Emily Blunt...j'aime assez...parfois...ces "5 ANS DE REFLEXION" pas pu aller au bout

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Drivel

Author: Georgina Eldridge from United Kingdom
6 October 2012
 

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I switched this film off after thirty minutes, because in all that time I did not laugh or even smile and had started to feel a bit ill at the dangerously pathetic attempts at humour.

I like Jason Segel but Emily Blunt does nothing for me - she is just quite dull and irritating. However, even Jason Segel could not save this embarrassing train-wreck of a film.

Just don't bother. If you do you will very quickly regret it when you see an engagement party with some sad powerpoint presentation of Segel's exes, with an accompanying song. Yes, because that is both believable AND hilarious!I was on an eight-hour flight and I preferred to switch this off and stare out of the window. That should tell you everything.

20 out of 31 people found the following review useful:

Absolutely Terrible!

Author: krsgallant from Los Angeles
13 May 2012

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This is one of the all time worst films I have ever seen. I am surprised that theater goers aren't demanding their money back (it really was that bad). Shame on you Nicholas Stoller for your lack of direction -- the film was all over the place. I am amazed that Judd Apatow did not take his name of this one -- it's a real stinker! Great cast, beautiful locations -- no excuse. With all of the great scripts that can't get funding, what genius gave this poor attempt at comedy the green light??!!! No wonder the theater was empty! In addition to the bad directing, editing and writing, the film was almost two and a half hours! It was painful to sit through.

11 out of 18 people found the following review useful:

just horrible.

Author: steven acker from United States
7 May 2012

first review, and usually don't offer up my opinion like this, but this movie was a combination of lame screen-writing, a boring story, and constant bashing of my hometown.

the movie's length was interminable, but not as bad as the single woman sitting in 2 rows in front of me, incessantly laughing by herself at every non-funny joke.

the ending was cute, but by 2 hours i was hoping the romance would end poorly.

I'm looking forward to my next review of a movie i actually....enjoyed.

if anyone was interested in moving to Ann arbor, seeing this movie would ablate any consideration. please...this movie misrepresents everything about the city...couldn't find a better place to settle, raise a family and live in a vibrant urban area than Ann arbor..

12 out of 21 people found the following review useful:

Seriously, don't bother.

Author: Catherz_siobhan-419-124390
10 July 2012

I only went to see this film because it was on at a convenient time, but boy do I wish I never bothered. It was...dreadful. It calls itself a comedy? In a reasonable sized screening I didn't hear one person actually laugh, the odd titter - that was it. What resounded was the awkwardness everyone felt watching this 'comedy' just fail in every way. We were all sat there in horror as joke after joke fell flat on its face. Mind you, so unbelievably bad as it was, it was spell-binding in its awkwardness. I think Emily Blunt generally is a great actress, but she does not have comic timing. You'd think Jason Segel couldn't go wrong, but even he couldn't pull off the "jokes" that this film was rammed with. I would literally rather pull my own fingernails off than have to watch this painfully misguided comedy again. Who on earth wrote that script? Give it up before you butcher any more actors' reputations.

14 out of 25 people found the following review useful:

Not really a comedy

Author: rogerdob from United States
9 May 2012

This picture is being sold as a comedy...however it is more like a drama with some comedic elements...and those few comedic moments aren't really that funny. The movie examines with a cynical eye a relationship that the director wants to present as a real loving one. However, anyone in the audience can see that this relationship has problems. The female lead is an annoying selfish character while the male character is wimpy and feels sorry for himself.

The movie is extremely self indulgent...it was written by the director and by the star. I don't think they wanted to leave any scenes out. The movie meanders for over two hours. It could have easily been a 90 minute film.

16 out of 29 people found the following review useful:

A waste of time and money

Author: jrrdube from Canada
6 May 2012

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This movie is strickly a 'by the numbers' date movie, the only problem is a lack of comedy. Considering the cast, it should have had some moments, but the lack of any real funny gags, or joke is surprising. The only thing I can think of is they cut out a lot to avoid a NC-17 rating, so it might be interesting to eventually see an unrated version, but I doubt the result would change things that much. I would consider this movie more of a drama than a comedy, because it deals with the reality of moving from one city to another, and the fact that you may think you have a career, it all really depends on the time and place. If they marketed the movie as a drama, I would have not expected to be amused, but the whole campaign is centred around the laughs surrounding an engagement, but there is nothing funny about frostbite, and amputation of body parts. It is starting to look like Jason Segal isn't as funny as everyone thought, and as he gets older, he will be less and less funny, who really wants to watch someone in their 40s act like a teenager, because he is funny now, sometimes, doing that kind of comedy, but this movie demonstrates that is the only comedy he is successful at. The supporting cast was the only interesting part of the plot, and where the movie worked, and the only reason this movie gets a very generous one star out of ten.

If you have $20 you want to waste, find a casino, or some scratch and win tickets, you WILL have a better time with either one, as opposed to this flop.

42 out of 81 people found the following review useful:

Horrible in every way

Author: felliott-133-6341 from Australia
15 May 2012

The first minutes of this movie seemed promising, but it quickly sank into a horrible, slow paced film where nothing seemed important. The length of this movie is just silly, I love slow movies and sat through this movie longer than I would have anyway because I liked that it was a different pacing than most Hollywood flicks. But by half way through I realised that this pacing does not work for this film, because there is not enough happening to keep us interested through the slow points. The characters are not highly complex, the drama isn't compelling, and neither is their relationship or any of the relationships around them.

I feel as though half of this film should have been left on the cutting room floor, a very poor job in editing as well as script editing. This seems to me as a first draft. I loved forgetting Sarah Marshall, and feel as though the producers probably rushed the script of 'The Five Year Engagement' into production before it was developed. So what we are left with is a very slow, very boring, and sometimes plain laughable movie.

I never walk out on movies, and I walked out on this one because I felt the horror couldn't go on any longer - and surely it would come to an end soon, only to realise there was another hour to go. A really poor movie.

2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:

Bar Far The Worst Movie of 2012

Author: foodfrenzy
26 January 2013

I am always leery of actors who want to take more control of their careers by either writing, directing or producing movies. It is painfully obvious Jason Segel is more suited to be given lines and directed than to try to write his own scripts. This fell into the same category as American Pie and had the same mean spiritedness as The Breakup." It was just a train wreck from jump street.

What I also found offensive was the buffoonery of the supporting cast. He is supposed to be some up and coming chef working in a high end restaurant in San Francisco where is co-worker, mind you simulates masturbation with a carrot replete with a facial money shot in an exhibition kitchen. How do you spell FAIL? His chef is depicted as some crazy lesbian who is nothing but unhinged and the whole thing was frustrating to watch since I've been in the industry for over 25 years.

They depict these two as great communicators deeply in love but for the life of them cannot work out their futures together and as stereotypes in Hollywood go, Segel then proceeds to fall completely apart now becoming a rabid hunter coupled with really bad ironic facial hair. We almost turned this horrid thing off it weren't for the voyeur in us try to see the movie could get any worse. It did. The two scenes Segel actually uses the knife is to basically butcher the living hell out of onions. Ugh.

Laughs were to a minimum and crass and unrealistic gags were never ending. I didn't buy the genuine connection between the two that the writers were trying to create and frankly,I want my $5.99 back from Comcast. What a complete waste of money.

3 out of 4 people found the following review useful:

Asian stereotypes galore

Author: (drdurden70) from United States
2 February 2013

These are just in the first 30 minutes of this piece of crap.

