome continuity mistakes, uneven pacing and (generally) lackluster acting.