Posted by
Emmett of the Unblinking Eye on Friday, August 08, 2008 1:06:31 AM
Every once in a while I get dragged to a movie that I know, for a biological fact, I will not enjoy. Whether it's frilly, French, or overly family-friendly, I can pretty much predict which films are going to leave me cold. And I'm invariably right.
Which I was with the remake of Brideshead Revisited
. As a BBC TV series starring Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews, it made many -- well, many women -- swoon. But I'm not sure the new version of the Evelyn Waugh novel will have the same effect. Admittedly, this is not a horrible movie, and has some things going for it. The English countryside and the sets are absolutely gorgeous. But the transition of the novel -- which hardly anybody has actually read -- to the screen seems truncated. Characters appear and then disappear with little if any explanation. For example, Emma Thompson, the coldly Catholic matriarch of the manse, dies with no explanation or exposition, and Charles's (Matthew Goode) seemingly nice-but-pushy wife just vanishes when Charles reunites with his long-lost love Julia. And the movie is almost testosterone-free. In fact, when Michael Gambon finally appears as the ne'er do well father of the Flyte family it's like he descended from another planet, if not a different species. The remaining males are so un-masculine -- make that anti-masculine -- that it's almost impossible to believe that any of them could.... well, you know.
And my golly, is it slooooooooooooowwww. No hidden action scenes here.
So should you go? If you're male, I'd say that's a negative, unless you're able to extract some major concessions from your significant other. And if you’re female -- well, give your man a break and take any number of your female friends.