1. There's the "this Korean, that Korean" in buddy's engagement party song 2. What's with the inexplicably mute father's Asian girlfriend? 3. Why does the Asian guy at Michigan have the phoniest accent? 4. There's the Indian guy at restaurant he's applying for, from 40 year old Virgin, who I guess is funny, because he says "fuck" with a Jamaican accent.

Stopped watching this crap after 30 minutes. This is why Hollywood sucks. There are too many white, Jewish guys who have their yarmulkes so far up their privileged Lilly asses, they don't know what the world is really like.

12 out of 22 people found the following review useful:

First time I walked out of a movie in 20 years!

Author: Drewboy-2
28 April 2012

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

If I could rate this a zero, I would. Meanwhile I'll say this: if you are a young parent with kids who can't get a sitter, don't even THINK of bringing young children into this film! This is considered a romantic COMEDY? Ridiculous! It's a raunchy comedy, but any respect for the sanctity of marriage is completely thrown by the wayside here. Scenes showing male depression, a professor hitting on a student, people of Asian descent (as well as elderly parents) using the "f" word on each other, black racial stereotypes, the state of Michigan portrayed the worst it's ever been, frostbite injury seen as humorous (it is not), someone getting shot with an arrow, children watching their mother and aunt cursing right in front of them while imitating childhood TV characters, a woman demeaning a man's sexuality, all of this is just totally unfunny. I'm only 52 but as I watched this I felt very sad that the audience in my theater just laughed at every dysfunctional, pathetic joke. Is this what the idea of marriage has fallen to amongst people in their 20s and 30s? I also found myself wondering how long it would be until this excuse for a movie ended, finally walking out - couldn't take any more. Has our society fallen this far? I thank God that I am naive to this kind of trash! I will never watch another movie starring Jason Segal, and that includes "How I Met Your Mother" as well.

...qu'il n'y a pas une seule critique,commentaire,avis sur ce film ultra conventionnel et vraiment inutile...Pas pu regarder en entier...lâché l'affaire au bout de 30mn...l'humour pince sans rire de Jason Bateman...terminé pour moi

Un autre film complêtement inutile...Ryan Gosling ? là ça y est j'ai ma dose...pas changé d'expression depuis les 4 derniers films que j'ai vu (DRIVE,BEYOND THE PINE,HALF NELSON...etc)

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A Painful Waste Of Time

Author: sddavis63 (revsdd@gmail.com) from Niagara Region, Ontario, Canada
28 May 2011
 

Some movies are bad. You get to the end and you wonder why you bothered watching them. And then some movies are painful. "All Good Things" falls into the "painful" category. Was this a story that deserved to be told? It's based on the story of Robert Durst (whose name is changed in the movie to David Marks, played by Ryan Gosling.) The details (as far as they're known) of Durst's life are fairly well presented. The story revolves around the troubled relationship David has with his real estate mogul family, and with his deteriorating relationship with his wife Kathleen, played by Kirsten Dunst. Eventually Kathleen disappears, and to this day no one knows what happened to her.

The movie clears nothing up (which is forgivable, since it is an unsolved case.) It revolves around testimony David gave in his trial for killing someone else, which is the somewhat cliché means by which the movie unfolds. The problem with it is that it starts out uninteresting from the very beginning, becomes downright boring quite quickly, and enters the realm of the truly bizarre in the last 45 minutes or so. The story doesn't flow well, and the pieces don't seem to fit together. The story seemed to move in a sort of A to E to M to X direction, with the viewer not really being sure what the connecting points were, and in the end it left me completely unsatisfied.

To be frank, this was a waste of time. (1/10)

2 out of 6 people found the following review useful:

Really depressive and scary movie

Author: illy_hristova from Bulgaria
1 December 2012

This is a very depressive movie that can make you feel really bad. I don't recommend this film at all. Please don't watch it. It will make you feel sad and unhappy. This movie is not for normal people who believe in "all good things". This movie is about all the bad things. This movie is repulsive. This movie can make you sick. This movie is the saddest movie I have ever watched. This movie is a metaphor for everything evil in the world. Please don't ever watch it. I need to write 3 more lines about how bad this movie is. It is not bad, it is pure evil. It can make you feel afraid for your sense of humanity. It can make you doubt that good in the world is stronger than the bad.

13 out of 30 people found the following review useful:

Horrible

Author: lenny_bda from Oklahoma
16 December 2010

This movie is absolutely awful. As posted before maybe Kirsten provides some redeeming quality. Maybe. The quality of the camera footage is pretty decent. But the screenplay and editing is horrendous. Acting is poor and the story is slow to develop. The lighting is very low throughout the movie; however, this technique is ineffective as a mood setting. This should have gone directly to Lifetime Movie Network, but even their ratings would have suffered because no one outside the industry would even sit through this production. The music is another ineffective tool that could have given some life to the suspense of the movie. However the sound editor seems to have nodded off during the production process because the background music just seems to come on and off at odd times. Maybe when they when to get coffee and then started dozing off, and then had more coffee. There are "dark" areas in the movie that just suddenly change to lighter moments, no transitions between. They probably cut this into a decent thirty minute documentary. Its like the editor was tasked to make this into a feature length movie and doesn't have enough content. This makes for prolonged periods of nothing but scenery or traffic scrolling across the screen. The pans over to the beautiful dog at least provides a few limited moments of watchable screens. Also, the dog does not appear to age throughout the movie. We do get the narrator to let us know that time has elapsed, but there is not build up or followup to what was missed during the missing years. I don't understand the use of the lead male character constantly wearing the same sweater. Understandably, the budget for the movie was probably nonexistent, but surely the actor could have tapped into his personal wardrobe. Stay away from this one. The wife will forgive you once she goes and walks out after thirty minutes of languishing through this true display of awkwardness.

12 out of 19 people found the following review useful:

Like Watching Paint Dry

Author: cracker from NYC
30 April 2011

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

"When will this turkey be over?"

Every once in awhile you will see a movie that is full to the brim with acting talent that can do nothing collectively to save the awful script and direction. This is that movie.

This is neither a psychological thriller nor does it have any suspenseful elements at all. The story would make a very mildly interesting ten-page article in an unsolved crime magazine, but should never have been made the focus of an entire movie. One is left to wonder how movies like this get funded and made, and the only plausible explanation is someone with deep pockets had animus against the Marks family.

Don't be fooled by the cast. Avoid.

10 out of 19 people found the following review useful:

Put me to sleep and I'm sorry i got it on demand!

Author: valid908 from California
24 January 2011

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I don't get all the rave reviews because although the cast is top notch and the acting is decent the storyline to me was extremely confusing and boring!!! i didn't understand why the main male character was always so upset about his mother's death and how it tied into the plot. Kirsten Dunst is usually one of my favorite actors but for this movie, i just found her kind of dull as well. I got that the father wanted him to join into the family biz and that he wasn't too supportive of their marriage because he felt that his wife was "beneath him" and not high class enough or from the right family but so what?!?! i haven't finished watching the entire movie yet and i may not. i hate not finishing a movie i paid 5 bucks online to see but i really really was disappointed and bored with this feature!

16 out of 51 people found the following review useful:

Extremely Cliché, poor directin and screenplay but good performances.

Author: khan2705 from Pakistan
6 December 2010

Inspired by the most notorious missing person's case in New York history, ALL GOOD THINGS is a love story and murder mystery set against the backdrop of a New York real estate dynasty in the 1980s.

well i saw this movie which is based on a true story of unsolved murder case. its a drama thriller with romance of course. i was not expecting much from this movie when i saw it receiving not so good reviews. the only reason of watching this movie was seeing these two actors, the hot and handsome Ryan Gosling and the beautiful and gorgeous Kristen Dunst after a long time. well this movie turns out to be extremely Cliché.

Its so Cliché, i mean i felt i have seen movies like it before, story was very Cliché. that thing does not effects me much for a movie because that is not the problem with me, i don't think that on certain plot if a movie is being made then there shouldn't be another one like it. i always find some difference and some new things in it and even if i mention it being Cliché, it doesn't effects the rating. but this movie was pretty average.

its all that a girl (poor one) meets a very attractive handsome rich man, falls in love then marry either way. things start to get little weird and strange day bu day, girl star finding secrets about the family, that handsome looking guy actually turns out to be a psycho man and he always loose control and beat and torture his wife, she separates, then he kills her. it was pretty much like it. but the few things that makes it somewhat different is that its based on a true story, the girl is actually missing not considered dead, which means the end. end of the movie is what makes it pretty different from other movies like it.

movies starts somewhat slow, takes sometime to develop and then everything just come rushing, everything start happening so fast which is a negative point and it seriously annoys me. towards the end it has some pretty shocking, mysterious and thrilling moments that are pretty good to watch. its actually a narrative movie, Ryan at his present old age is shown saying the story to the Court.

acting wise pretty good i will say, its the only positive point, Ryan Gosling did a fantastic job again, he is very good in his character. towards the end his strange Woman get up and that psycho killer thing was done very well by him. on the other hand Kristen Dust was awesome too. she played her character pretty good.

screenplay of this movie is very dull and much in places pretty hollow, story is not narrated in a right way. movie is very empty and lost in places. i even didn't felt much connected to the characters as well. direction is pretty weak as well. so i will say to AVOID IT.

8 out of 16 people found the following review useful:

Awful waste of time

Author: agacyb from Israel
7 October 2011

Ryan Gosling fans be warned: He is not enough of a reason to see this movie! I have no idea why Gosling would attach himself to this abysmal project. I usually love him, but this was a very repulsive character that never seemed real to me.

Although Kirsten Dunst was mostly a pleasure to watch, the direction was so slooooowww and painful that I felt like committing murder myself by the end of the first act, trapped watching awful (mostly insane) characters making awful choices.

Following a tedious start, with the droning voice-over of a lawyer questioning the main character, the lackluster script never improved. The repetitive, melodramatic plot just kept going from bad to worse. I very much regret wasting an evening on this.

6 out of 11 people found the following review useful:

Good work tossed away in a docudrama final act

Author: tigerfish50 from Old London, New England
21 January 2011

"All Good Things" provides a text-book example of the inherent weaknesses in drama projects based on real-life events. The first two-thirds of this film has a strong script coupled with excellent performances, direction and cinematography, all working harmoniously together to tell the story of a doomed love affair between David and Katie Marks. David is the eldest son of the patriarch of a wealthy and politically connected NY real estate family. His attractive facade conceals a fragile interior damaged through witnessing the violent suicide of his mother at a young age. He desires to live a simple life with the warmhearted, uncomplicated Katie, but his controlling father forces him to work in the part of the family business that hosts Times Square prostitution rackets. The internal and external pressures undermine David's stability, and the couple's marriage deteriorates into mutual distrust, substance abuse and physical assault - followed by Katie's suspicious disappearance.

So far so good - but the last third of the film is a mishmash of dramatized news reports and court proceedings spiced up with some dubious speculations, which leads to a hypothetical conclusion that reeks of lawyers supervising the screenplay. Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst play the two lead roles with sensitivity and skill, but their efforts can't save a film that leaves one shrugging one's shoulders at all the imagined conversations and unsubstantiated theorizing.

3 out of 6 people found the following review useful:

All Good Things...Like this Picture Come to An End **

Author: edwagreen from United States
13 January 2013

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Moody piece dealing with the disappearance of Katharine Marks, and the suspicion falling on her husband David Marx.

Frank Langella co-stars as the father of David Marx-Ryan Gosling. He is a moody man, wealthy from real estate investments who allowed his son at age 7 to witness the suicide of his wife, the boy's mother by the child witnessing the mother jump off a building.

Obviously, in adulthood, this has had a lasting impact on the young man as he quickly meets and marries Kate.

Both father and son are obviously terribly disturbed as they torment each other.

The second part of the film deals with murder and mayhem. You will be glad when the final credits roll.

1 out of 3 people found the following review useful:

Disappointed that Ryan Gosling's movies are so slow

Author: Finbar-1 from Sarnia, Ontario
12 January 2014

Let me start real quick by saying this is my first IMDb review, and that I think IMDb is one of the best web sites on the internet.

We watched "All Good Things" I think mainly because of the hype about Ryan Gosling, and while I believe he is a good actor he seems to choose parts that are so very slow that they leave the movie quite boring. In All Good Things, he plays a troubles guy who tries to change his life in order to please his father, but not to the same level of pleasure for his wife.

We are given little insight into why he is the way he is (other than his father's expectations) or why he does what he does. This leads the viewer to be as frustrated with him as his wife appears to be. The twist at the end also leaves us wondering what the heck really happened, but not in an interesting "make your own conclusions" kind of a way.

That said, if you like Mr. Gosling's acting style (and the slow style of his choice in directors) in previous movies such as "Beyond the Pines" and "Drive" (which I liked more than "Good Things"), you might like this one as well.

Dirty Harry

Author: kenjha
26 December 2012
 

After his best friend is killed by hoodlums, an elderly man goes vigilante. The vigilante film has ranged from the awful "Death Wish" (1974) to the fine "Gran Torino" (2008). This entry may be the low point of the sub-genre. Nothing works here. The opening credits have ridiculously tiny print. The opening scenes feature nauseating camera work (this is the director's first feature). The villains are one-dimensional caricatures. The situations are clichés. The narrative has no flow, as it gets bogged down in police politics. Caine's character is flat. Even a good actress like Mortimer is wasted in an anemic role. It's dreary and depressing.

17 out of 38 people found the following review useful:

The Epitome of everything foul in mass cinema

Author: Richard von Lust from Germany
16 June 2010

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Harry Brown is a weak, utterly formulaic and propagandist piece of cinematic ordure. Let me explain. There are only four remotely positive characters in the whole film. 1. An old man who means good but nonetheless brandishes a bayonet to protect himself. 2. A weak and rather stupid male police inspector whose only positive claim is that he tries to defend the female hero but dies in the process. 3. Michael Caine of course who fights for good but naturally kills everything around him and 4 (the real hero and only really positive character) a female police woman who knows all, sees all, feels all and ultimately saves society.

All the other characters are male (besides a few female extras like rape victims)and all these males are either stupid, insane, violent or just plain evil. All the gang members are shown to be psychopaths, thereby showing absolutely no understanding of modern culture whatsoever. Most of them are white, thereby showing no understanding crime statistics. All of them are male, thereby showing no comprehension of the rise of females in gangs. And none of them have any criticism of each other, thereby showing no connection with real gang culture.

Drug takers are shown as total crack maniacs who give total strangers a tour of their weed factory and their snuff movie studio before shooting up with heroin and selling them guns and ammo whilst off their heads. Of course the purchaser just blows them away. Utter tosh.

