PARADISE ROAD
A film review by Michael John Legeros
Copyright 1997 Michael John Legeros
(Fox Searchlight)
Directed by Bruce Beresford
Written by Bruce Beresford
Cast Glenn Close, Cate Blanchett, Jennifer Ehle, Frances
McDormand, Pauline Collins, Elizabeth Spriggs, Julianna
Margulies, Johanna ter Steege, Wendy Hughes, Tessa
Humphries, Pamela Rabe, Sab Shimono
MPAA Rating "R" (presumably for violence and nudity)
Running Time 115 minutes
Reviewed at The Colony Theatre, Raleigh, NC (25APR97)
==
PARADISE ROAD gets my vote for Most Boring Movie of the Year. A bunch of stately actresses play a bunch of stately prisoners of war, interred by the Japanese during World War II, and who form a "vocal orchestra" as a way to wail in harmony. The story is true and the actresses are appealing and neither of these is a reason to recommend this exceptionally uninteresting movie. Oh, sure, a *few* things happen: one woman is doused with gasoline and set on fire. A catfight erupts over soap in the shower. And Francis McDormand speaks in a campy German accent. (Well, at least that's one less role to cast for a big- screen update of "Hogan's Heroes.") With the exception of a-cappella renditions of Dvorak and Ravel, there isn't a thing here that we haven't seen before. I kept praying for the film to break.
Grade: C
--
Mike Legeros - Movie Hell http://www.n-vision.com/hell
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews