fatcat-73450
Joined Dec 2020
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Ratings313
fatcat-73450's rating
Reviews304
fatcat-73450's rating
The poster is really too good for this movie.
The plot is nonsensical and trite. Two friends are disillusioned with city living and move out next to the beach to live ... on the beach with no sustenance? When they move to the beach, they discover the grass isn't so green on the other side as they thought and they encounter a few hardships.
Why two seemingly urban, well-adjusted, and well-dressed young men and their girlfriends would just pick up and move to the beach with no manner of sustaining their livelihoods and build a rickety shack there I don't know.
Along the way we'll see generational fishermen struggling, pollution from a factory in the river, sickness, and even death. None of it is dealt with long, but you can vaguely see that the movie wants you to feel indignant about this or that social injustice. There's just not enough of a connection to spark anything.
For example, at one point the lead engineer for the factory says he wants to have a public banquet for the residents of the city they built the factory in, so he asks his henchman to set it up. The henchman kind of chuckles when he gets the money, as if he was going to do something corrupt with it. Then the event proceeds as planned and the henchman barely speaks at all from that point on.
The film ends up displaying much but saying little, and it doesn't display the things it does well at that. The acting is poor, the dialogue is weak, and the whole thing is poorly directly. Additionally, the whole thing ends dramatically for no reason at all.
Honourable Mentions: The Mosquito Coast (1986). An engineer decides to move his family to an undeveloped village in Central America and build his paradise there, but things go wrong. It's full of action and great acting and the plot makes sense.
The plot is nonsensical and trite. Two friends are disillusioned with city living and move out next to the beach to live ... on the beach with no sustenance? When they move to the beach, they discover the grass isn't so green on the other side as they thought and they encounter a few hardships.
Why two seemingly urban, well-adjusted, and well-dressed young men and their girlfriends would just pick up and move to the beach with no manner of sustaining their livelihoods and build a rickety shack there I don't know.
Along the way we'll see generational fishermen struggling, pollution from a factory in the river, sickness, and even death. None of it is dealt with long, but you can vaguely see that the movie wants you to feel indignant about this or that social injustice. There's just not enough of a connection to spark anything.
For example, at one point the lead engineer for the factory says he wants to have a public banquet for the residents of the city they built the factory in, so he asks his henchman to set it up. The henchman kind of chuckles when he gets the money, as if he was going to do something corrupt with it. Then the event proceeds as planned and the henchman barely speaks at all from that point on.
The film ends up displaying much but saying little, and it doesn't display the things it does well at that. The acting is poor, the dialogue is weak, and the whole thing is poorly directly. Additionally, the whole thing ends dramatically for no reason at all.
Honourable Mentions: The Mosquito Coast (1986). An engineer decides to move his family to an undeveloped village in Central America and build his paradise there, but things go wrong. It's full of action and great acting and the plot makes sense.
You wouldn't expect a movie wholly consisting in two ageing men trolling each other to be much fun, but it remains compelling throughout its run.
It's class warfare in a single room practically between older wealthy man and a young but humbler and more ambitious man. As civilised as the whole thing seems on the surface, it still ends up being quite animalistic at the root, with the pair bullying and trying to humiliate each other for supremacy in a house with no spectators at all.
Olivier and Caine deliver excellent performances in their respective roles and play off well against each other.
It's compelling, and it's impressive that it does so with solely two (or possibly three, but I didn't read up much about the third character), but at the end of the day it seems to be nothing more than frivolous diversion. A lot of energy is expended only to get back to square one and you get the feeling that all you've done is seen a passing performance.
Honourable Mentions: High Strung (1991). Amazing movie involving mostly just one man complaining at the camera in his apartment during the film's run. There are a few other characters that come up (I think four characters total), but it seems to me to be a lot more meaningful than this movie.
It's class warfare in a single room practically between older wealthy man and a young but humbler and more ambitious man. As civilised as the whole thing seems on the surface, it still ends up being quite animalistic at the root, with the pair bullying and trying to humiliate each other for supremacy in a house with no spectators at all.
Olivier and Caine deliver excellent performances in their respective roles and play off well against each other.
It's compelling, and it's impressive that it does so with solely two (or possibly three, but I didn't read up much about the third character), but at the end of the day it seems to be nothing more than frivolous diversion. A lot of energy is expended only to get back to square one and you get the feeling that all you've done is seen a passing performance.
Honourable Mentions: High Strung (1991). Amazing movie involving mostly just one man complaining at the camera in his apartment during the film's run. There are a few other characters that come up (I think four characters total), but it seems to me to be a lot more meaningful than this movie.
The book is one of the most meaningful books ever written. It is a cautionary tale against greed and unchecked attempts to suppress human animal instinct.
It was wrapped up in a sensational package, giving an attractive fictional and blond account of all such cases of chyldren locked away by parents, sometimes wicked, sometimes fearful, sometimes overprotective, but always absolutely crazy, who try to prevent their spawn from coming into contact with the outside world and once in a while come to be caught and punished by the long arm of the law.
This movie more or less just focuses on the second part. It's a good story, but most of the meaning is lost. This isn't about the enticements of greed slowly peeling a mother away from her natural instinct. We hardly see the mother, and when we do, we get the impression that she's merely a naturally cruel and insane person rather than a normal person changed by universal greed. As for the suppression of humanity, the most shocking scenes from the book are not translated into the film. Here the chyldren just seem a bit bored, frustrated, and sick at being kept in an enclosed space.
I can say the chylde actors do a very good job and the project was perfectly cast. Overall it's rather a cheap and limpid production, however.
Honourable Mentions: El Castillo de la Pureza (1973). It's a similar story based on real events about a father who keeps his family locked up. Has a bit more life than this one, with the father's hypocrisy an important part of the film and the family's natural inclinations forcing their way out here and there.
It was wrapped up in a sensational package, giving an attractive fictional and blond account of all such cases of chyldren locked away by parents, sometimes wicked, sometimes fearful, sometimes overprotective, but always absolutely crazy, who try to prevent their spawn from coming into contact with the outside world and once in a while come to be caught and punished by the long arm of the law.
This movie more or less just focuses on the second part. It's a good story, but most of the meaning is lost. This isn't about the enticements of greed slowly peeling a mother away from her natural instinct. We hardly see the mother, and when we do, we get the impression that she's merely a naturally cruel and insane person rather than a normal person changed by universal greed. As for the suppression of humanity, the most shocking scenes from the book are not translated into the film. Here the chyldren just seem a bit bored, frustrated, and sick at being kept in an enclosed space.
I can say the chylde actors do a very good job and the project was perfectly cast. Overall it's rather a cheap and limpid production, however.
Honourable Mentions: El Castillo de la Pureza (1973). It's a similar story based on real events about a father who keeps his family locked up. Has a bit more life than this one, with the father's hypocrisy an important part of the film and the family's natural inclinations forcing their way out here and there.