The police are shown to be all weak and stupid - excepting the female inspector of course. They face a riot without tear gas and simply run away when a few stones are thrown. Again utter rubbish.

And the basic moral message of the film is that revenge is cool. It is that sick. This film doesn't reflect modern social ills but rather it actually encourages them. Micheal Cain has no problem in shooting kids without any attempt to arrest them or use non lethal force. He makes himself judge, jury and executioner - exactly as bad as the film tries to show the gang members as being. In one particularly sickening scene he forces a young whimpering lad whose only crime was to witness a killing and lead the boy to his death as a human shield against the other boys. And we are meant to applaud this?

Harry Brown is genderist, fascist, classist and racist filth. Do not soil your mind by even watching it.

9 out of 24 people found the following review useful:

Harry Brown is politics. It's not Michael Caine playing Dirty Harry.

Author: Michael Thompson from United Kingdom
11 March 2011

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Okay, now to get to the nuts and bolts of Harry Brown.

Michael Caine was interviewed around the time of this films release, and in this interview he talked about the very real issue of thousands of young people being thrown on the political scrap heap by the politicians, and that his film, Harry Brown is about these type of youngsters.

What annoys me about Michael Cain, is that he is a known Thatcher supporter, and it was Thatcher in the 80's who got rid of our manufacturing bases, who destroyed our infrastructure, who got rid of our council houses, who took hope away from millions by removing their jobs, making millions of adult men and woman unemployed, and on life long benefits for millions.

Michael Cain is on record as saying that he grew up on the type of kitchen sink estates he plays Harry Brown in, but when Maurice Micklewhite ( Michael Caine's real name ), was a young boy, Thatcher was not in power.

This film should not be about pensioner Harry Brown going on a rampage among young thugs, to find out and gain revenge on who murdered his friend.

The real issue in this film is an indictment of 18 years of right wing Tory rule under Thatcher and Major, and a further 13 years under Blair and Brown who did nothing to reverse the national decline they inherited in 1997, a country in tatters, and youngsters with no hope.

Im not stereotyping all youngsters as thugs. I am saying that the thugs stereotyped in Harry Brown, including Michael Cain's interview comments, are a replica of a lost generation in survival mode, due to breakdowns in family life.

Michael Cain's political interview comments have brought forth this review of Harry Brown.

I believe it is a shame that this film revolved around Harry Brown's revenge, and the violence which came forth was typical and predictable.

Michael Cain could have made a film with a political edge, to make us think, but he didn't, like the politician's, Michael Cain chose the easy way out. Violence in a modern Britain.

18 out of 44 people found the following review useful:

I see all these positive reviews out of the UK and think

Author: Simon Bocanegra from Norman, Oklahoma
31 January 2010

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

well, Michael Caine doesn't make bad movies, does he? *Answer below.

Granted, the notion of a vigilante pensioner is already a stretch, but Clint Eastwood pulled it off to perfection. They're about the same age, Eastwood and Caine, aren't they? But Eastwood's war was Korea in the 50's and Caine's was supposed to be Northern Ireland in the 70's. Okay, whatever.

Then I read "Oscar for Michael Caine" and "everything Gran Torino was supposed to be" and wonder, because frankly Gran Torino hit the note that this sack of garbage totally misses.

There is no plot, no plot development, no character development....well, the Gollumesque dealer is a pretty spooky advertisement against that sort of lifestyle.

It's basically a mindless rehash of vigilante movies of the past few decades, except it's maybe supposed to appeal to retired folks and those getting on in years. Which, I suppose, there's quite an audience to tap there.

So, really, I've got to wonder what is bothering all these UK viewers that they think this is gold. No, I don't want to wonder because I've already wasted an hour and a half of my time watching it and that was too much. I'd like to know Sir Michael's opinion of the film, if he thinks it adds to the celluloid canon in any way....

*Yes, Michael Caine made a bad movie here.

13 out of 35 people found the following review useful:

Boring; laughably bad

Author: vsdobbs from Canada
2 May 2010

I cannot believe the positive reviews this film has gotten. The film is literally Rambo (ex marine messed with by everyone he comes into contact with) crossed with Death Wish. However, the bad guys are so comically over the top the film is laughable. You will not see a more unbelievably ridiculous crew of baddies in another film. It's like the campy bad guys from Robocop except they're not played campy--they're played for real. Absolutely hilarious!

The score is overwrought and ridiculously out of place; the script is boring and predictable; the characters are about half-a-dimension each, and going nowhere fast; the police are unbelievably ineffective.

Truly, this is one of the films most devoid of, well, anything, that I've seen in years. It won't scare you, it won't thrill you, it won't entertain you--all it will do is cause you to shake your head in bafflement that it managed to get made.

Anyone who thinks this movie is a masterpiece on any level whatsoever is deluded. Oscar nominations? The mind, it boggles at the thought.

28 out of 93 people found the following review useful:

A couple of hours you'll never get back

Author: Robert Saxon from London England
8 November 2009

On hearing of a British movie starring Michael Caine and Emily Mortimer, it's probably natural for avid film fans to skip to the cinema in the hope of finding the kind of gem that Venus turned out to be a few years ago. A tiny movie of unqualified class that would, for a modest budget, entertain its audience with a good story well told, turn the heads of the cinematic world, earn praise for cast and crew, and possibly major awards nods for those involved. Though it's fair to say that Caine delivers a solid performance as the titular lead in Harry Brown, to suggest that the film itself was anything but poor would be a massive inaccuracy.

There is no doubt that many comparisons will be drawn with tales that have trodden the well worn path this film follows, from the belligerent Death Wish to stylish Gran Torino. However, this is not Harry Brown's greatest flaw. That is an honour reserved for the American cop-movie-cliché ridden script directed with the kind of two dimensional, unimaginative heavy handedness one would expect from first year film students. Or Guy Ritchie. It is paint by numbers film making, delivered by people who have failed completely to do their homework or think beyond anything they have seen on and absorbed from the small screen. Since most of that is clearly from across The Pond we are fitted with this strange hybrid coat that never sits comfortably on British shoulders.

Caine does his considerable best with what he has to work with, and at times shows a deeper understanding of his character than the script deserves. As such he is a gemstone set in lead. Emily Mortimer is baffling as Inspector Frampton. One cannot help but wonder how such a simpering and weak woman - intelligent though she may be - rose to be a police officer of senior rank when she has such an utter lack of backbone. She is no Jane Tennyson, and is surrounded by a police force portrayed as being utterly devoid of saving graces, lacking respect, understanding or intelligence by a writer and a director who have no knowledge or comprehension of police training, procedure, methodology or character.

Everything about this film - with the exception of Caine - is poor. It is a shallow pool filled with stale regurgitate, utterly pointless and thoroughly distasteful, that serves no purpose whatsoever. It lacks the power of Sweeney, the intelligence of Cracker, the depth of Prime Suspect, and with the exception of Michael Caine's character study of the protagonist, is drivel of the worst order, aping films of much greater stature that come from a culture similar but alien to our own and whose overriding characteristics will never apply to Britain or its people. Poorly observed, badly written, sloppily directed and served on a bed of hyperbole, this in microcosm is why British Cinema is in such a parlous state. It fails to convince on every level, and a strong performance by Caine is betrayed by too many weaknesses that no actor, however brilliant, could possibly overcome.

The only wonder of Harry Brown is that enough people in various funding bodies were persuaded to release the significant funds required to make it.

It is said that Caine hopes for an Oscar for this film. It wouldn't be unfair to suggest that his disappointment is likely to be as great as that of his audience.

5 out of 10 people found the following review useful:

it's something brown, all right...

Author: Martin Teller from Portland OR
12 January 2012

It's possible that Michael Caine has been forever ruined for me by THE TRIP. I can't watch him without thinking of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon dueling with their Caine impressions. It doesn't matter, though, because Caine or not (and his performance here is nothing special in the slightest), this is a spectacularly awful movie. It demonizes its villains to the extreme (they GROW MARIJUANA AND TAPE THEMSELVES HAVING SEX!!!) in order to justify its ultra-conservative fear-mongering endorsement of vigilante violence. Loaded with terrible clichés, absurd characterizations, predictable plot developments, and some incredibly shoddy policework. But of course the government is inept at everything, and that's why we need to take up arms and waste all those filthy chavs ourselves, am I right? And speaking of police, Emily Mortimer is rather blubbery and humorless for a homicide detective. Maybe I'm reading too much David Simon lately, but if you're offended by a would-be witticism as innocuous as "death-o-gram," you're in the wrong line of work. An utter waste of time.

11 out of 24 people found the following review useful:

Angry Old Man: The Movie

Author: TheMarwood from United States
23 March 2010

Oh dear. Where to begin with this one. This kind of film is my favorite kind of bad film. It's competently made, has nice cinematography and the actors are talented -- but the screenplay is lurid rubbish -- and everyone took it seriously. There are so many unintentionally hilarious scenes, I feel a new cult classic is born. How about the scene where Michael Caine's old friend almost gets asphyxiated from poo in a flaming paper bag and starts screaming "bastards!" into the night sky -- while tragic dramatic music is playing. But that's nothing compared to the not so subtle criminal youth. Blisters; rotten flesh; bags under their eyes that fall past their knees; weird tics that make Looney Toons characters seem tranquilized in comparison.

The half baked detective subplot is funny for all the wrong reasons too. This villainous youth gang occupies an underpass tunnel for most of the film's running time and commit heinous murders in this tunnel, yet the police can't seem to pin a murder on these junkies. Or the police won't pin a murder on these junkies. They are junkies in a tunnel, not a rich mafia crime syndicate.

For a good laugh, watch Micahel Caine fight crime. One can only hope for as many sequels as Death Wish. Personally, I think Harry Brown 5: The Face of Death, would make the world a better place.

3 out of 9 people found the following review useful:

Why are so many UK films this boring?

Author: photomanvince from United States
24 October 2010

This isn't an English version of Gran Torino as I had hoped it would be! It is more a lesson in how to politely take revenge.

Michael Caine is too good an actor to have taken this role. It simply proved to me that the English can make mediocre films using great actors, just as they do in the U.S.

The characters lack depth.

The movie is: Predictable, cliché and slow.

Make sure you have plenty of patience when watching this.

It also lacks believable character development.

Either don't waste your time, or wait 'till it comes out on TV.

5 out of 18 people found the following review useful:

Great idea but too far-fetched

Author: DuncanOldham
30 November 2009

I was really let down by this movie.

The previews and the general idea of the movie were right up my street but it was too far-fetched for my liking.

I thought it was a great opportunity to show how bad the system is in the UK but it failed.

The 2 police officers were the strangest coppers I've ever seen. It was bizarre. I can't believe that Michael Caine put his name to this.

I also thought too much happened too quickly at the start. It seemed rush to point.

Sorry if my review is negative because I see the votes are quite high so I'm on my own with this one I think :)

Duncan Oldham

This has to be a joke....(a 5 user resume)

Author: TzoTang from England
5 July 2007
 

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Unbelievable what I read about this movie! I don't have one single positive comment to make about it since during the entire movie I only contemplated whether to leave or see it through hoping to see it turn for the better and at least get my money's worth.

What a bore. What a lack of suspense. What an inane script. What a poor plot, it leads nowhere. The story totally fails to unravel, it is poorly acted, especially by Clair Hope Ashity who puts in an abysmal amateur performance and Julianne Moore who is just an add on to attract some viewers but more than clearly fails to impress during her way too brief appearance. The Human Project is mentioned continuously during the movie and comes up as a boat named Tomorrow? Please! Give us a break!

You would think that somewhere in the process of writing, directing, and producing this unmitigated disaster of a film, someone would have paused and said "eh...guys....what 'TF' are we doing here exactly?". The characters have absolutely zero depth, the setting is more artificial than a Borg cube, and the storyline....well, I'm still trying to figure out what the storyline WAS, exactly.

Things not explained in this movie include: the title, The Human Project, the infertility, the reason for the treatment of the immigrants, what happened to the rest of the world, why Julianne Moore is offed by the Fishes, what the Fishes actually DO to help immigrants (other than kill every native they encounter???), how the Fishes believe that having the baby will save THEM (not just provide hope for humanity), why the army wouldn't immediately take the mother and child into custody rather than letting them stroll through a gun battle, why they wouldn't have gone worldwide public with the news of a pregnancy or birth to begin with, given the celebrity of the youngest person on earth, and I could go on and on and on. If this is the thought-provoking side of this film everyone is talking about then I think I just wet my pants. That's not thought provoking, it's…plain stupidity?

And the lack of logic in the movie is just stupendous.Starting with their "silent" escape from the farm, when they were opening and closing car doors and trunks with enormous noise 5 meters from their captors. And ending with the unreasonably hopeful mood of the terrible 'ending', despite the absolute uselessness of having one accidental baby for the restoration of the world. Sweet lord, some of you reviewers are seriously disparate for a hopeful state of mind, aren't you.

This is the third movie I recently saw based on high ratings and claims of superb acting, story, directing and cinematography and have been utterly disappointed with. We all know that there will be film companies out there writing their own rave reviews, but I'm beginning to question if there are not now rave review factories fixing the movie ratings on IMDb. Just as is done with internet search engines. I simply don't believe that a movie can get such great reviews and then turn out to be so blatantly poor.

228 out of 408 people found the following review useful:

Derisory story poorly executed, pretentious rubbish.

Author: Gorgon Zola from Belgium
7 January 2007

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

A good day to all.

Children of Men was not a good movie and although the subject matter logically has a mass appeal which has probably lead to the incredible high rating, I'd really wish people would quit voting purely on the entertainment aspect. Needless to say, a movie should score highly on a variety of aspects if it is to be anywhere near the level of a true top-250 film.

I really enjoyed e.g. Spielberg's War of the worlds, again because of the subject matter. But that is not to say that that is a great movie either. Great it truly is not, even though Spielberg did a much better job directing it and the cinematography and the acting can't even be compared to that of Children of Men.

Children of Men has an absurd premise. In stead of depicting a world where human fertility has dropped significantly resulting in chaos, we are to swallow that 'over night' women stopped giving birth period (did the aliens from Worlds finally get it right this time?) and that the only country which can deal with this is Great Britain partially due to the introduction of a nazi-like regime. Why the rest of the world failed to do so is never explained just like everything else which is thought up as the storyline progressed.

The story which is served is equally as absurd as the premise. In a nutshell we are to believe that the birth of a single baby doesn't sound the dawn of a new age but in stead will lead to scientists implementing what 'naturally' happened to this horribly acted Kee on a global scale? This to further the idea that despite the self-destructive nature of humans we are still in control of our fate? Or the proof of the existence of God since it wouldn't be possible for ordinary people to stroll through a warzone with a freshly born child being shot at with endless rounds of amo and survive? Again, this is not explained in the movie, narratives were absent much like any memorable acting, the cameo of Caine aside.

The baby being born into the childless world has no real enemies, only the opposite. Yet it is being hauled through a warzone on a tip by a stoned and aging hippie whose purpose in life is to have his fart-finger pulled, in order to reach a certain group of people who's intentions remain completely vague throughout the entire film? Sigh, how utterly stupid. In 2027 there are only two boats left? One in a warzone and one owned by the 'Human project'? Sounds more like a video game to me, hardly like the story of top-rated movie.

No plot development, no character depth, serious low-budget-feel cinematography and a script without any poignancy. Nothing in this movie that would make it worthy of its high ranking. Totally out of place action-shooter war-scenes and the cheap Hollywood appeal on the senses which initially seemed to be left out, magically appears (alongside the terrorist cell) during the urban shoot-out and henceforth during the so called ending of this movie. The boat being called 'The Tomorrow' came straight out of the Shallowwood textbook and made me bite my teeth till they finally broke off one by one.

The poorly developed chase story which CoM basically is, is just too one-dimensional and frankly just straight out flimsy and it got boring fast. And it is so filled with implausibilities that even the greatest mathematicians of our present world will not be able to count them all.

This movie could have been much much more if its back-story had been fleshed out to some degree and its storyline aspiring to be more than just covering a bunch of people constantly traveling from one dreary set to the next. Preferably with one or two strong and discerning messages (and not a score of them which are never explored and certainly had nothing to do with the actual storyline, making it the pretentious twaddle it truly became) and performed by actors worthy of playing next to Caine.

An unarguably over-hyped piece of pretentious rubbish. Simply a vehicle for art-director Lubezki to play around with his camera and editing-room and for Cuaron to bludgeon the audience with disjointed references to contemporary issues with no tale to tell. A typical product of the headline-society we've become with on par appreciation.

154 out of 265 people found the following review useful:

Waiting for a story which is just not there

Author: Vozzywuzzy from Earth
27 June 2007

Watching Children of Men was a really odd experience. Expecting at least something above average, all I got was something almost amateuristic.

I don't know, but I like my movies with something of a story or plot to it. Especially when a premise as in Children of Men provides an abundance of opportunity to do just that. What they did with it, came off slightly B-movie-ish and so did much of the cinematography with that nauseating homevideo-style cameramatics and bits of the acting as well. Why this movie is adored by so many people I cannot begin to fathom. Was the polling rigged in some way?

The movie is basically a chase-flick in which a woman and her baby are escorted to a safe-haven while everyone helping her get offed during the travel. The whole premise of a barren world was completely wasted when the movie sloppily turns into this chase-vehicle, leaving its original dystopian backstory being merely an afterthought. The way they tried to pull it back in during the chase-sequences (e.g. the abandoned classroom scene) was clumsily forced, as were all the 'references' to: the immigration issue, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, The Bush Empire and what have you more. If you have something to say about these issues then say it, a movie is a great format for that. But surely they deserve much more than just a lazy nod in their general direction in some underdeveloped chase-movie.

What I truly don't understand is why they didn't make the characters more likable. After all, we as onlookers are following their plight and should be concerned with it. When I watched this movie I had no sympathy or empathy for any of the characters or their predicament. This simply because they were either not very well portrayed (The sketchy part of Jullianne Moore), unlikable (Theo, Kee, the 'Fish') or Simpsons-like cartoon-figures (Sid, Jasper, that gypsy woman).

I am a sucker for chase movies and that was the only reason I sat through the entirety of this mess. But even the chase plot didn't work for me at all. So many improbabilities* in the shovel-fed storyline and the pacing was just so off, rendering it ultra boring. A patronizing script making sure that every imbecile and his five brain cells got what was going on and the jarring soundtrack suitably missed the mark completely while multi-featuring the worst Stones-cover to date. Which was rather annoying.

*I mean if Tom Hanks can build a raft from FedEx wrapping paper, I'm sure they could have built something seaworthy from the abundant piles of trash scattered throughout the sets.. did they really have to go to that refugee camp being exposed to all that violence with a baby? I thought they were trying to save it, not getting it killed...

A complete mishap as far as I'm concerned with a most embarrassing 'ending' when almost out of nothing "Children of men" is blazon upon the screen in bold print. My oh my...

Acting: 5 Story: 2 Cinematography:3 Script: 2 Soundtrack: 2

74 out of 111 people found the following review useful:

Stop the madness..

Author: hermoinois from Springfield, Earth
17 January 2008

It is hard to believe that the movie we saw tonight is the same as the one praised here on this website. Where is the intrigue? Where is the view of a world that is tormented with the knowledge of being barren? Where are the deep insights into a 'very possible future'? All I saw was a simple chase movie that was obviously done differently compared to what we are usually dished by the likes of Hollywood but also one that not for second convinced me. Worse yet, I can't remember the last time I saw a movie this fake and contrived.

Apart from the fact that no reasonable explanation is given for the whole ordeal of getting the child through the violence to a ghostlike organization other than that it provided some sort of subterfuge for shooting the battle-scenes, no credible reasons are ever given for Anything that happened on the screen. The same goes for the motivations of most of the characters in the movie.

Sure, most mainstream productions hit us over the head with exposition making such productions not very challenging to watch, but to simply reverse it and unaffectedly explain nothing is just the opposite side of the coin and equally insipid even if it was shot from a first person perspective. The fact that the audience has to dig with shovels to find a plausible story somewhere is what makes this a masterpiece? By God, I think not.

I think I speak for the four of us who saw this movie tonight that we were all totally underwhelmed considering the acclaim and current ranking of Children of Men. The acting felt labored, especially by Caine whom we adore, the script embarrassingly poor in places, nothing really profound or philosophical to sink your teeth in and the ending, if one could call it that, was unimaginative and completely devoid of any intelligence to it. But frankly, so was the whole movie, so ten stars for coherence.

We remain dumbfounded considering the praise of this clearly overbudgeted but all the same cheap effort and feel totally hoodwinked by the glorifying reviews.

Ann, Kate, Deirdre and Cathy

94 out of 153 people found the following review useful:

Betrayal of Men

Author: evycomelately from Grenoble, Australia
4 January 2008

This film seems to have received incredible high praise and is currently listed in the Top250 of this website. I hate to fly in the face of such adoration, but this film left me completely indifferent and rather irritated if not highly annoyed. Sure, there are a few nice setpieces, but it's all set against a hack-handed background rendering them only a mild distraction from the otherwise continuous amazement at the film's triteness and mindboggling illogical plotpoints. The film is poorly structured and almost entirely if not completely un-engaging with the most lame and sappy ending I have ever seen to a film.

This film is supposed to be full of big ideas on Britain's dystopian future and the reactions of the public to an infertility plagued society. Angry youth throwing rocks at trains, the rails to Auschwitz have been reopened and are deporting the fugees (not the band) back to where they came from (hell) and even the spectrum of light is somehow compromised*. With this kind of background, you'd expect the movie to actually focus on any of it, something which this movie is acclaimed for. But apart from the main characters being in a bad mood for 90 brief minutes, there is surprisingly little this movie reflects on. The exposition on these theme's was simply replaced by endless shots of people being deported Nazi-style, the English countryside and mind-numbing dialog that was doing little else than driving the weary plot onward. The whole infertility and the world-gone-to-hell themes could just as well have been left out entirely and it wouldn't have made any difference to the actual storyline of two people on the run.

*Truly Amazing that someone would spent enormous amounts of money on expensive filming equipment only to make the actual picture look like it was shot by my Uncle Fred (who has Parkinson's) who just got his Handicam yesterday for Christmas and is still working his way through the manual which is written in Chinese and which apparently only describes how to deprive the picture of colour.

In Children of men subtlety was not allowed. Everything is as bad as bad comes and even good is apparently bad. The sets look over the top sleazy, our main characters are anything but likable, a pasture of grazing cows has been replaced by a smouldering pile of meat and bones, the rebels simply kill their leader over a dispute or kill policemen when they turn up at the wrong place at the wrong time. The overemphasized way of portraying such a dull and drab doomsday landscape as was done in Children of Men, surely would bother anyone who is not into cartoonistic film-making but in stead likes some subtlety on any subject matter if indeed this is presented in a serious movie. Maybe I misunderstood, but I believed that's what this movie was.

Meanwhile in the film, the script is pretty awful. Caine certainly tries his utmost with it, but his lines are one-note and much too viewer-informative only to result in a feeling of 'we get it already, move on please..". Owen is his usual wooden self and thus type-casted perfectly in the role of Theo Faron, a morose lower government official who couldn't give a fart about anything. Although I really liked his performance, his character is screenplayed terribly and I couldn't give an equal fart about his fate in the movie. Next up a utterly forgettable cameo by Julianne Moore, some B-actors to play the bad guys lead by Chiwetel Ejiofor who since his performance in Serenity for me lost all credibility as an actor. And newcomer Claire Hope Ashity as the Black Virgin Mary who does little more than swear a lot, which by modern standards, is apparently good enough for a 'solid performance' in the books of the critics. Frankly, her performance wouldn't even cut it on Eastenders.

The story in Children of Men is practically non-existent and covered not much more than an action packed chase from the old peril to the land of deliverance. But this was done on purpose to not loose focus on the sublime messages it miserably failed to communicate because they forgot to include them. As a result many of the scenes drag relentlessly while jarring opera music and a hate-crime of a muzak cover-version of 'Ruby Tuesday' plundered that what was left of the viewer's will to live. Indeed, it's really all that bleak and pointless. But intentionally so! The end result of all this is an aesthetic crime against the art-loving moviegoer or the one with more than 2 brain cells to rub together.

The end result is also one that is critically acclaimed by nothing less than the entire society of professional movie critics minus one or two who probably didn't receive the letter which stated they would get a nice percentage of the movie's revenues when their review would be kind. Seriously, you'd think all these glowing reviews and those on this website, were written by people who had somehow managed to miss the entirety of Western cinema.

The gourmet-fare that is Children of men is actually a night out at the McDonald's of film-making where the second bite of your food is already spoiling the experience of the first. Let us all gather in prayer and hope that there won't be a sequel. Unless the sequel was already made when they created 'Shoot Em Up'. Another highly creative movie in which mr. Owen is once again protecting a baby that people are trying to kill.

Evy

102 out of 170 people found the following review useful:

Just ranks with any shooter action game

Author: Slim Jack Rabbit from Planet KzOrp
10 January 2007

How utterly bizarre to see a movie like this getting so much credits. I tried to understand it from the reviewers point of view here on this site and found nothing comprehensible.

Realistic plot. Where? If it's likely that women will stop giving birth all of a sudden, then we can toss aside everything we know about biological science. 'The convincing future world' which results from the premise as being a totally chaotic world, almost reads as wishful thinking on the part of the reviewer. 18 years go by with no women getting pregnant and without any known cause, one suddenly gets pregnant? And this obvious fluke is supposed to be interesting enough to carry a whole movie and provide a feeling of hope in such a desperate world? And besides, surely any type of future world with this kind of scenario going on, has got some more interesting to tell than what is shown in this movie. And surely Great Britain wouldn't be the only country to be able to sustain that premise. Rubbish, fairytalestuff, unmitigated Hollywood bull-crap.

Excellent acting. Where? Owen certainly didn't impress, hes just doing his zombie-thing once again. The support cast and especially Ashity (Kee) made me laugh and being annoyed at the same time throughout the entire film. This movie certainly did not impress acting-wise, surely for everyone to see. Caine's cameo was the odd one out and made me feel like watching a completely different movie every time he's making an appearance.

Good story/complex story. Excuse me? It's just a plodding chase-story with zero depth, nothing realistic and about as complex as the basis of your average video game. One doesn't bring a child to a war-zone just because some drugged out old fart suggests that, especially when it's presumably the only one alive in the world. What made the story 'complex' was that nothing was explained about any of it (writers cramp?). Yet, this is considered one of the film's best traits!

Great cinematography. The natural look of the film, the documentary style if u will, was ultimately not what made the feel of this movie a positive or convincing one. It made me feel distracted from the events that were displayed and made me be aware of camera's and actors. They should have used that in portions of the film, but not in the whole of it. All the chase sequences seemed overpractised and what was up with the 'run after the car and get smashed by the door'-gimmick?

Comment on the world we live in today. Well, this movie didn't point out anything that can't be seen in any Newsprogram or documentary on the subject. Most of the theme's we saw, like the Islam-protest, seemed hopelessly and needlessly dragged in.

Dramatic ending. Yeah sure, if you consider vapid and cliché open endings which didn't give the film some sort of closure it desperately needed a dramatic ending, then by all means people...

The movie seems to want us to see a possible world future, and that's all fine. But why would I want to look at that grim and dismal future for two hours following a story-line with absolutely zero plot, no humor, no sfx, no build up of tension nor a decent soundtrack.

3/10

73 out of 118 people found the following review useful:

Total Confusion

Author: ReadyToLeaveEarthNow from Netherlands
6 December 2007

I'm confused. Very much so even...

I just saw Children of Men. A movie which currently holds a stunning nr 147# position on IMDb and is critically acclaimed. A movie with also little to no plot (and what it had was dumbfoundingly illogical and übersimplistic), wasted performances by otherwise fine to even great actors and a political or social slant so inane, so completely sophomoric that it's hard to believe this movie was made as a serious attempt at social commentary. Alas, the extra's on the DVD leave no room for ambiguity. No spoof here, this was meant to be serious...

So we have one fertile/pregnant woman amidst 3 billion who are not. We have an organisation presented to us in a lame stork-joke, which ocupies itself with getting the human race fertile again. That is, if this organisation even exists. They set out to find a raft to paddle to that phantom organisation which is said to bob somewhere around the coast of England. Why they chose to not just buy a raft but get one in one of the most violent parts of the country where bullets fly freely, tanks shoot at anything that moves and walking cameramen are trying to set records for the longest single-take ever made, all this with presumably the only infant alive in the world, is never even remotely tried to be explained.

I really don't mind that pompous, vacuous films are being made under the pretext of being subtle, deep and insightful. What gets a rise out of me is that people can't see a really terribly made movie for what it is, but in stead sing praise, forgive the exuberant defects they are willing to admit this movie has and vote it a ten anyway, without breaking a sweat. Like the headline-reading buffoons or game-console addicts they are.

Shame, especially to the professional moviecritics who along their careers surely must have seen movies like The Usual Suspects for plot and suspense, Full Metal Jacket for steadycam cinematography, It happened One Night for social commentary and God knows how many other quality films that have been produced over the years.

No, these movies were in fact never made. Apparently the line was drawn at October 2006, conveniently forgetting that a particular scene should display some profundity if you accompany it by long and abstruse orchestral manouvres. Forgetting that movies used to have some form of plot other than something any writer for Sesame Street could come up with using nothing but a broken pen and a paper napkin. And Forgetting that overexposing, completely plotdriven and patronizing scripts don't usually help the actors to do their jobs convincingly nor challenge a moviegoer in any way.

But..you've already seen this caper.

115 out of 203 people found the following review useful:

Garbage of men....

Author: CineCritic2517 from The Netherlands
5 January 2007

The world's gone mad in this film, the real world's gone mad upon reviewing this movie as well.

The directing is mostly a horrorshow partially due to the total lack of any dimension in the 'story'-line. The camera-work was totally uninspired, done in a hand-held docu-style which hasn't worked since...well that doesn't work period. And the performance of Caine aside, the average beer-commercial makes for a better acting experience. Miss Moore's on-screen time almost made the Guiness Book of Records and Clive Owen mostly looked like he needed a holiday and needed it badly.

People write in their reviews about a highly believable setting of a future world. Believable? 'Just like that' mankind can't bare children anymore without any explanation to why this is? How utterly cheap and annoying. Oh well, how could anyone possibly try and explain such a laughable premise anyway. It is just Mad Max all over again.

Just a meager, flimsy chase-story which makes '16 blocks' look like a Spielberg production. A story without beginning nor end (it really has no ending, what was that?!) in which absolutely nothing is ever explained. An aggravating execution of a laughably unrealistic plot with only unlikable characters you couldn't care less about and who are never truly depicted. Dragged-on scenes stretching what should have been a two second shot of Owen putting on some slippers to a grand 30 seconds ("...And the winner Is:..Clive Owen! in Children of Men, the slipperscene!).

A dismal, plodding movie with no discernible message since its plot is so ridiculous it even makes an invasion of Earth by the inhabitants of Planet KzOrp seem less banal. And with the most impressive amount of plot holes, this movie is Flabbergastingly still rated one of the top films of 2006 > Mankind isn't suffering from fertility problems, it is suffering from bandwagon-syndrome.

What a gyp....

Like someone said: "How many more turkeys like this are going to slip through the net before people choose to ignore film reviews and stop going to the cinema?"

1/10

60 out of 97 people found the following review useful:

A poor man's dystopia action/thriller

Author: cloakthedagger from Finland
14 December 2007

It's 2027 in Children of Men. Through advertisements, commercials and newscaster innuendo we learn that civilization has broken down on a global level. Only England somehow manages to 'battle on' and is suffering from large streams of illegal immigrants because of this. They the government, deal with it harshly; killing or deporting them as soon as they are rounded up and put in cages. We also learn that the entire world has become infertile; no children have been born in eighteen years. No one seems to know why and the hinted causality of growing pollution, global warming, and food manipulation as a reason for the infertility makes little to no sense.

It is here where the logic in the film is starting to buckle, which is shortly after the opening credits. For the human race to fully stop being fertile all of a sudden, something more catastrophic and acute is needed. Also it would not explain why animals would be able to procreate amidst this eco disaster or why the term 'cloning' somehow seems to have vaporised from the dictionary. Obviously the existence of something acute did not fit writer/director Cuaron's agenda because it would ultimately lose the film's connection with the present world. Of course, if Cuaron had stayed true to the book, the problem would not have been so obvious. Too bad he (admittedly) never even read it.

All this hardly matters because Children of Men comes off the shelf of the so-called thought-provoking movies. Which in this case means that its OK to INvoke some thought, but surely not to get too carried away with it. Judging by the way the script is handled, presenting the scarce plotpoints through ham-fisted explanatory dialog, I don't think this movie was meant to be thought provoking at all. At best it's a silly reminder of things we learn in school at age 10 and up or see in the news every time we turn the telly on.

The film itself plays out like a big formulaic chase in which our protagonists, mainly Theo (Clive Owen) and a black pregnant woman, 'mysteriously' named Kee (Claire Hope Ashity), are chased down by a terrorist group named The Fishes who want the soon to be born child for themselves in order to…cuddle it? Their motivations remain a complete mystery. The quest leads Kee and Theo through England's countryside, which is kind of a plod, also for the viewer. Fortunately we can listen to a jarring and bloated soundtrack that accompanies the bleak and unappealing shaky visuals the viewer is presented. The plot of the movie seems to revolve around getting Kee and her later to be born baby to another group called the Human Project that is not sure to even exist. But if they do exist, we can be sure that the human race, thanks to one little squealing baby human, will be saved….or something.

Children of Men is a clumsy experiment gone terribly wrong. Director Alfonso Cuaron is know to despise too much exposition in films and if he is referring to the 'Hollywood way' of telling stories, I would somewhat agree with him. But Cuaron fails to properly compensate for the lack of exposition in the way the story is unfolding and scenes are constructed. He compensates by making the dialog throughout the entire movie so unnaturally explanatory that it is far too obvious that he is just informing the viewer. Being taken by the hand through every reason and meaning of the plotpoints like a little kid is pretty infuriating. And this doesn't just hamper the acting by otherwise capable actors, it also ruins any character development in the movie which in turn is not compensated for. Furthermore the movie is pompous and monotonous with its one-sided political overtone. It is all the same evasive when it comes to answering, or even questioning the issues it nonetheless throws up. The symbolism and churlish nods to contemporary issues is far too conspicuous and highly annoying as such (The one captured immigrant they allow to be heared, speaks German!, yeah, let's deport a former Nazi...seriously people, who writes this stuff?) And the logic of the plot that a single baby/person will be able to save the world in a movie that is supposed to have a serious message, is, to put it kindly, ludicrous, puerile and as original as a beer commercial.

Although there is some fancy camera-work and editing in especially the last segment of the movie (a Kubrick homage?), I would not go as far as recommending this movie for just that bit alone as others have suggested. I think it is tragic that the talents of an artdirector like Lubezki were wasted on a bleak, rather predictable and messy film with zero likable characters, a questionable script and a too obvious political viewpoint which is shoved up the arse of the viewer over and over again. The film leaves out so much backstory and tries to compensate for this with so many minuscule silly details that even a second or third watch will not help to really put all the pieces together because too many important and interesting ones were simply left in the box.

Although the attempt is somewhat admirable and despite the absurd high rating, not recommended at all.

3/10

88 out of 154 people found the following review useful:

Supremely awful!

Author: mtwashingtonpa from United States
16 January 2007

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This is my first review on IMDb and I came here specifically because this movie has been so highly rated here. Sorry to all who have rated this movie above 5 stars, but have you ever seen The Godfather? If you gave Children of Men 8 or 9 stars, what do you give to the really great movies?

Things not explained in this movie include: the title, The Human Project, the infertility, the reason for the treatment of the immigrants, what happened to the rest of the world, why Julianne Moore is offed by the Fishes, what the Fishes actually DO to help immigrants (other than kill every native they encounter???), how the Fishes believe that having the baby will save THEM (not just provide hope for humanity), why the army wouldn't immediately take the mother and child into custody rather than letting them stroll through a gun battle, why they wouldn't have gone worldwide public with the news of a pregnancy or birth to begin with given the celebrity of the last youngest person on earth, and I could go on. Michael Caine is a complete sidebar with no real purpose to the story line with holes that you can already drive a tractor trailer through.

Things explained in this movie: One fertile woman (and presumably, at least one fertile man) left on earth.

I want my two hours and my $8.50 back.